Paper short abstract:

This presentation attempts to formulate an alternative method to the study of digital lives globally but based on ethnographic insights from Kinshasa (DR Congo). I propose 3 starting points: (a) the experience of disconnection; (b) the culture of indirectness; and (c) multiplex personhood.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation attempts to formulate an alternative method to the study of digital lives based on ethnographic insights from research in Kinshasa. I see three dimensions pronounced in, but not exclusive to Kinshasa's digital cultures. These can provide starting grounds for comparison globally. First, as Kinois constantly need to grapple with unexpected and undesired forms of disconnection (when politicians cut the internet or slow down data traffic; because of lack of funds; because of mobile credit theft), Kinois internauts often feel to live "in the meantime" (also Fischer 2018). This provides opportunities to rethink the dialectics between online and offline; second, in Kinois sociality, much, if not most attention is paid to what is not said, to the ellipses and assumed deliberately withheld. Urban savviness entails knowing how to read the hidden: benda bilili (to pull the images). This culture of indirectness also plays out online. Such a perspective on digital interaction thus goes beyond the more familiar study of digital discourse and aesthetics, and can help us to gain new insights in digital communication elsewhere. And, third, many Kinois who go online take on other identities and play with a wide range of digital alter egos. This should not always be understood as fakery or mere pretense, but rather is related to indigenous perspectives on personhood: people are always becoming and multiple (see Nyamnjoh 2017). I will discuss these three perspectives in order to start formulating a "digital theory from the South", which can contribute to global anthropology.