In Dishonor of: The Assemblage of Counter-Memory as Networked Resistance on Twitter

Abstract

This study investigates the performance of counter-memory in the intersection of networked publics, counter-discourses, and technologies of memories. We map the social network and analyze the discursive practices of the Twitter hashtag network #ArawNgMagnanakaw (“Day of Thieves”) as a counter-commemoration of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. We theorize the “assemblage of counter-memory” as the connective, discursive, and material assemblage that has the capacity to privilege subjugated knowledge, reconstruct history, and shape the trajectories of reality. It acts as a counter-structure to the order of knowledge of history, built on the substructure rendered by the affordances of digital media. We argue that the assemblage enacts a kind of “relational” agency that emerges and reemerges to resist both established historical orders and systematic political manipulation. More importantly, it can reconfigure itself to respond to new issues and contexts and weave counter-memory practices with contemporary forms of political participation.