“My Constellation is Space”: Towards a Theory of Black Cyberculture

Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

Technology is the American mythos (Dinerstein 2006); a belief system powering the relations between—and politics of—culture and technology. In the Western context, technoculture incorporates Whiteness, White racial ideology, and modernist technological beliefs. This presentation is a critical intervention for internet research and science and technology studies (STS), reorienting “race-as-technology” (Chun 2009) to incorporate Blackness as technological subjects rather than as “things." Utilizing critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock 2018), Afro-optimism, and libidinal economic theory, this presentation employs Black Twitter as an exemplar of Black cyberculture: digital practice and artifacts informed by a Black aesthetic. Learn more about this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-12-04/my-constellation-space-towards-theory-black-cyberculture