Lia Wolock

Talk Title: Sepia Mutiny and Coalitional South Asian America: Blogging New Racial Publics in the 2000s

Watch lecture Youtube recording here.

Presentation Description: In the 2000s, a new coalitional South Asian American identity and racial politics was coalescing online through blogs, podcasts, and digital archives. No site was more central to this project than Sepia Mutiny, which started with five authors in 2004 and incorporated more than 60 over time. Offering a significantly more diverse snapshot of South Asian America than ever before seen in community media, the topics and tone of the blog’s 5000+ posts and lengthy comment threads ranged widely, from the deeply personal and comedic to the reflective and sociopolitical. Through Sepia Mutiny, coalitional South Asian America’s proponents found each other, discovered their voice, and advocated for critical solidarities externally with other communities of color, and across many highly volatile internal fault lines. A raucous and inclusive online public, however, also demands constant curation and moderation. This often invisible and unevenly shared labor, the rise of misogynist trolling cultures, and the growing dominance of social media platforms all contributed to the site’s winding down in 2012. Examining Sepia Mutiny in relationship to scholarship on mediated publics, racial formations, and economies of visibility and authenticity, this paper reveals the role of blogs in the evolution of South Asian American identity politics and community media. Sepia Mutiny is a crucial example of soon-to-fade online publishing and socialization cultures in the 2000s that existed outside of major social media platforms. This paper highlights how such online subcultures can be leveraged by minoritized communities to shift internal and external racial politics.