Ms Sulagna Basu1
1University of Sydney, Australia
Biography:
Sulagna Basu is a PhD candidate and sessional lecturer in the Discipline of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her doctoral research examines the historical development and spatial imaginaries underlying U.S. cybersecurity policies to explore how cyberspace illuminates the complex dynamics of empire, settler colonialism, and Indigenous dispossession. With an interdisciplinary background including postgraduate degrees in both Computer Science and International Relations, Sulagna’s broader research interests focus on the politics of technology, particularly its intersections with race and gender. Her writing has been published in The Sociological Review Magazine, Meanjin and Information, Communication and Society.
Abstract:
The dominant context of US cybersecurity policy remains primarily premised on discourses of nationalism, territoriality, and state sovereignty. By drawing on Indigenous theorizations of cyberspace, where questions of sovereignty and territoriality hold particular resonance specifically related to the ways in which land-based relationships constitute the foundation of Indigenous thought, I explore and complicate the politicized dynamics of this space. By following on Veracini and Weaver-Hightower’s provocation, “What happens […] when the space of postcolonial and settler colonial studies is cyberspace?”, I seek to subvert the neat, linear, and often colonial narratives that obfuscate entangled relations of power to undermine the utopic universalizing narratives of cyber technologies that dominate policy frameworks and initiatives. I explore the spatial imaginaries of the settler state within discourses of cyberspace specifically taking the case of the Navajo Code Talkers as a departure point to examine the multiple overlapping contradictions, elisions, and investments that inform Indigenous ties to cyber landscapes. This case illustrates the instrumental value placed on Indigenous knowledges by the settler state, even as it constructs Indigeneity as dissonant with technological progress. I argue that the exclusion of Indigenous communities from cybersecurity policy considerations is a continuation of this pattern. Furthermore, by centring Indigenous perspectives and experiences, I aim to shift the focus from one of exploitation and state mediated oppression to that of Indigenous possibility. Drawing contrasts between state-oriented policies and more relational socio-spatial re-imaginings of cybersecurity frameworks, I highlight the importance of engaging with Indigenous epistemologies in the context of cybersecurity.