The game story is based on an initial fictional research called The Sexuality of Technology : Memories of Existing in Techno-Society. It examines surveillance as violence and power that creates inequalities in motion illustrated through the lens of three friends navigating the intricate relations of power. The project grounds pain, rage and practices of survival of queer people, moving away from the ‘acceptance’ narrative to highlight that for many queer people in Ghana, violence and power is messy, unspectacular, and embedded in their everyday existence within techno-societies. In the game, the story is extended into a journey of justice, healing and renewal, hoping to inspire insight and reflections on how spirituality, technology and our environment’s spaces are intertwined. We reference a paradoxical relationship with technology, looking at how on one end it is marred by surveillance, and on the other it could be an outlet for creativity and play, when methods and visions of surrounding its design is embedded in practices of care and community
The following article is my (Mardiya) reflection of doing research on violence power and inequality as part of a fellowship that inspired this extended work. I hope my lessons resonates with your process, do let us know!
Author’s Reflection: Lessons from Researching Violence, Power and Inequality
I write non-fiction. It has always been my mode of storytelling for resharing information through research. This work that puts together accounts of queer Ghanaians navigating threats and anxieties in a digital society, however, proved to be much more difficult to translate into a research report, policy brief or other typical social-science format. So I attempted fiction, inspired by real stories from Ghana. During my field work, I would leave focus group discussions depleted, or angry. At the end of the initial process, I dreaded reliving the emotions, often wondering whether this work would ever come to fruition. But I did not have the luxury of choice. Instead, I complained sorely about the cruelty of the world and how ironic it was that I, who took on the responsibility of conducting this research, felt the trauma each time I relistened to, transcribed, translated (some interviews were conducted in the local language), coded and analysed the stories. To avoid that aspect of the work, I would also delve into reading literature to help me shape and analyse the accounts stored in my drive. The major question that guided me was, How can I accurately capture the affective experiences from my data? My initial research questions were: a) How have queer people experienced violence facilitated through technology surveillance, its products and systems? And b) What drives queer anxieties, threats and fear within digital societies?
While sitting in the room, speaking with the queer folk, I realised these are intricate and messy experiences of violence and power. The stories are not mere anxieties and fears shaped through technology and social media. I too could feel the violence and power dynamics at play in everyday lives and usage of technologies. The resulting inequalities were not exceptional either. As I worked through, relistened to, and re-engaged with the sad, painful and violent experiences of queer Ghanaians, I was still unsure whether narrative fiction was the format to take. Recall: I normally write non-fiction. This was uncomfortable, and very difficult, because I needed to learn and apply a new skill within a limited timeframe.
When I shared this uncertainty with Zanele Sokatsha who had read the initial proposal and drafts, she pointed out, “I am wondering if you may have to write your approach to violence and power and present it as violence in motion rather than static violence, which is the widely used format in research papers. People with privilege are used to dealing with violence as a concept to be taken apart, uncovered and layered, yet that is still static. In motion, it is more like an assemblage, which is why it is best to present it narratively.”
Assemblages! I beamed at this reminder. It was like an assemblage of events within people’s lives, inspiring and causing other actions, thus I expanded my review of literature on the subject. These included bell hooks’ Oppositional Gaze, Sara Ahmed’s Feminist Killjoy Handbook, Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times and Patrick Keilty’s edited volume Queer Data Studies. I also examined Ghanaian music as a form of resistance and counter-narrative building, through the use of political mockery. All of these sources influenced the concepts explored through the final piece.
Within Queer Data Studies specifically, I came across the idea of obscurity and opacity as a queer survival technique. Shepard (2023) argues that, in historical accounts in the United States, postwar gay and lesbian communities used creative literary techniques to share information on sexual surveillance. These literary practices fell within techniques of opacity that provided critical information with sexually diverse groups in secure ways. The art of opacity inspired my decision to capture this research in speculative fiction, as a test to the theory of opacity, as well as my conscious decision to meaningfully share knowledge in ways that do not negate the efforts of the people whose stories are represented. Sara Ahmed (2023), in The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, argues that “feminism survives through us” and our stories. Leila Lariba (2024) also points out that such survival requires introspection on what community entails. Does community entail loose connections based on shared experiences and identities or does it entail “a genuine sense of care and solidarity”? Ahmed (2023) suggests we create “care collectives” and learn each other’s survival tips. According to Ahmed (2023, pp. 48), “to survive the world we need to transform it. But we still have to survive the world we are transforming.”
These are sentiments shared throughout my interviews as well — hence, for now, the project is to build solidarity, work through internal polarizations, and learn modes of survival
Bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. Seal Press, 2023.
hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” in Feminism and Tradition in
Aesthetics, edited by Brand Weiser, Peg Zeglin, and Carolyn Korsmeyer, pp. 142-159.
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
Lariba, Leila. “The Heart of Activism: A Young Queer Activist on Building a Stronger LGBTQI+
Community.” African Feminism, May 31, 2024.
Keilty, Patrick. Queer Data Studies. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2007.