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The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

ISSN: 2472-7318

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On “Reading”

Offering a variety of options to interface with my curation of plena in Diasporic activism, I hope to provide an instantiation of the multiple ways in which one could encounter plena. To emphasize location, the piece begins with a Google Map that has geotags with links to the videos I have curated. Distinguishing the locations and layers of sounding out plena across what Judy Rohrer (2010) calls oceanic borderspaces, I chronicle a DiaspoRican experience that is situated in political moments of socio-political unrest and protest, from the historical exigency in which plena originates to the current moment wherein Puerto Ricans recover from an economic crisis exacerbated by the massive destruction of Hurricane María late in 2017, and the most recent Puerto Rican insurgency of summer 2019. Just like plena, DiaspoRican activism is historically grounded and situated in and against colonial power, both of which are amplified in this piece and potentially in its circulation.

For those who prefer a guided instruction for interaction, I’ve offered a somewhat linear iteration of the curated videos, with a transcript in the language featured in the video (English, Spanish, and Spanglish). In either option, I aim to emphasize glocal configurations of plena. Arturo Escobar defines glocalities as “cultural and spatial configurations that connect places with each other… place-based struggles reorganize space through networks, and they do so according to different parameters and concerns” (166). In other words, it may be difficult to neatly distinguish, place from time, from (the need for) protest, as they continually repeat themselves in coloniality, or coloniality follows people regardless of their places. Plena, then, is a node of sound that creates a socio-political space for modalities of survivance. Language choice is part of that modality. 

After each video I provide a statement explaining the content and context for each video, signifying some of the intentionality behind my curation. The videos, themselves, however, remain pretty intact, with minimum interpretive signposts. The inspiration for such an approach is based on an exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston this summer, celebrating 50 years of the Stonewall riots. A video installation featured drag queens dressed as iconic activists of the time, such as Sylvia Rivera, as sound of riveting speeches played in the background. There was little context for each of the speeches, or any kind of reference to another source: instead, the viewer/listener was immersed into the artistic performance (and all its symbolic layers). And yet, aware of the dearth of knowledge regarding Puerto Rico as a colonial territory of the United States, I find it necessary to provide some context for my video, sound, and image choices. This curation, therefore, offers a cultural rhetoric about Puerto Rican activism through music, one enveloped in history and contestations of political identity.

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Curatorial Statement

Notes on Positionality 

Webtext 

References