Megaphonic Somsak Comes by His Goddamn Self

This chapter explains the use of the megaphone by Red Shirt protesters as an act of figuration, in Donna Haraway’s sense. The figured performance of megaphone singing or oration specifically suggested that Red Shirts were self-motivated, rather than agents provoked or paid by outside forces. Megaphone lectures gave the impression that the Red Shirts were authentically motivated. The author calls this sense of self-motivation kuu maa’eng (“I came by my goddamn self”) protest, after a slogan commonly used by the Red Shirts themselves. The chapter focuses ethnographically on one particular megaphone orator who came to most large Red Shirt protests in 2010–11.