2002
MLA
Globalization and the Image I: Imagining the Global
Jillana Enteen
Northwestern University
Networking Against Spatial Conceptions: Tamil Eelam on the World Wide Web
Do not cite
without permission of the author.
In its current
state, the Internet may be understood as a dynamic, shifting network of
computers and other electronic signal receptors transmitting and/or receiving
bits of digital information. Popular conceptions of the Internet, however,
depict this exchange of information as delimiting virtual space. Privileging
certain conceptions of cyberspace over others is not a 'disinterested'
aesthetic strategy; the envisioning of space, like all forms of rhetoric,
inscribes particular relations of power.1 In this brief discussion, I
argue that current procedures for identifying the location of electronic
data, Uniform Resource Locators in particular, situate the Internet and
the world wide web (www) as geographically based systems with corresponding
geopolitical reference points in the physical world. Rather than recognizing
the networks formed through on-line data exchange, the prevailing archeology
of the Internet and www ties individuals to physical locations. This perpetuates
the belief that our planet consists of a conglomeration of nation-states
with bounded territories and national subjects, sustaining, as a consequence,
the inequities inherent to this way of organization. Some websites, however,
resist this model, such as those launched by citizens of Tamil Eelam,
members of what might be termed a stateless nation that uses the world
wide web to argue their agenda, organize, and inform electronic visitors.
The designers of these sites employ the notion of networks rather than
presupposing that geographical referents are the primary framework for
meaningful exchanges.
Possibilities
of Network/Hierarchies of Space
Why has the image of the Internet as a network languished in the popular
imagination? If one must provide a "shape" for the Internet,
it would be instantaneously dynamic, changing minutely whenever a byte
of information is deployed. Networks accounts for these processes more
accurately than the image of occupied, navigational space. The dominant
metaphor of the Internet as cyberspace may have encouraged the adoption
of territorial metaphors (Dodge and Kitchin 75). Journalistic and popular
accounts initially relied on cyberpunk portrayals of the Internet, such
as those of William Gibson's Cyberspace and Neil Stephenson's Metaverse.
These interactive systems are gridded, Euclidean worlds, stretching uniformly
in three dimensions, geo-metric totalities. One influential example, Howard
Rheingold's 1993 tract, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic
Frontier, as the title suggests, redeploys the frontier metaphor for computer-mediated
communication (CMC). This extends the logic of manifest destiny and space
exploration, ideologies reflecting those employed by European nations
to justify the colonial project, reinvigorating the U.S.'s sense of entitlement
and spirit of conquest.
Tongchai Winichakul uses the instance of Siam to explain one ramification
of colonial attempts at territorial acquisition, the mapping of national
boundaries: maps "anticipated. . .spatial reality, not vice versa.
In other words, a map was a model for, rather than a model of, what it
purported to represent" (Winichakul 131). Maps do not merely represent
that which already exists; instead, they actively mediate the relationship
between human beings and space. Perceiving of information available for
access by a remote computer with a specific application and some hardware
as a website with a fixed location in the cyberspace of the www, to be
traveled, surfed or navigated and then put into perspective, located,
and mapped, forces current global conditions resulting from colonial and
expansionist practices upon the electronic domain. Conceptualizing web
pages as locatable under the logic of domain names and Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) enforces the ideological implications of mapping and displaces
other discourses about electronic communication. While some sites, such
as those run by search engines, function primarily as connections to other
sites, the majority of websites, particularly those dedicated to nation-state
representation, assume an unproblematic correlation between the world
wide web and physical territory.
Mapping through
TLDNs
The status of a web page depends on its domain name, the Uniform Resource
Indicator (URL) that presumes to locate this collection of data in the
vast territory of cyberspace. The connection between this system of nomenclature
and contemporary conceptions of geopolitical configurations is most clearly
articulated by Top Level Domain Name (TLDN) suffixes. These suffixes were
initially purported to indicate the physical location of the computer
holding the primary data for each website. Nations that did not occupy
bounded territories recognized by the International Organization of Standardization,
the ISO, such as Tamil Eelam, were not assigned country code Top Level
Domain Name (ccTLDN) suffixes with which to organize their Uniform Resource
Indicators (URLs). Sites are often interpreted according to the physical
nation-state to which they refer, and names without nation-based suffixes,
such as .org, .com, or .edu were initially assumed to be U.S.-based, reinforcing
assumptions of the United States as originator and center of electronic
connectivity.
Yoking networks of connectivity to nation-states through TLDNs extends
the forces of capitalism, rendering a virtual topography where nation-states
with little power in the global marketplace become increasingly invisible.
In several instances, corporate entities have negotiated for the control
of the domain suffixes of small, less-powerful nations. For example, the
.tv corporation, a subsidiary of the Verisign Corporation, sells Tuvalu's
domain names with the .tv suffix at the home page for this nation (www.tv
[Image 1]). Finding any mention of this pacific island nation on its national
homepage is no longer even possible. Until August 2002, persistent visitors
could follow a series of six links to find, deeply embedded in the website,
a brief description of Tuvalu and four photographs that blatantly implied
a primitive society with simple inhabitants (Image 2). In addition, there
was a commitment by the .tv corporation to allot a percentage of its earnings
for the purchase, installation and maintenance of computers with internet
connections for the island residents. This island and Verisign's financial
commitment no longer exist-at least not on the world wide web.
There are many alternatives to this practice of mapping the world wide
web according to political configurations: employing the numerical designations
that underlie these text based space markers; or devising generic URLs
without regional designations. TLDNs are no longer required to reflect
a national affiliation, but corruption and incompetence by corporations
such as ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
with the authority to assign TLDNs has hindered the widespread deployment
of alternative systems of notation. Increasingly, however, suffixes such
as .com or .net are understood to reference international or non-local,
albeit primarily economic, webpages. Despite the popularity of these extra-national
suffixes, ccTLDNs continue to function as the most widely used designation
for organizing people, products, information, and interactions on-line.
By "buying into" the value of this system of nomenclature, website
managers and web page visitors accept that web pages possess real world
referents, thereby reinforcing current geopolitical hierarchies. Tamil
Eelam websites, however, offer several alternative models that resist
this territorial correlation.
Tamil Eelam
and the Network
Tamil Eelam is a nation fighting for territory located within the island
nation of Sri Lanka, formerly the British colony of Ceylon (Image 3).
Their claim to this land has been refused by Sri Lanka and by international
governing bodies such as the United Nations, and unsuccessful negotiations
have led to violent conflicts between the ruling Sinhalese and the Tamils
struggling for independence. Many Tamils in Sri Lanka therefore support
a resistance movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also
known as the Tamil Tigers, who are committed to obtaining control over
this historically Tamil-occupied territory. In order to escape persecution
from the Sri Lankan government, which has suspended their rights as citizens,
a large number of Tamils have fled the island, relocating around the world
in countries offering political asylum. These far-flung Tamils, together
with their compatriots in Sri Lanka, constitute the citizenry of the nation
of Tamil Eelam.
Tamil Eelam national websites, launched and maintained by Tamils no longer
in Sri Lanka, embody networks with scattered and shifting nodes. Although
the websites representing the Tamil Eelam nation attempt to place their
nation on the geo-political map, these sites execute a variety of practices
that dislodge dominant connections between the world wide web and real
world locations. The domain names they use challenge this territorial
link, several websites function as networks rather than virtual spaces,
and their sense of what makes community imagines bodies in diaspora as
the crucial network component that will enable territorial sovereignty.
Furthermore, web duration is premised as superior to territorial correspondence.
Sri Lankan Tamils in diaspora established a presence on the Internet early--from
controversial newsgroups emerging as early as 1991 to several sites launched
on the www by 1996.2 Tamil Eelam, however, has no country code Top Level
Domain Name (ccTLD) suffix to locate and affiliate its national webpages.
The citizens, situating themselves as opposed to the actions of the Sinhalese-governed
nation-state of Sri Lanka, would violate Sri Lankan laws that forbid national
critique if the sites employed the domain suffix of Sri Lanka, .lk. For
this reason, the five most prominent Tamil Eelam websites--the Tamil Eelam
homepage, Tamilnet, EelamWEB, Tamil Sangam, and the Tamil language site
TamilEelam--each have URLs that do not locate their nation according to
their geopolitical coordinates.
As I've discussed, the U.S. based domain-names end with a designation
reflecting the classification of the institution housing the domain server
rather than a suffix marking the nation-state to which it refers. Since
no ccTLDN suffix anchors Tamil Eelam citizens to the territory they claim,
these web pages use the U.S. based TLDNs of .com and .org. The .com suffix
increasingly indicates an economic function extending beyond the boundaries
of a single nation-state; by employing a .com suffix, the Tamil Eelam
websites, like other .com websites, break the cyberspace/geo-political
correspondence and diminish the centrality of the U.S. on the web by rejecting
a U.S. affiliation that a .com address would have, at one time, presumed.
While the .org suffix continues to designate U.S.-based non-profit organizations,
the Tamil Eelam webpages employing .org disrupt the notion that on-line
issues compliment the policies of their suggested nation of origin. Since
the U.S. government classifies the Tamil Tigers as terrorists, Bush has
proclaimed Tamils working for national sovereignty to be enemies of the
United States in the current "war on terrorism." The .org suffixes
that locate these sites, one of which appears primarily in Tamil language
as a news source for Tamil speakers, and both of which support the actions
of the Tamil Tigers, illustrate that implied locational markers need not
reflect the opinions or concerns of the corresponding host nation-state's
government nor its citizens. These URLS thereby resist the logic of previous
domain naming practices.
The names of two of the most trafficked sites, TamilNet (www.tamilnet.com
[Image 4]) and EelamWEB (www.EelamWEB.com [Image 5]) function as news
services rather than as web-based locations standing in for or speaking
on behalf of a traditionally conceived nation-state. Their webpages aim
to respond to international condemnation of the Tamil Tigers for terrorist
activities by providing sympathetic portrait of freedom fighters attempting
to control their historically occupied territory and by reporting the
international human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan government
against the Tamils.
Both TamilNet and EelamWEB function in a way that diverges from neighboring
Sri Lanka's nation-state based website, which envisions itself as a window
for the outside world into a geographically specific tourist destination
or investment opportunity (Image 6). EelamWEB, in particular, imitates
news services anchored to a place such as the New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
or the Washington Post (www.Washingtonpost.com [Image 7]), reporting on
events of concern to the corresponding location rather than providing
a portrait for visitors. Rather than reporting news for Tamils located
in Tamil Eelam, however, who are unlikely to have internet access and
who presumably support the cause, EelamWEB attempts to persuade a global
readership. It's layout adheres closely to on-line news service conventions,
with along the top banner, folders for specific news areas below the banner,
links to relevant sites along the left hand side, headlines and photos
in the largest frame with links for the entire article, and prominent
update information to suggest up-to-the-minute accuracy. In addition,
EelamWEB's special services such as an on-line store, free downloadable
games and computer wallpaper reflect the electronic branches of these
newspaper-based on-line news services. EelamWEB provides news in a conventional
format, and, like the washingtonpost.com, offers items of interest to
keep the reader engaged and likely to return. Yet EelamWEB is primarily
concerned with the achieving political recognition for Tamil Eelam. The
designs for the free wallpaper downloads (Image 8) for instance, feature
waves, an aesthetic reference to both Eelam's physical location on the
former island of Ceylon and the "waves," as this site and others
refer to it, of resistance committed by the Tamil Tigers. The wallpaper
page also features a series of five maps that show the war zone and detailed
views of the land said to constitute the nation-state (Image 9).
TamilNet, also configured as a news service with no corresponding territorial
locatrion, claims to "report to the world on Tamil affairs."
This suggests a network of writers and readers sharing interests on a
particular topic rather than ethnic or national affiliation. Some reporting
in Tamil is offered, but the site is primarily English language, the dominant
language of the internet, thereby, like EelamWEB, targeting a large constituency
beyond the Tamil community.
Incorporating the terms Net and WEB in their names invokes internet and
wwweb specific references, locating these sites in a strictly electronic
realm. TamilNet emphasizes this; no maps appear that outline the contested
territory of Tamil Eelam. In fact, TamilNet does not necessarily invoke
national affiliation. "Tamil" refers to an ethnic group that
includes a large population not involved in the struggle for Eelam. With
no domain name that maps location, no clear base of operations beyond
the www, and services aimed for a worldwide audience, these nets and webs,
like their names suggest, situate themselves in an electronic network
rather than tied to a physical location.
Although EelamWEB displays detailed maps that locate Tamil Eelam, it too
deploys a network metaphor by predicating Tamil Eelam upon the activism
of its citizens abroad. Tamil Eelam, the site insists, is sustained by
the Tamil diaspora; these remote citizens enable the continued existence
of Tamil Eelam. The "Our People" link shows photographs of Tamils
in exile around the world demonstrating on behalf of Tamils in Sri Lanka
(Image 10 and 11). The shape of the web produced by EelamWEB is defined
by the locations of its participants; citizens in diaspora embody this
web, providing an ever shifting constituency connected through actions
and intent, one that transcends attempts to enforce territorial boundaries.
This assumed web, however, is not the focus of the site's content; the
daily reports center on the Tamil Tigers and their resistance, as well
as actions taken by Sri Lankan forces to curtail them. As a result, the
contested territory of Tamil Eelam links seamlessly to these networked
bodies around the world, and the political project of national recognition
is advanced without insisting that this website possesses a traditional
geo-political correspondence.
The Ilankai Tamil Sangam (www.sangam.org [Image 12]) similar intimates
that Tamils in diaspora are responsible for the continued existence of
Tamil Eelam. Tamil expatriates living in liberal democracies, they argue,
"are the only voice through which the voiceless Tamils can speak."
The Ilankai Tamil Sangam, also known as the Association of Tamils of Eelam
and Sri Lanka in the United States, locates itself clearly within U.S.
borders: "The Ilankai Tamil Sangam is such an organization of the
exiled people of Tamileelam in the USA." Claiming the United States
as geo-political referent for the site calls attention to suppression
and human rights violations experienced by Tamils located in Sri Lanka,
employing contemporary hierarchies between east and west in addition to
sustaining the territorial conventions of the world wide web.
Not only are dominant visions of the world wide web invoked, web presence
is also proffered as a justification. Tamil Sangam's emphases imply that
existence on the web is separate, and perhaps superior, to territorial
correspondence. The site bases its credibility on its lengthy web presence.
For example, the moving banner at the top of the homepage explains: "Sixth
year on the web. Standing Up for What We Believe in" (www.sangam.org/index.html).
The age of its corresponding organization is equally highlighted: "we
are 25" (Image 13) are the words accompanying the first image below
the masthead. This prominent link advertises the 25-year, silver jubilee
of the Sangam organization. Age and duration are celebrated throughout
the site; for example, the text in "Our Mission" explains that
Tamils speak "one of the oldest living languages in the world"
(www.sangam.org/Mission.htm). While strategically employing territorial
correspondence, this site ignores the status conferred on domain names
insisting instead that duration is a fundamental criterion for world wide
web credibility.
The Tamil Eelam sites refer to the physical location of Tamil Eelam in
vague, ideological terms. On the Tamil Eelam Homepage (www.eelam.com),
for example, the map of the nation of Tamil Eelam is only an outline,
shaded a darker pink than the rest of the island (Image 14). This outline
suggests a version of Tamil Eelam that is removed from the physicality
of its location, a common practice of Tamils abroad: the nation is marked
this way for children, and it appears as an outline in maps, wall hangings,
and, perhaps, in the minds of its members. This consistent visual representation
of the nation functions as a sign rather than a navigational tool. By
ignoring the specific details contained within and surrounding the lines
that form the national shape, it provides an idealized place and national
identity. Symbolic Tamil Eelam supercedes and overrides the need for corresponding
territory. Pradeep Jaganathon explains, "Nationals of Tamileelam
have no desire to return to Eelam, nor wish to live there, but helps them
to keep living where they live. It is real, lived not as a place, but
as an image" whose space exists in virtuality and in the imagination
(Jaganathon 527). The outline of the nation functions like a national
flag, a symbol rather than a territory. Thus, rather than following the
common practice of linking national webpages to geo-political coordinates,
the Tamil Eelam Homepage uses the shape to bind an imagined national community
as a scattered network of its members.
In the same way, The Ilankai Tamil Sangam website does not imagine the
nation-state of Tamil Eelam as an embattled physical location. Rather
than mapping Tamil Eelam, the homepage displays a palm tree, implying
that there might be more to its location than the "U.S." while
refusing any specificity. To find a geographical reference to Tamil Eelam
on the site's homepage, a visitor must click on this image of a palm tree,
connecting to a page defining the organization's mission and displaying
a series of three descending maps. The first image is a map of South Asia,
then a map of Sri Lanka. Finally, at the bottom of the page in a location
that requires scrolling down, the Sri Lankan map with a black outline
that represent Tamil Eelam, can be seen. Tamil Eelam exists on this site
as a sign, a black border, not a detailed and defined nation-state with
infrastructure or population information (www.sangam.org/Mission.htm).
Conclusion
This brief examination of the effects of mapping the Internet demonstrates
that many alternatives that reconfigure or resist dominant assumptions
currently exist. The virtual existence of Tamil Eelam illustrates that
the Internet need not replicate current geopolitical configurations, and
that spatial metaphors used to describe the Internet exist in tandem with
other models. Deviating from the adherence to ccTLDNs is a step towards
alleviating the systemic inequities inherent in current nomenclature and
altering the way the www is understood by exploiting the dynamic, interconnected
and participant based nature of electronic communication. This may ultimately
contribute to transforming conceptions of nation-state, national affiliation,
and the functions of new media.
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Notes
1 The most relevant discussions of power in relation to space include
Foucault, Soja, and Davis. Internet and cyberspace has been considered
from different angles by many New Media theorists including Benedikt,
Stratton, Sardar, Dodge and Kitchen, Sardar, Imken and others in Crang,
Crang and May's edited Virtual Geographies.
2 The group soc.culture.tamil-eelam never officially existed due to constant
violation of voting procedures. See ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/
. Thanks to John Paolillo for this pointing me to this usenet group history.