Citizenship as mediated through technology (Pratik Nyaupane non-core post #7)

 I wanted to share this insightful talk by Itty Abraham on the relationship between postcolonial states and their citizens through technology. According to Abraham, the citizen is not merely a person, nor an individual with certain legal rights, it is a character, one that is political and is the ideal of a liberal society. Through technology, the state can construct and legitimize the liberal notion of a good citizen, especially where colonial pasts have disrupted, delegitimized, and devalued the individual as a citizen. 

Inserting technology into the discussion of citizenship changes the meaning of citizenship in vast ways. It challenges the notion that technology may be value-neutral and states use  Implementations of technology by postcolonial states can be a significant tool by design to further particular interests of class, race, nation and even obstruct and stifle social progress and political change.

The notion of citizenship is now understood differently in postcolonial states because of the impact technology has. To the postcolonial state, technology serves as a utopian future, a way to think or at least attempt to think in a decolonial manner. To the postcolonial state, technology is the rationale for colonialism. However, they believe that through technology, the lasting effects of colonial destruction can be undone, and so technology is an object that is understood as a utopian fix, to legitimize and establish a powerful relationship between the postcolonial state and its people. Therefore to the postcolonial state, the intersection of authority and modern technoscience produces this utopic future.

“Asian states have long had an intimate relation with modern science and technology as an economic prophylactic”