Speaking “Out of Place”: YouTube Documentaries and Viewers’ Comment Culture as Political Education

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Speaking “Out of Place”: YouTubeDocumentaries and Viewers’ CommentCulture as Political EducationMarcelina Piotrowskiaa University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia,CanadaPublished online: 16 Apr 2015.

To cite this article: Marcelina Piotrowski (2015) Speaking “Out of Place”: YouTube Documentaries andViewers’ Comment Culture as Political Education, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 12:1, 53-72,DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2015.1008076

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Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 12:53–72, 2015Copyright © Curriculum and Pedagogy GroupISSN: 1550-5170 print / 2156-8154 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15505170.2015.1008076

Speaking “Out of Place”: YouTubeDocumentaries and Viewers’ Comment Culture

as Political Education

MARCELINA PIOTROWSKIUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This article examines the comment culture that accompanies doc-umentary films on YouTube as a site of (geo) political educa-tion. It considers how viewers try to teach each other about theproper “place” of critique in response to the global, national, andlocal rhetoric featured in one environmental documentary film.YouTube viewers use comments to attempt to socialize as well aseducate each other about political subjectivity in relation to theappropriateness of critiquing based on geography. Expanding onwhat Wendy Brown calls untimely critique, I propose the conceptof unplaced critique to refer to events in which critique is labeledas inappropriate or “out of place,” and conversely as a virtuouspractice of speaking questionably. The article is based on a study ofviewers’ comments on YouTube in response to Oil in Eden: The Bat-tle to Protect Canada’s Pacific Coast (Pacific Wild, 2010), a shortdocumentary film about political resistance to a pipeline proposalin Canada.

How does place feature in documentary films, and how do viewers useonline comments to teach each other about “placed” political subjectivitieswhen discussing films online? These are two questions through which Iwish to map the relationships between online documentary films, audiencesand political education. I use the documentary film Oil in Eden: The Battleto Protect Canada’s Pacific Coast (Pacific Wild, 2010), as well as viewers’comments made in response to it, to argue that YouTube’s comment culturefacilitates a space for political pedagogy through which viewers can questionpolitical subjectification based on place and speak “out of place.” A recent

Address correspondence to Marcelina Piotrowski, Centre for Cross-Faculty In-quiry in Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. E-mail:[email protected]

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rise in the popularity of films such as An Inconvenient Truth, March of thePenguins, or Food Inc. has resulted in more frequent academic engagementwith environmental documentaries (Clover, 2011; Hughes, 2011). However,a dearth of literature has focused on the pedagogy afforded through docu-mentaries on YouTube, or how this mediated context affects how viewerslearn and engage with these documentaries and other viewers. Because ofthis, I focus on how a documentary film on YouTube fosters a political ped-agogical exchange, especially when viewers interact with the film, and witheach other, using online comments.

In this article I suggest that YouTube, as a space that facilitates the ex-change of comments between viewers from around the world, can be a spaceof political education because it complicates what it means to critique “fromhere.” A geopolitical analysis of the viewers’ comments opens up questionsregarding what it means to practice what I will call unplaced critique. Mygoal for this argument is twofold: First, to demonstrate how online documen-taries and viewers create possibilities for educational dialogue, which has sofar been unexplored in education and, second, to engage with a theoreticalquestion that emerges from this film and the comments, namely: What is theplace of critique, and what political and cultural ramifications emerge whensomeone tries to educate another about the proper place of critique?

I will first provide a brief overview of Oil in Eden, contextualizing itwithin discourses about place-based and political education. Next, I discusshow spatial politics feature in YouTube viewers’ comments in response to thefilm and in response to other viewers. Finally, I discuss the concept of critiquefrom the perspective of inappropriateness, or what Wendy Brown (2005)calls “untimely critique.” I extend Brown’s concept of untimely critique,which considers the temporal aspect of the “inappropriateness” of critique,to examine how “inappropriateness” operates from spatial perspectives. I dothis in order to problematize how the place and location from which critiqueis offered becomes a key factor in political education between YouTubeviewers. I offer the concept of unplaced critique as a type of critique that caneither be labeled as “out of place,” or be seen as disruptive and necessary,because it helps to question the place of political action within a contextof established binaries of local–global politics that are frequently seen as“common sense” arenas of geopolitical debates.

METHODOLOGY

Most literature on the role of documentary films in education has focused onwhat effects they can have on students (Frank, 2013). The interest to steerstudents’ learning so that they can predictably “take away” the main points ofenvironmental messages from film is grounded in the “transmission model”of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), in which the concern is over

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the effectiveness of communication, determined by whether a message istransferred from sender to receiver without disruption. This linear modelassumes that the sender controls the message and that the responsibility forunderstanding and deciphering it is placed on the receiver. It assumes thatcommunication has been successful when the receiver “gets the message,”which fails to consider that communication is culturally situated; that mean-ings are not imposed on the receiver by the sender, but are also producedby the “receiver” based on his or her knowledge, background and expe-riences, and the circumstances within which the communicative exchangetakes place.

As a response to the transmission model, cultural models of communica-tion began to emerge from within the Birmingham School, which advocatedfor more complex understandings of communication. Stuart Hall’s (1980) en-coding/decoding model of communication developed as a response to thelinear transmission model, arguing that individuals take up preferred mean-ings, negotiate them or develop oppositional ones to some of the culturalnarratives and social identities that media content puts forth. More recently,audience research methodologies have also begun to focus on the culture of“audiencing practices,” and conventions of being an audience member in agiven context also become important dimensions in the cultural approach tocommunication, wherein the location, context, and expectations of the com-municative event matter as much as the message itself (Bratich, 2005). Inother words, viewing an environmental documentary in a classroom, wherethe instructor probes students for what the film “meant,” can be very differ-ent than when a person goes to see the same film at an environmental filmfestival or watches it online.

This article, therefore, takes a cultural approach to communication,rather than one based on the understanding that communication is solelya process of transmission. It sees film as a productive event that triggers aseries of possibilities each time it is watched and operates like a speech actthat “produces collective utterances” (Deleuze, 1989, p. 222). Hence viewers’comments are as important to the analysis of a film as the film itself. I aminterested in how viewers engage with the film and each other in ways thatare politically educational, not just whether the film is effective in transferringa message or teaching about sustainability.

At the time of writing this article, Oil in Eden had received 216 com-ments made by 100 distinct viewers and a total of 61,262 views on YouTube.Neither significant nor miniscule, these figures do not enable this docu-mentary to boast of a quantitative impact of “hits” that are associated withYouTube blockbusters. For comparison, the trailer for the documentaryfilm Who Killed the Electric Car (Paine, 2006), an environmental documen-tary about the invention and barriers to market of electric cars, had 1026comments and 499,961 views at the time of writing. However, to the extentthat exchange of comments on YouTube in response to the documentary

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contributes to the public exchange of opinions about individuals’ stances andapproaches to political subjectification on pipeline issues in British Columbia,the number of viewers and responses to the documentary is nonetheless sig-nificant. The exchange of comments on this specific topic is particularlyimportant in the context of the tightly regulated legal and discursive processoutlined by the Canadian National Energy Board, which makes decisionsabout pipeline approvals. This regulated process dictates the locations andspaces at which some citizens can engage in public hearings, and attempts tocontrol discourse by outlining which topics (such as climate change) citizenscannot discuss when they make a comment at a pipeline hearing (NationalEnergy Board, 2014). By outlining that only those individuals who live inclose proximity to the proposed pipeline route can become commentatorsat a public hearing, and that comments can only be made at specific loca-tions, the National Energy Board has taken a spatial approach to constructinga perimeter around the definition of who constitutes a political subject onthis specific issue. Within this context of regulation based on place and prox-emics, the response to the documentary on YouTube exemplifies two things.First, the viewers’ comments show the need for spaces for political debateon this very specific issue, and second, they illustrate how YouTube—ageographical non-place—facilitates discussions about the role of place inpolitics, particularly when place is a contentious and regulated theme.

Following Antony and Thomas (2010) and Reilly’s (2013) approach tostudying viewer comments on YouTube, in this study I undertook a criticalthematic analysis. Critical thematic analysis of online interaction is a researchmethod that emerged out of a study of undergraduate students’ reception tofiction film by studying their online comments (Orbe & Kinefuchi, 2008). Itfocuses on analyzing only those comments that directly address a theme theauthor is examining, by observing the intensity with which the theme occurs,rather than by counting occurrences, creating reductive categories or forminghierarchical relationships between coding terms (Orbe & Kinefuchi, 2008).Because I was interested in the interactive dimension between YouTubeviewers, in order to think about YouTube as an interpersonal educationalspace of politics, I focused on the ways in which comments were threaded, away of studying comments that is typically deployed within studies of onlinediscussion boards. The combination of critical thematic analysis together withthreaded content analysis allowed me to focus on a set of specific commentsrelevant for this study. For example, threaded content analysis was used tostudy the political preferences of online newsreaders based on the commentsthey made in response to other readers (Park, Ko, Kim, Liu, & Song, 2011). Inorder to analyze viewers’ comments, I exported all the comments made to thevideo on YouTube and searched through them to find threads that includednested comments. I identified those nested comments that focus specificallyon the politics of place. My own take on the practice of coding comesfrom the post-qualitative approach in which comments, as “data,” cannot be

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classified, slotted in as examples, taken to represent predetermined codes,or be meaningfully made sense of and generalized. Instead, coding involvesthe construction of a “cabinet of curiosities” or a “wonder cabinet” (MacLure,2013, p. 180), through which researchers are invited to inquire into the orderand disorder of words, the relationships between them, the silences thatconstitute commentary as performance. In this analysis, I therefore chose notto count or code for particular words that represented “place,” and insteadanalyzed the theme of place as it emerged through viewers’ own comments,as expressions of their political subjectification.

OIL IN EDEN AND DISCOURSES OF PLACE

Oil in Eden is a 16-minute film about the West Coast of British Columbia inCanada, as well as its environment and people. It was filmed, directed, andproduced by Damian Gillis for Pacific Wild, an environmental, non-profitorganization in Canada, and released on YouTube in December of 2010.The film addresses the threat that looms with the decision whether to allowa company called Enbridge to build the Northern Gateway pipeline thatwould carry a daily load of half a million barrels of bitumen from Alberta tothe coast of British Columbia, with the intention to ship it to Asian markets.1

Discourses about place and place-based communities feature prominently inOil in Eden. The documentary links oil to a geopolitical conflict, situatingit within the discourses of local–global, regional–national, and ethical-dirtybinary frames.

To help frame the interaction of the viewers’ comments, I will brieflydiscuss two place-based narratives in the film: those of rarity and visibil-ity. One of the first place-based narratives to emerge is that the coast is asite of rarity. The film includes interviews with members of Gitk’a’ata. TheGitk’a’ata are a Tsimishian indigenous nation on the Pacific Coast in thecommunity known as Txałgiu, or Hartley Bay, and live just at the mouth ofthe Douglas Channel, the area where bitumen tanker traffic would navigatethe narrow waters, and the region that could see the most immediate effectthat a hypothetical spill would have on the coast. In the film, Gillis, the film’sdirector and narrator, frames the story of the north-central Pacific Coast in anarrative of “rarity,” explaining how it is “one of the last great wild placeson the planet.” The theme of rarity, just like the word Eden in the title of thedocumentary, points to a specific type of place that is simultaneously ideal-ized and desirable, and also remote and untenable for many urban dwellers.The theme of rarity operates like the aura of an art piece; admiration andaspiration for it emerges from the fact that it is not available for everyone.Place-based sustainability education can create dichotomies between urbanand rural settings and the choices that are made within them, propelling aromantic image of rural life, rather than a realistic understanding that rural

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and urban communities in reality have symbiotic relationships based on tradeof goods, labor, and symbolic value; we are only able to define large-scale,urban living, and sustainability through density, in relation to how differentsuch a version of sustainability is in smaller communities.

Just as an artwork’s aura exists only in reference to a curious audi-ence that exists hypothetically to the extent that it does not actually seethe original piece but its many, mediated reproductions, in Oil in Eden,place-based romanticism is produced only in as far as the Pacific Northwestexists as a mythical Eden within the context of being in a global, urbanspotlight generated through the media. This spotlight can be leveraged todemonstrate to governments and individuals involved in the conflict that“the world is watching.” A scientist in the film discusses Enbridge’s North-ern Gateway Pipeline project as “the Canadian experience that is changingour politics, changing our economics, and changing our international rep-utation abroad.” The film shows that various individuals along the PacificCoast are aware that the mythical idealization of rural communities can beused, not only to draw attention from urban dwellers throughout the world,but also to reconfirm to individuals in the Pacific Coast communities thatbeing “visible” and in the spotlight necessitates a place-based responsibilityand call to political action. As a Gitk’a’ata interviewee in the film describes,the coast is a place at which “the world is looking.” The very presence ofan audience, of a group of people looking on from elsewhere, producesgeopolitics (Dittmer & Dodds, 2013). Places are produced relationally. With-out “global” viewers and the mediation of environmental conflict, it is im-possible to define issues as “local.” The executive director of Pacific Wild,the environmental group that sponsored the documentary, asks: “how arewe going to tell other countries that they should be reducing fossil fuelconsumption, if we go forward and build this pipeline?” By becoming atarget site of the world’s attention, Oil in Eden, in reference to the PacificWest Coast, suggests that it would be embarrassing to “live here,” and beimplicated in the process of non-critique or non-action. The film, therefore,suggests that various West Coast individuals’ desire to perform “good” po-litical subjectivity before the world, might or should be driven by virtue ofbeing visible and perceived as “rare” in the eyes and tenability of others.This theme is further developed when the film represents West Coast com-munities as living in the spotlight of potential shame. Clips of newspapersintersperse interviews in the film, showing headlines such as “Climate Shame,as Canada named Colossal Fossil.” The documentary leverages the circula-tion of other already published media texts, such as newspaper articles thatemphasize stories that depict Canadian bitumen as “dirty oil,”2 to further illus-trate that this issue is drawing attention and is “newsworthy,” or worthy of anaudience.

By selecting media clips and interviews that call attention to the roleof, and need for global visibility of the Enbridge conflict in the Pacific West

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Coast, the director of the film emphasizes the significance that calling forthan audience, or a popular public, can have, in the sustenance of a politicalpublic, namely one of the three types of publics in the public pedagogyliterature (Savage, 2014). This shows the increasing blurriness between anddependency of place-based political publics on global popular publics. Sav-age (2014), drawing on Warner, refers to a “political” public as one that isgeographically situated, while a “popular public” emerges based on the in-terest that audiences take in popular media texts by being drawn to issues ofcommon concern. However, as I will demonstrate by examining the viewers’comments momentarily, the distinction between political public and popularpublic, as Savage (2014) categorizes them, becomes obfuscated when au-diences that are considered “popular” by virtue of engaging with a global,popular culture platform like YouTube, can be considered political publicswhen they discuss and debate political issues. I would argue that the global,popular public that is addressed through Oil in Eden is done so in orderto provide ongoing witnessing into the local, political public that is battlingagainst Enbridge in Hartley Bay and the Pacific Coast. By pointing out theneed for sustained representation, the director of Oil in Eden acknowledgesthe significance of calling for a global audience in order to sustain localpolitical spirit. However, the film, despite clearly situating itself in relationto a global audience, does not address its global viewers as political sub-jects. It addresses them as remote witnesses who are unplaced as politicalparticipants in this conflict.

VIEWERS’ COMMENTS AND UNPLACED CRITIQUE

While in the past, activist videos or documentary films in environmentalmovements were limited to circulation within small networks of individualsand organizations, or through independent movie theatres, YouTube hasenabled environmental groups to make an impact by spreading the messageabout environmental issues more broadly to various viewers (Askanius &Uldam, 2011). In the following section, I depict how viewers responded to Oilin Eden and how they used the comments function on YouTube to voice theirown critique. While some aspects of the viewers’ comments seek to exposeassumed legal and cultural entitlement to impact politics based on location,others attempt to socialize other viewers by reaffirming this normative place-based notion of political efficacy. I use the term socialization to refer to thenormative dimension of public pedagogy. This term has been used in thepublic pedagogy literature to refer to processes in which cultural norms arecirculated and reappropriated, but in a way that is distinct from conventionalsocialization theories that focus on the transmission of norms within stable,localized units, and on how these social norms are taken up developmentallyby individuals within institutions on a local level. Within public pedagogy,

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the process through which cultural norms get reproduced is neither linear,nor local, but takes place through “more distant relationships establishedthrough mass media and popular culture” (Hickey-Moody, Savage, & Windle,2010, p. 229).

YouTube, as a medium of video sharing, facilitates an exchange ofcomments between viewers—known as threaded comments—in a way thatin the case of Oil of Eden reveals deliberations on the role and significanceof place and the rights to critique in ecological and social justice. First, Iillustrate this by showing how place-based ideas of ownership of critiquewere prevalent in several comments in response to Oil in Eden. Consider forexample the following four threaded comments.3 Each comment respondsto the one posted prior to it.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Harper is selling Asbestos to third world coun-tries knowing full well that they will be handling the asbestos with noprotection. In short he is inflicting poor people with no chance with allsorts of Cancers. ( . . . ) We need your help.—Comment 1( . . . ) Who needs local and wild fish when you can buy Chinese seafoodafter you sell them the most disgusting oil in the world.—Comment 2The world’s “dirtiest oil” and the term “tar sand” are both derogatory termsused by extreme environmentalists working to destroy the Alberta andCanadian economies by focusing world hippy attention on our domesticissue. It is outrageous that foreigners (USA) are allowed to have a say inthe development of OUR natural resources. Every American that showsface at our own review process should be deported! This is a CANADIANissue, all other countries go home.—Comment 3I’m Canadian and have been proud to be so until we began to pro-duce/sell/export “the world’s dirtiest oil.” The “world’s dirtiest oil” andthe “tar sand” are both our “DOMESTIC ISSUE” and the time is now tostop that kind of production . . . time to produce healthiest and cleanestoil.—Comment 4

This four-comment thread reveals the complexity of discourses which view-ers draw on to contextualize the pipeline issue within a broader context ofneoliberal global trade and the ethics of involvement in “dirty exchange.” Thecall for help from the viewer who made Comment 1 is significant in a num-ber of ways. The viewer draws on an understanding of political impact thatstretches beyond national frames, suggesting that Canadians participate notonly in an export of oil, but could also be implicated in a pattern of inflictinghealth problems on communities to which the oil is exported. She seeks togive visibility to the perceived potential unethical situation that Canadianscould find themselves in, if the pipeline is put in place. Her call for helpalso suggests that she is cognizant that she speaks to a global audience ofvideo-viewers on YouTube that also exists as a global audience of politics,which she believes might have some impact on the issue. A call for help can,

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therefore, be read as an invitation for critique of the pipeline’s proposal frompeople living outside of Canada. Interestingly, this invitation is challengedby the other comments. Commentators 2–4 reveal that while they opposethe installation of the pipeline, they disagree with the invitation for criticismor support from non-Canadian voices. They show what could be consid-ered an insular protectionism, but can also be seen as an non-readiness forcritique from “elsewhere” until a proper and diligent consultation processhas taken place locally. This first set of nested comments points to a debateabout who ought to be entitled to participate in critique. Commentators thatcriticize others’ “place” in political critique, by saying “it is not your place”to comment, draw on complicated understandings of themselves as politicalsubjects, that are steeped in socialized notions of political subjectificationbased on place. My concern with these types of critiques is that they fail toconsider the transnational impact of concern about climate change.

In contrast to the first set of commentators, another viewer, who at firstglance appears to write from the United States (as indicated by the statement“up there in Canada”), and who is actually registered on YouTube as a viewerfrom Denmark, steps in as a participant who would be considered “out ofplace” by the first set of commentators with the following comment:

Ohhhhh! This has to be stopped! It is ONLY about the profit for this bigoil-pipeline company, no one gives a s . . . about the people, the animals,and the environment up there in Canada. Let’s hope, that the governmentsteps in and does the right thing = being to keep the promise that theygave to the First Communities up there! Ohh my . . .

This intervention from a European viewer shows a concern for the implica-tions of an installed pipeline. The viewer is critical of the apathy of corpora-tions, yet distances herself from personalizing the critique of the pipeline, orseeing her own involvement. She comments on the effect that oil extractionand consumption can have, yet places political power into the hands of thegovernment, whose role she suggests is to do the “right thing” with respectto keeping promises to First Nations communities, and reaffirming a local,place-based decision-making process as the right approach to pipeline poli-tics. This Danish viewer’s critique within YouTube allows her to temporarilybecome situated within a specific conflict, without making a personal con-nection to the politics of the place she is discussing. Auge (1995) wrotethat a non-place is a fleeting stopover for travelers; historically impoverishedin the traditionally anthropological sense, because it is commoditized and,therefore, predictable, such as an airport, a mall, or a truck-stop town ona highway. Rather than being vacant of meaning, non-places are part ofa “supermodernity” that is characterized by an over-abundance of produc-tion of meaning: Non-places are designed to downplay any possibility ofattachment to the geographical specificity of place for their travelers because

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“the interaction between individuals and their surroundings in the spaceof non-place is established through the mediation of words, or even texts”(Auge, p. 94). YouTube, as a non-place, encourages bold critique withoutpersonal attachment because it creates conditions for anonymity. However,it seems to me that rather than a temporary entry and exit into a non-place,YouTube viewers, through their comments, have the possibility to leave con-tributions within this dialogical space, as part of an educational exchangethat includes the text and the comments themselves. Unlike live conversationon Skype, or chat, YouTube dialogue is asynchronous, meaning that it hasthe potential to be read by others, and replied to later, long after the initialexchange of comments took place. The film and comments, as well as thelogic and mechanics of YouTube, constitute an event that would otherwisechange significantly if the film was viewed elsewhere, such as on television,where comments from international viewers might not be possible in onelocation. Commentators, therefore, do not encounter videos as stand-alonetext, but see them as media-audience assemblages, already articulated bythe difference that emerges between text and viewers, as well as amongviewers.

In another example, a viewer from Australia discusses a sense of solidar-ity that should be shared between different indigenous groups that strugglefor “local” rights.

The Indigenous people of Broome Western Australia have a similar fighton their hands with Woodside, they have fought hard and long and arestill fighting because they believe country is more important than profitsand 200,000 year old dinosaur footprints need to be dug up for thisprocess to go through—some of which have due to exploratory drilling.Please keep up the fight. The world is behind you.

The sweeping generalization of the words, “the world is behind you” andthe specificity of the solidarity between indigenous people in Australia andCanada, attempts to create inter-continental alliances and solidarity in en-vironmental issues that defy Keynesian-Westphalian boundaries, in whichthose with access to the space of justice defined in the context of nation-states, are those “citizens” who are able to exercise rights. However, thiscomment, as well as the one before it, could be seen to have a social-izing function, meaning that it aims at maintaining normative definitionsof political engagement based on legal boundaries or proxemics. Theseviewers externalize their political agency and desire to be involved in en-vironmental issues, and by doing so, keep definitions of the political “inplace.” A theme that emerges in some viewers’ comments in response toOil in Eden is that it may seem inappropriate to interject with critique whengroups or individuals seem to be making progress on collective action ona local level, are advocating for issues of justice or social equality based

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on local recognition of legal rights, and have taken steps in the politicsof recognition. This was most clearly evident when some viewers triedto advocate keeping pipeline politics at a local level. They do this by af-firming an approach to political efficacy that focuses on giving voice tothose with the most geographic proximity to the land, rather than pursu-ing an approach that reconsiders geopolitical boundaries in a way that en-compasses the simultaneously global and personal impact of environmentalproblems.

The pedagogical possibility of documentaries found on YouTube existsin the ability for viewers to first exchange discourses as forms of inter-personal education, and second, respond to and disrupt the circulation ofdiscourses that attempt to educate the public about how to be political.I agree with Barnett (2008), who argues that “places where potential ad-dressees for communications on matters of public concern are to be found,aren’t, after all, places at all. They are stretched-out, complex networks of cir-culation” (p. 408). YouTube as a space of inter-personal education, or mutualeducation based on viewer-to-viewer interaction (Kellner & Kim, 2010) pro-vides a space for political pedagogy, not only because it enables the circula-tion of discourses through which individuals learn about political issues, butalso because it enables the space for conversation through which, in responseto those discourses, viewers can further attempt to socialize or converselyeducate each other about how apparatuses, or the artifacts, discourses, prac-tices, and techniques (Foucault, 1977) that comprise political subjectification,operate. Viewers who want to connect with others on YouTube to negoti-ate meanings about issues that are political in themselves, and additionallypoliticized because of the global movement of people, goods, finances, andcultural artifacts (topics such as religion, sexual values, race, or the environ-ment), enact political performances (van Zoonen, Vis, & Mihelj, 2010). vanZoonen and colleagues (2010) argue that political performances on YouTubetake place when individuals leverage an imagined global audience to debateor express political issues, that cannot readily be solved within parametersof boundary-states. These can include debates about the effects of global-ization on understandings and performances of race, cultural imperialism,or environmental impacts. By participating on YouTube via viewing and byproviding comment-based utterances and participating in exchanges withother viewers, YouTube audiences enact political performances as formsof “unlocated citizenship:” “citizenship that is not defined by its relationto an institutional or communal entity, but that takes its form with respectto dispersed other people” (van Zoonen et al., 2010, p. 260). YouTube be-comes a space of potential for political pedagogy because it enables encoun-ters between individuals for engaging in discourse about collective action.It allows individuals to voice concerns about normative, placed-based no-tions of political rights, such as boundary-states, or the customs of localcommunities.

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Wendy Brown’s concept of “untimely critique” helps to frame the discus-sion of the danger of labeling critique as unmannered, and of the necessityfor such critique. Writing in a different context, Brown (2005) referred to“untimely” as what happens when critique appears to interfere with the tim-ing of gains made by political activists, because it begins to question theirapproach or their aims. In this context, when someone steps in to questionthe methods or content of political activists who are taking action against asystem of injustice, such questioning or critique could be said to be out ofsync with the sentiment of the movement, be perceived to be made at thewrong time, or be seen as unmannered (Brown, 2005). Brown’s example ofwhen critique has been named untimely is the context of groups fighting forgay-marriage rights. Brown (2005) argues that critiques posed by individualswho question the institution of marriage and its history of oppression, duringa time when the fight for marriage rights is central to the perceived interestsof lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, havebeen called “untimely.”

Questioning the timing of critique reflects a sensibility of time that isshort. In this context, a short sensibility of time can mean that first, it failsto consider and question the historical events, techniques of power andsocial transformations that have built up to what we consider “commonsense” today, and second, that it is impatient in making progress towardsocial justice, without thinking about the process through which it attemptsto do so. Building on Walter Benjamin’s (1968) Theses on the Philosophy ofHistory, Brown argues that timeliness and untimeliness impose tensions onthe question of the appropriateness of who can participate in politics at anygiven time. Benjamin argued that progress could be pursued in a straightand quick, or spiral yet longer course, one that is progressive yet ahistorical,or one that is historically founded, but takes longer (Benjamin, 1968). Byhistorically founded, Benjamin refers to a genealogical curiosity and inquirythat questions the production of discourses that socialize what we have cometo take as “common sense,” whether that be marriage or politics based onproperty rights or geopolitical divisions.

Brown also gives the concept “untimely critique” another purpose. “Un-timely critique” is not just a phrase used to judge a critique that is perceivedto be unmannered, as a display of dissatisfaction about the bad timing ofcommentary. For Brown, the concept of “untimely critique” can be leveragedto refer to the necessity of political commentary, precisely at the momentwhen there is danger of forgetting the history of struggle or recognizinghow short-term gains might re-essentialize power relations despite apparentwins. Untimely critique is necessary as it calls into question the politenessof silence. Brown writes that “critical theory is essential in dark times notfor the sake of sustaining utopian hopes, making flamboyant interventions,or staging irreverent protests, but rather to contest the very senses of timeinvoked to declare critique untimely” (Brown, 2005, p. 4). Brown argues that

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we need to cause timely explosions, blowing up the urgency of impactful,yet short-lived critique and activism, and foremost, know what time it is, inorder to recognize critique when we see it, in order to reflect on its “out ofjointness” in dark times (Brown, 2005). When Brown describes times as darktimes, it is not in reference the present moments’

unparalleled constellations of undemocratic power (neocolonial, capi-talist, imperial, religious, terrorist) and of political visions dimmed by acentury of failed alternatives. Rather, the reference would seem to con-jure a child’s experience of darkness, one rife with diabolical forces thatcan neither be mastered or comprehended, forces that frighten as theyspook and heighten a felt impotence. The darkness signals not only dan-ger but absence of illumination . . . We are disoriented, frightened, andstumbling in the dark. (Brown, 2005, pp. 9–10)

Drawing from Brown’s and Benjamin’s reflections on the role of timeand timing of critique, it is the broader idea of the inappropriateness ofcritique that strikes me as a particularly useful lens through which to un-derstand the geographical and cultural politics of comment culture and itseducational possibilities on YouTube. In the context of Oil in Eden, the filmand comments reveal discourses about what comprises “unplaced critique,”rather than one that is untimely. I want to extend thinking about critique be-yond temporality, and to consider critique in terms of place. If an untimelycritique is one that is uttered at the wrong moment, or is “out of touch withthe sentiment of the times,” then unplaced critique is one that is said “out ofplace,” is out of touch with the sentiments of a place, or what it means to be“in one’s place.” The discourse of place and labeling others as “out of place”becomes a mechanism of coercion. While people say “it is not your placeto critique,” place can be understood both literally and philosophically. Iwish to discuss place in terms of the role geographical boundaries have had,historically, in enabling or distancing critique. Between themselves, viewersdiscuss how to position the Enbridge pipeline debate as a local, national,or international issue, at times proposing that certain perspectives are morevalid than others depending on their location, suggesting that some critiquesare “unplaced.” Some viewers try to overcome the labeling of their critiquesas unplaced by forming global networks of solidarity in which they attemptto acknowledge global similarity and empathy in ecological crisis.

An interesting tension in the pedagogical encounter fostered throughthis documentary’s presence on YouTube is about what responsibility in-dividuals who live in urban spaces should have in political action againstEnbridge, given that they are more substantial consumers of fossil fuel, and,therefore, more dependent (at least in terms of quantity) on oil. Perhapsbecause the focus in the film is on the Hartley Bay community’s struggleagainst Enbridge, one of the predominant missing discourses in the film is

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about what role individual behaviors of consumption have in driving thedemand for oil worldwide. In contrast to the absence of this theme in thedocumentary, it is addressed within some viewers’ comments. YouTube com-ments are not separate from, or supplementary to the content of uploadedmedia texts. Viewers’ comments expand the textuality of YouTube videosbecause they expand it within a text-audience relationship that speaks tothe difference between them. The video-commentary text is more complexthan the video on its own, as it forms a mediated performance that canbe studied for productive, discursive flows or disruptive clogs to politicalexpression.

Viewers of Oil in Eden take part in pipeline politics that are differentthan the discourse of place-based community, visibility, and shame that issuggested to them through the film. The tensions between communities, asdepicted in the film, and the critical self-reflection that viewers have of theirrole in climate change in urban, mega-city contexts, show conflicting defini-tions of place, of the role of property ownership, and of individual agency.The following is an example of threaded comments from four distinct view-ers about the personalization of the responsibility for an oil-based economyand lifestyle:

That’s the problem. Progress is destroying the planet. We need to startsimplifying or we will be in serious trouble.—Comment 1

You go ahead and simplify, I want to continue using my car, TV, andnice hot water in my shower. When the right replacement comes along,then will be the time to stop using oil but until then we have nochoice.—Comment 2.

I’ll be there simplifying with sunshine, ride a bike or bus, or try alternativeways of powering your car, bio fuels, ( . . . ) it can be done. What I’mgetting at is we don’t need to expand the tar sands at such crazy rate,putting so much at risk.—Comment 3

I agree we shouldn’t expand the mining of the oil sands in Alberta, butwe have a resource there which can be used to better our country as a(w)hole.—Comment 4

The attempts to personalize pipeline politics, as shown in these comments,appear to me to be productively unplaced in relation to the geopolitical focuson local communities or governments’ influence on politics, as depicted inthe film. Nowhere does Oil in Eden encourage individuals living in largeurban centers to begin to visualize themselves as part of a group that couldcritique the pipeline despite not living along the towns and cities where it willbe built. Viewers that try to educate each other about proper and improperways that they “fit into” the problem and solution, have a more diversesense of responsibility for place and care for the potentially catastrophicimplications of the pipeline than is represented in the film.

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Despite leading their own polarized debate about whether fuel-efficientoptions on the market should lead to change, or whether self-regulationcould drive the market to change, the four commentators attempt to dis-place normative ideas about place-based politics. The viewer who madeComment 3 strives to resituate pipeline politics on the Canadian West Coastinto one that should be universally considered by each individual throughsimple lifestyle changes regardless of where they live. The person makingComment 4 agrees with the decision to not build the pipeline, but uses hercomment to articulate an internal debate about the role of place in politicaldecisions—should responsibility be defined by focusing on a specific issueand the environment, or for the betterment of “our country as a whole?” Thiscommentator suggests that responsibility might include the sacrifice of localspaces and personal interests for the benefit of national ones.

Place-based frameworks for legitimizing speech have been and continueto be prevalent, and are important, particularly in the context of First Nations’struggles for recognition of their rights to make decisions on their uncededterritories. However, political subjectivity as a type of place-based identitycan also at times be limiting when discussing global issues that involve move-ment of people, finances, and in this case environmental degradation. Forexample, Nancy Fraser (2009) discusses the unmapped, untenable place thatmigrant workers have when they strive for rights and recognition in the legalsystem. She has argued that justice needs to be “re-framed” in a globalizingworld, extending beyond national boundaries when it comes to the ability tovoice critique and struggle for justice. Mediation and the distance it affordshave, therefore, become one of the most important means of regulating andtransforming what is understood as political activity into practices of self indaily life (Chouliaraki, 2013). Chouliaraki (2013) has shown that individualswho take part in social change activities are increasingly doing so to impactglobal issues, and are doing so privately or through activities that would beconsidered part of their private lives. For example, humanitarian politics hasbeen mediated through a culture of online donations, crowdfunding, or on-line petitioning which enable individuals to “take part” in global issues whileprivately surfing the web (Chouliaraki, 2013). In the context of environmen-tal issues that require environmental or humanitarian aid, Chouliaraki (2013)argues that media has complicated audience behavior because it is the careof the private self and its sense of morals and not the distant “other” that isthe source of political motivation. Additionally, the media’s intermittent pat-terns of paying attention only to sensational development to environmentalconcerns taking place in “distant” locations, creates what Chouliaraki (2011)has called “improper distance: they subordinate the voice of distant othersto our own voice and so marginalize their cause in favour of our narcissisticself-communications” (p. 9).

The individualization and decrease of activism in physical spacesthrough the ease of professionalized online campaigning has meant that

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online activism is accused of mere “slacktivism”: a slacker version of activismin which it is assumed that participants take part in collective action througha consumer approach to politics—low-commitment, feel-good signing ofonline petitions or donating funds—rather than focusing on direct action thatresults in concrete change (Christensen, 2011). Despite the self-caring dimen-sion of online participation in “distant problems,” I would suggest that thesecomments as acts and expressions of personal involvement in large or globalproblems are also expressions of desire to reconsider geopolitical bound-aries that are ineffective in dealing with these issues. A counter-argument tocritiques of slacktivism is that the internet and social media enable a cultureof do-it-yourself (DIY) citizenship in which politics are intricately integratedwithin individuals’ online expressions, conversations and performances thatcontest the politics of place, sexuality, race, or religion (Ratto & Boler,2014). It is through these forms and modes of political participation thatconversation about the reimagining of political place-based politics canhappen, and it is by examining the pedagogical and critical potential of theinternet’s non-places, such as YouTube and its comment culture, that wecan productively, and in more nuanced ways, provide counter-examples toslacktivism.

UNPLACED CRITIQUE AS A VIRTUOUS PRACTICE

The documentary Oil in Eden and viewers’ comments show a struggle be-tween, on the one hand, discourses of community that are unified in theiropposition to an environmental issue, and on the other, discourses of indi-viduals who are unplaced, physically, and within the space of speech as anactivity that seeks to trouble socialized ideas of what it means to be a politicalsubject. In the film, the unified position is strengthened by the discourse offorming a community of action, based on the possible shaming that resultsfrom being under the world’s microscope. The reception to the film throughviewers’ comments that have been posted on YouTube illustrates that inter-national spectators perform acts of critique by virtue of posting commentsonline. These acts of critique have the potential to transform other view-ers by either attempting to socialize them into proper political places, orby being educational through challenging the places out of which one canbe political. I have argued that viewers attempt to socialize each other intosubjects with political agency that are based on traditional ideas about place,by suggesting that some critique is unplaced. I have suggested the conceptunplaced critique, to open up a space of possibility to begin to theorizethose instances when place and critique are correlated in a way that en-titles or distances one to speak. YouTube documentaries, and particularlythe viewer-led discussions about political framing and recognition that theyinspire, are good sites of analysis of “by whom” and “from where” issues

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becomes legitimately criticizable. Unplaced critique, in the context of thediscussion of viewers’ comments on Oil in Eden, refers to the way someviewers attempt to disrupt other viewers’ beliefs about whether geographicproximity or physical location (i.e., not in Canada, not in Northern BritishColumbia, not in a rural community) should be a factor that entitles themto interject with critique. Viewers try to educate one another about whenor how one offers a critique. They do so by speaking back to a politicsbased on physical proximity and thereby trying to educate others to do thesame.

The broader utility of the concept of unplaced critique is to use it asa methodological approach that consists of two tasks of analysis. First, tomap the impacts of utterances, policies, documents, and other elements ofgovernance and governmentality, that label critique as “out of place,” or asinappropriate. “Out of place,” in this context, refers to the arguments thatdraw on legal and cultural discourses that suggest that political critique canor should only be made based on correlations to physical location, and to thelabeling of inappropriateness of critique made from outside of these places.The second task is to use the concept of unplaced critique to take part inpolitics that challenge normative ideas about such mechanisms. Butler (2001)has argued that critique is a virtuous practice that demonstrates the abilityto think about the constructed, contextually, and historically situated, anddiscursively and materially orchestrated situation in which one finds oneself.The critical approach to political education aimed against political social-ization is virtuous because it is “established through its difference from anuncritical obedience to authority” (Butler, 2001, p. 8). Ruitenberg’s (2005)reflection that “a deconstruction of the concept of community does not denythe existence of community, nor does it seek to destroy community” (p. 218)appropriately expresses the spirit of this article. As a critique, not a judgment,this article has probed at the value of the correlation between place and po-litical subjectification. Being unplaced can have positive politico-pedagogicalpotential, just as activism based on place can lead to action. If critique is nota judgment but a virtue (Butler, 2001), then can we teach, with or withoutthe use of documentaries, about how to become unplaced? Can we helplearners cultivate unplaced critique as a virtuous practice? Unplaced critiqueas a virtuous practice might come to be seen as a way of speaking question-ably. That is, it may become a form of political pedagogy that teaches one toquestion political subjectification based on place and encourages speaking“out of place.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose feed-back and suggestions have been tremendously useful.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Marcelina Piotrowski is a doctoral candidate in Cross-Faculty Inquiry inEducation in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.Her research focuses on adult education, critical media studies, and politicaleducation for social change, and her approach is informed by cultural studiesand poststructuralist approaches.

NOTES

1. While it continues to be uncertain whether or not the pipeline will be built, several decisionshave already been made at various levels of government. At the provincial level, the government ofBritish Columbia rejected Enbridge’s proposal to build the Northern Gateway pipeline in May of 2013.Despite this, later that year in December 2013, the Joint Review Panel, established by the CanadianNational Energy Board at a federal level, recommended that Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gatewaypipeline be built pending 209 conditions. In response to this recommendation, in January 2014, BritishColumbia’s indigenous communities and a coalition of environmental groups launched a court challengeto the Joint Review Panel’s recommendations, of which the outcomes are still pending. Even thoughthe court challenge was in place, the Canadian federal government accepted the Joint Review Panel’srecommendations and approved the pipeline in June 2014, as long as the conditions are met. It is stillunknown whether the pipeline will be built. At the time of writing, Canadian newspapers have speculatedthat several companies (such as Cenovus Energy Inc. and Suncor Inc. and the Chinese government-ownedChina National Offshore Oil Corp) have signed non-binding precedent agreements as Enbridge’s potentialpartners or customers, although the specific corporations with which Enbridge will choose to partnerremain unknown. As one of the 209 conditions, the company needs to secure clients for at least 60% ofthe crude oil before it is allowed to build the pipeline.

2. Oil is referred to as “dirty oil” in various ways, depending on context. Oil is considered “dirty”when in comparison to cleaner forms of oil when its extraction or refining requires a large amount ofoil to produce. The second popular interpretation of “dirty oil” refers to the ethics of using oil from acountry that has a bad record of human rights.

3. The comments have been kept mostly intact. Capitalized letters are original. Only spelling mis-takes have been corrected, and excessive profanities have been removed.

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