About the site

The site’s title, “who speaks and acts,” comes from Gilles Deleuze. In the widely published 1972 conversation between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the two theorists discuss the relationship between theory and practice vis-à-vis the distribution of power and changing role of intellectuals in society [1].

Deleuze begins by moving past the traditional view of practice as either an application of, or a basis for, theory; a view that corresponds to the figure of the intellectual as one “representing consciousness” of the ignored and the unheard; he cites Foucault’s analysis of institutional confinement to promote instead a different characterization of theory-practice relationship: “a system of relays within a larger sphere, within a multiplicity of parts that are both theoretical and practical” (206).

This site is an attempt to document and examine the form and meaning of theoretical critiques produced with those who struggle for power, of sharing voice in the context of architecture and digital public humanities work, and of asking questions about representation in these deliberately connected fields of study and practice. As a savarna queer feminist, it is also my way of examining how and with which tools might we teach, learn, and talk about scholarship, community engagement, and digital pedagogy in such unequal and often violent contexts of race, caste, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and geographical difference lest we reproduce in Deleuze’s words “the indignity [and violence] of speaking for others” (emphasis added) (209).

[1] Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze” [1972], in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996): 205-217.