August 23, 2024 • 19 mins
How can communities creatively adapt and reshape online practices to forge resilient digital publics?
In episode 162 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews media studies scholar Raven Maragh-Lloyd about the historical contours of Black digital resistance.
The Ideas on Fire team was honored to work with Raven on her new book Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age, which is an insightful analysis of how Black technology users adapt and reshape resistance strategies and forge Black publics in the digital age. The book is out now from the University of California Press.
In their conversation, Raven and Cathy chat about how digital resistance is best understood as a creative process rather than just an outcome of digital practices and how Black communities create and sustain that process across time periods and platforms.
They dive into a bunch of different examples, from Instagram archiving around Juneteenth and Black women’s online networks of care to the politics of cancel culture and where the migration of Black Twitter in the wake of the platform’s demise.
The episode concludes with Raven’s vision for critical hopefulness in digital spaces, a critical hopefulness that reckons with the violences of the past and forges more just futures.
Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/162-raven-maragh-lloyd
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, thepodcast about bridging art, activism,
and academia to build more just futures.
I'm Cathy Hannabach, and today I'mtalking with media studies scholar
Raven Maragh-Lloyd about the historicalcontours of University digital resistance.
The Ideas on Fire team was honoredto work with Raven on her new book,
Black Networked Resistance (00:24):
Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age.
This book offers an insightful analysisof how Black technology users adapt
and reshape resistance strategies andforge Black publics in the digital era.
The book is out now from theUniversity of California Press.
In our conversation, Raven and Ichat about how digital resistance
(00:47):
is best understood as a creativeprocess, rather than just an outcome
of specific digital practices, andspecifically how Black communities
create and sustain that process acrossdifferent time periods and platforms.
We dive into a bunch of different examplesof this, everything from Instagram
archiving around Juneteenth and Blackwomen's networks of care in online
(01:09):
forums to the politics of cancel cultureand where Black Twitter is migrating
in the wake of the platform's demise.
We close out the episode with Raven'svision for critical hopefulness in
digital spaces, a critical hopefulnessthat reckons with the violences of
the past and forges more just futures.
(01:29):
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you for having me.
So in this amazing new book youexamine a pretty wide range of
creative resistance strategiesdeployed by Black digital media makers.
What I find particularly interestingis you focus on the process of
resistance rather than just theoutcomes of that resistance.
(01:49):
What does that emphasis on process do?
And what are some of your favoriteexamples that you found in your research?
Yeah, so resistance as process forme helps us to connect and reflect
on the past with the present.
I think, especially when it comes totechnology and digital technology,
(02:12):
we tend to think that every issueis brand new, or this is the
first time we're seeing something.
But Black publics have long beenshowing us the different faces of, for
example, oppression for a long time.
So the aim might have changed whenit comes to resistance, but the
process is actually quite ingrainedto a particular group's history.
(02:34):
One of my favorite examples is from thecancel culture chapter, where I trace
the history of canceling and I'm inconversation with brilliant folks like
Meredith Clark who write about this.
There were strategies in the1960s, like economic divestment and
boycotting, the Don't Buy Where YouCan't Work campaign in Chicago or
Selective Patronage in Philadelphia.
(02:57):
And these economic divestment strategiesmoved, then, into attention divestment
online, what we understand as canceling.
So, you know, taking our attentionaway from somebody like Cardi B,
who was going through accusationsof sexual assault at the time.
So connecting the past andthe present is one thing.
(03:17):
And then the second thing when it comesto resistance as process I think that
framework acts as a sort of archivefor online Black resistance efforts.
I purposefully in the book use resistanceover activism throughout the book because
many of the strategies I examine aren'ttraditional activist strategies, like
organizing or economic divestment,they're resistance efforts that I think
(03:42):
on the face are easily written off asjust jokes or they're made invisible,
like the care networks of Black women.
So for me, this is a sort of academiclegitimation of these kinds of
nontraditional resistance efforts.
And I say academic because Black womencare networks have been legitimate and
these women know they're legitimate,but I think in our spaces of academia
(04:05):
it's important to archive and makelegitimate these resistance efforts.
So in the chapter about Instagramarchiving around Juneteenth, you write
that quote, "archiving interrupts byallowing for a collection of the past
to be read through multiple lenses inthe present and the future," end quote.
And this gets at that temporalityquestion that you were just mentioning.
(04:27):
What are some of the ways that Instagramarchivists and other kinds of digital
archivists that you look at mobilizeplatforms as a method of resistance?
That's such a good question.
I enjoyed writing about Instagram.
I don't think we give as much attentionto visuality, perhaps, as we should,
because text sometimes is moreprominent in some of our research.
(04:50):
Instagram gives us the visual aspects of a platformthat I argue Black publics mobilize.
So in thinking about Juneteenth,we bring history to life.
These Black historians that I analyzedbrought photos from the 1800s into
a context of the 21st century, wherewe're seeing these historical figures,
(05:11):
I call them, like, serving face.
Like, we see them in the, in the culturallandscape of selfies and, like, the
interiority and intimacy of Instagram.
So it's moving these museum-likephotos into the everyday.
And then the second thing is theinteractive features of Instagram.
So the ability to add prominent figuresinto these conversations that we've seen
(05:34):
in digital media research when it comesto Twitter or X, but I saw a lot of these
Black digital historians adding Republicansenators, for example, around certain
bills that were being passed at the time.
And so there was this element ofinterfacing with public prominent
figures that often gets overlookedwhen it comes to Instagram.
(05:55):
I'm wondering if we could go backto what you were saying about cancel
culture, because I think obviouslythis is a topic that a lot of people
have thoughts on, often divergentthoughts on even within the same person.
But I think you treat it reallyinterestingly in this book, both naming
it as a resistance strategy, as itclearly is, but also teasing out how
(06:18):
digital media affordances play a rolein how cancel culture works and who
uses it and its effects like that.
So I'm curious how affordanceslike scalability, persistence,
those kinds of things, shape thatparticular form of resistance
strategy and the impact that it has.
Yeah.
(06:38):
This was an interesting chapter for me.
I forget if I said it in the book,but I wanted to do anything else
but write about cancel culture.
I did not want to do it, exactly becauseof what you say, like, it's so, divergent
in terms of people's opinions and complex.
But I had to contend with the complexitiesof canceling and cancel culture because
(07:01):
I'm writing about resistance online.
And so, in some way, I treat cancelingand cancel culture as showcasing some
of the limitations of digital resistanceonline, because it's messy, right?
It's not as straightforwardmany times as we like to think.
So, in terms of the affordancesof scalability and persistence,
with scalability or visibility,and I'm writing with folks like
(07:23):
danah boyd here, scalability givesus a greater range of visibility.
When you hit post, your followerscan see what you post, right?
And depending on how public orprivate your profile is, you can be
retweeted, you can be searched for,you can even like move beyond just
your followers to a whole host ofother people you have no idea about,
(07:45):
but also you can be screenshot, right?
And like, you have no ideawhere your post ends up.
So the visibility of these affordancesis definitely heightened when
it comes to social network sites.
So this high visibility I write aboutin the chapter adds an interesting
element when it comes to holdingsomeone in power accountable.
Like all of a sudden, it's not just oneperson, entering into the conversation
(08:07):
of, for example, hashtag #MeToo.
We've got millions of people and there'ssome sort of importance and power
when it comes to visibility like that.
But at the same time, this high visibilitygets confusing, maybe, when we don't have
fact checkers for certain situations.
We see folks on the alt-right whohave co-opted conversations like Me
(08:29):
Too with this exact piece in mind.
Or when the situation is stilldeveloping and there's a lot of
conversations, sort of like with R.
Kelly, which folks like Briana Barner havewritten about, when it comes to holding
each other accountable and also grapplingwith very public teardowns of Black men.
(08:50):
There's a whole history of this that weabsolutely should hold him accountable and
there's the complex piece of race loyaltythat, when it comes to cancel culture,
we're dealing with in unique ways.
So that's scalability and thenpersistence or permanence.
We know that online content sticks aroundand that's why platforms like Snapchat
(09:13):
were so powerful or so popular, in thebeginning anyway, because for the first
time, we're seeing the popularizationof a platform where content just,
in theory, anyway, just goes away.
We're like, whoa, what happens whencontent is not permanent anymore?
So, in this sense, we can holdpeople accountable, people in power
(09:33):
accountable, for their past actionsbecause of this affordance of permanence.
But again, there's complicationshere because this brings
questions about somebody's growth.
And this gets into thedivergent piece you mentioned.
Like, even withinourselves, we're confused.
Like, how do I feel about cancel culture?
Because are we saying wecan't grow from the past?
(09:54):
I don't think it's ablack and white issue.
It's not a good or bad, black andwhite issue, but it's complex.
You talk a lot in the book about BlackTwitter and for obvious reasons, and you
point out how central Twitter has beenand Black Twitter in particular to the
resistance strategies that you analyze.
And I think you also show much broaderconversations about what digital
(10:17):
media can do for marginalized groups.
I'm really curious to know where you seethose resistance strategies or frameworks
going in the future, particularlygiven the mass demise of Twitter or X.
And I know this is, you know, everyone'sgetting this question right now, but I
think it's interesting to think through,like, where does all that energy go?
(10:39):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, Black Twitter came aboutat a particular time and using a
particular platform and its affordances,such as the short character limits
at the onset in the early 2000s.
Folks like André Brock have written aboutBlack folks retrofitting our linguistic
(11:00):
styles, such as call and response,into these short character limits.
So that's what made Black Twitterwhat it is, what we know it to be now.
Meredith Clark has a book on Black Twittercoming out, which I'm so excited about.
But the bigger picture of Black folkscoming around and coalescing around
particular media platforms is not new.
(11:21):
We see that Black folks rejuvenate timeand time again and across multiple media
platforms, whether we're talking aboutthe Black press or we're talking about
social network sites, we see this sortof rejuvenation time and time again.
And so what I hope that thebook shows is that Black Twitter
(11:41):
or Twitter X can come and go.
But the cultural makeup of marginalizedgroups move across platforms.
We know that these platforms werenever here to serve us to begin with.
And so, with that in mind, weretrofit our, for example, linguistic
practices to a particular platformwith the knowledge that that
(12:01):
platform might not be here tomorrow.
I hope that answers that question.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, especially since so many of theplatforms that claim to, potentially
replace Twitter, like, we don't knowwhere they're going to go either, right?
So we invest in them tentatively indifferent ways and different communities
do it to differing degrees, but whoknows what it's going to be tomorrow.
(12:22):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I think it's just helpful to liketake the bird's eye view on that one.
Like it's less about the platform andmore about our cultural practices.
One of my favorite chapters of thisbook you alluded to earlier a bit,
it looks at Black women's networksof care in these digital spaces.
And you point out that this is a topicthat is largely absent in most of the
(12:46):
debates around the politics of technologyand resistance and digital media.
What are some of the strategiesat work in those networks of care?
And how do you see them pushingback on some of the violences or
potential violences of digital media?
Yeah, this chapter came aboutthrough focus group data at
(13:06):
two different points in time.
So it was 2017 when I was finishing upmy dissertation, and then again in 2021.
And those times are, I think, importantwhen we're thinking about post–Mike Brown
and in 2017, and then post-2020 and 2021.
I was really interested in talkingto women who don't consider
(13:28):
themselves traditional activistsbut found themselves in the realm
of digital media doing something atthese particular moments in time.
And so what came up time andtime again was this idea of care.
For example, the women across bothfocus groups, talked about using
(13:48):
the knowledge of the algorithm.
In 2021, it was mostly TikTok.
In 2017, it was mostly Twitter,but using the knowledge of the
algorithm to support and makevisible other Black women and femmes.
So particularly at times where we'reseeing the reproducibility of Black
death, I'm thinking of Tonia Sutherland'swork here, these Black women make
(14:11):
content visible that challengesthe reproducibility of Black death.
They explain that they know thatalgorithms favor content that is highly
emotional and highly spreadable, right?
And so, what the women do ismake sure to do something as
simple as reproduce content thatchallenges subjugation and death.
And I thought that was beautiful.
(14:32):
The second thing I noticed acrossthe focus groups was the Black woman
talking about not talking back.
Particularly online, when we haveinformation overload, we have lots
of hot takes about everything.
And the women mentioned theburden to educate others.
Especially when you hold amarginalized position, you see
(14:55):
something on the online, you're like,No, that's not what it is, right?
That's not my experience.
And some of the women even mentioned beingcastigated for not posting, for example,
in 2020, not putting the Black square up.
And what they mentioned was, I'mgoing to release that, release
the burden to educate others.
I love the metaphor that one of thewomen mentioned, which was Double Dutch.
(15:17):
She mentions like, should Igo in or should I not go in?
Another woman mentioned like, I'mjust going to close shop, right?
So these Black women were well awareof the landscape that they had to deal
with on- and offline, and they tookagency and said I'm not talking back.
I thought that was interesting, especiallythinking through works like bell
(15:37):
hooks, who writes about talking back.
Like there's an agencyhere in not talking back.
And then the last thing I do in thechapter is thinking through care
online as political and communal,through the histories of Black
feminism and Black queer feminism,rather than solely individualized.
And I'm thinking throughindividualization through the
(15:58):
frame of digital neoliberalism.
So in the chapter I write aboutthe iPhone, for example, and the
onus that is put on the individualto limit our screen time.
Like it's our job to make surethat we move away from technology
to take care of ourselves.
And this is a veryindividualized notion of care.
(16:21):
Same thing when we think about the, themarket of selling self-care, like somehow
we can reach care by buying things.
And so, from a Black queer feministperspective, thinking through works
like Jennifer Nash's love politics, orAudre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, the
Combahee River Collective, bell hooks.
(16:42):
Black feminists have long writtenabout the self as inextricably tied
to the whole, and that's what Isaw come up in these focus groups.
The women mentioned what I do ordon't do impacts other Black women.
That's the algorithmexample I gave earlier.
So yeah, those are some of thethemes that came up in that chapter.
This brings me to my favorite questionthat really gets at the heart of why you
(17:07):
do this kind of research and why you writethese kind of books and why you talk with
students about these kinds of issues.
What is the world thatyou're working toward?
What kind of world do you want?
Yeah.
This was good.
This was a good question that tookme a minute to like really sit
with, I'd say critical hopefulness.
(17:27):
I hope that this book and my workbuilds on folks like bell hooks in
thinking about critical hopefulness.
I want to pay attention and I wantto do the work of critiquing, things
like digital neoliberalism, but I alsowant to do the work of being hopeful
about the present and the future anddo the work of hopeful imagination.
(17:50):
I love Ruha Benjamin'snew book on imagination.
And I think about this work thatyou're doing, Cathy, in this
podcast, it's all about imagining.
I love that.
Well, thank you so much for beingwith us and for writing this awesome
book—there will be links to it inthe show notes for this episode.
And thanks for sharing all theseways that you imagine otherwise.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
(18:14):
Thanks for joining me for thisepisode of Imagine Otherwise.
A big thanks to Raven aswell for sharing her work.
Our team had a blast working withRaven on her book, Black Networked
Resistance, which is out now fromthe University of California Press.
You can discover more about the book andgrab your copy in the episode show notes
on our website, which also have a detailedtranscript, related books and interviews,
(18:36):
and a teaching guide for this episode.
If you'd like some interdisciplinaryediting or indexing support for your own
book, we would love to hear from you.
Our team of developmental editors,copyeditors, indexers, book marketers,
and publishing consultants specialize ininterdisciplinary books like Raven's and
can help you go from draft to published.
(18:56):
You can get in touch onour website at ideasonfire.net
This episode of ImagineOtherwise was produced and
edited by me, Cathy Hannabach.
If this episode inspired you,make sure to subscribe to the
show at ideasonfire.net/podcast.
In addition to new episodes, subscribersalso get access to exclusive writing
and publishing resources, book newsfrom the Ideas on Fire author community,
(19:20):
and invitations to interdisciplinaryevents to help you imagine otherwise.
Finally, you can find Ideas on Fire onsocial media, at @ideasonfirephd, where
we share all kinds of different resourcesto help interdisciplinary scholars
write and publish awesome texts, enlivenpublic conversations like this one,
and ultimately build more just worlds.
Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, thepodcast about bridging art, activism,
and academia to build more just futures.
I'm Cathy Hannabach, and today I'mtalking with media studies scholar
Raven Maragh-Lloyd about the historicalcontours of University digital resistance.
The Ideas on Fire team was honoredto work with Raven on her new book,
Black Networked Resistance (00:24):
Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age.
This book offers an insightful analysisof how Black technology users adapt
and reshape resistance strategies andforge Black publics in the digital era.
The book is out now from theUniversity of California Press.
In our conversation, Raven and Ichat about how digital resistance
(00:47):
is best understood as a creativeprocess, rather than just an outcome
of specific digital practices, andspecifically how Black communities
create and sustain that process acrossdifferent time periods and platforms.
We dive into a bunch of different examplesof this, everything from Instagram
archiving around Juneteenth and Blackwomen's networks of care in online
(01:09):
forums to the politics of cancel cultureand where Black Twitter is migrating
in the wake of the platform's demise.
We close out the episode with Raven'svision for critical hopefulness in
digital spaces, a critical hopefulnessthat reckons with the violences of
the past and forges more just futures.
(01:29):
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you for having me.
So in this amazing new book youexamine a pretty wide range of
creative resistance strategiesdeployed by Black digital media makers.
What I find particularly interestingis you focus on the process of
resistance rather than just theoutcomes of that resistance.
(01:49):
What does that emphasis on process do?
And what are some of your favoriteexamples that you found in your research?
Yeah, so resistance as process forme helps us to connect and reflect
on the past with the present.
I think, especially when it comes totechnology and digital technology,
(02:12):
we tend to think that every issueis brand new, or this is the
first time we're seeing something.
But Black publics have long beenshowing us the different faces of, for
example, oppression for a long time.
So the aim might have changed whenit comes to resistance, but the
process is actually quite ingrainedto a particular group's history.
(02:34):
One of my favorite examples is from thecancel culture chapter, where I trace
the history of canceling and I'm inconversation with brilliant folks like
Meredith Clark who write about this.
There were strategies in the1960s, like economic divestment and
boycotting, the Don't Buy Where YouCan't Work campaign in Chicago or
Selective Patronage in Philadelphia.
(02:57):
And these economic divestment strategiesmoved, then, into attention divestment
online, what we understand as canceling.
So, you know, taking our attentionaway from somebody like Cardi B,
who was going through accusationsof sexual assault at the time.
So connecting the past andthe present is one thing.
(03:17):
And then the second thing when it comesto resistance as process I think that
framework acts as a sort of archivefor online Black resistance efforts.
I purposefully in the book use resistanceover activism throughout the book because
many of the strategies I examine aren'ttraditional activist strategies, like
organizing or economic divestment,they're resistance efforts that I think
(03:42):
on the face are easily written off asjust jokes or they're made invisible,
like the care networks of Black women.
So for me, this is a sort of academiclegitimation of these kinds of
nontraditional resistance efforts.
And I say academic because Black womencare networks have been legitimate and
these women know they're legitimate,but I think in our spaces of academia
(04:05):
it's important to archive and makelegitimate these resistance efforts.
So in the chapter about Instagramarchiving around Juneteenth, you write
that quote, "archiving interrupts byallowing for a collection of the past
to be read through multiple lenses inthe present and the future," end quote.
And this gets at that temporalityquestion that you were just mentioning.
(04:27):
What are some of the ways that Instagramarchivists and other kinds of digital
archivists that you look at mobilizeplatforms as a method of resistance?
That's such a good question.
I enjoyed writing about Instagram.
I don't think we give as much attentionto visuality, perhaps, as we should,
because text sometimes is moreprominent in some of our research.
(04:50):
Instagram gives us the visual aspects of a platformthat I argue Black publics mobilize.
So in thinking about Juneteenth,we bring history to life.
These Black historians that I analyzedbrought photos from the 1800s into
a context of the 21st century, wherewe're seeing these historical figures,
(05:11):
I call them, like, serving face.
Like, we see them in the, in the culturallandscape of selfies and, like, the
interiority and intimacy of Instagram.
So it's moving these museum-likephotos into the everyday.
And then the second thing is theinteractive features of Instagram.
So the ability to add prominent figuresinto these conversations that we've seen
(05:34):
in digital media research when it comesto Twitter or X, but I saw a lot of these
Black digital historians adding Republicansenators, for example, around certain
bills that were being passed at the time.
And so there was this element ofinterfacing with public prominent
figures that often gets overlookedwhen it comes to Instagram.
(05:55):
I'm wondering if we could go backto what you were saying about cancel
culture, because I think obviouslythis is a topic that a lot of people
have thoughts on, often divergentthoughts on even within the same person.
But I think you treat it reallyinterestingly in this book, both naming
it as a resistance strategy, as itclearly is, but also teasing out how
(06:18):
digital media affordances play a rolein how cancel culture works and who
uses it and its effects like that.
So I'm curious how affordanceslike scalability, persistence,
those kinds of things, shape thatparticular form of resistance
strategy and the impact that it has.
Yeah.
(06:38):
This was an interesting chapter for me.
I forget if I said it in the book,but I wanted to do anything else
but write about cancel culture.
I did not want to do it, exactly becauseof what you say, like, it's so, divergent
in terms of people's opinions and complex.
But I had to contend with the complexitiesof canceling and cancel culture because
(07:01):
I'm writing about resistance online.
And so, in some way, I treat cancelingand cancel culture as showcasing some
of the limitations of digital resistanceonline, because it's messy, right?
It's not as straightforwardmany times as we like to think.
So, in terms of the affordancesof scalability and persistence,
with scalability or visibility,and I'm writing with folks like
(07:23):
danah boyd here, scalability givesus a greater range of visibility.
When you hit post, your followerscan see what you post, right?
And depending on how public orprivate your profile is, you can be
retweeted, you can be searched for,you can even like move beyond just
your followers to a whole host ofother people you have no idea about,
(07:45):
but also you can be screenshot, right?
And like, you have no ideawhere your post ends up.
So the visibility of these affordancesis definitely heightened when
it comes to social network sites.
So this high visibility I write aboutin the chapter adds an interesting
element when it comes to holdingsomeone in power accountable.
Like all of a sudden, it's not just oneperson, entering into the conversation
(08:07):
of, for example, hashtag #MeToo.
We've got millions of people and there'ssome sort of importance and power
when it comes to visibility like that.
But at the same time, this high visibilitygets confusing, maybe, when we don't have
fact checkers for certain situations.
We see folks on the alt-right whohave co-opted conversations like Me
(08:29):
Too with this exact piece in mind.
Or when the situation is stilldeveloping and there's a lot of
conversations, sort of like with R.
Kelly, which folks like Briana Barner havewritten about, when it comes to holding
each other accountable and also grapplingwith very public teardowns of Black men.
(08:50):
There's a whole history of this that weabsolutely should hold him accountable and
there's the complex piece of race loyaltythat, when it comes to cancel culture,
we're dealing with in unique ways.
So that's scalability and thenpersistence or permanence.
We know that online content sticks aroundand that's why platforms like Snapchat
(09:13):
were so powerful or so popular, in thebeginning anyway, because for the first
time, we're seeing the popularizationof a platform where content just,
in theory, anyway, just goes away.
We're like, whoa, what happens whencontent is not permanent anymore?
So, in this sense, we can holdpeople accountable, people in power
(09:33):
accountable, for their past actionsbecause of this affordance of permanence.
But again, there's complicationshere because this brings
questions about somebody's growth.
And this gets into thedivergent piece you mentioned.
Like, even withinourselves, we're confused.
Like, how do I feel about cancel culture?
Because are we saying wecan't grow from the past?
(09:54):
I don't think it's ablack and white issue.
It's not a good or bad, black andwhite issue, but it's complex.
You talk a lot in the book about BlackTwitter and for obvious reasons, and you
point out how central Twitter has beenand Black Twitter in particular to the
resistance strategies that you analyze.
And I think you also show much broaderconversations about what digital
(10:17):
media can do for marginalized groups.
I'm really curious to know where you seethose resistance strategies or frameworks
going in the future, particularlygiven the mass demise of Twitter or X.
And I know this is, you know, everyone'sgetting this question right now, but I
think it's interesting to think through,like, where does all that energy go?
(10:39):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, Black Twitter came aboutat a particular time and using a
particular platform and its affordances,such as the short character limits
at the onset in the early 2000s.
Folks like André Brock have written aboutBlack folks retrofitting our linguistic
(11:00):
styles, such as call and response,into these short character limits.
So that's what made Black Twitterwhat it is, what we know it to be now.
Meredith Clark has a book on Black Twittercoming out, which I'm so excited about.
But the bigger picture of Black folkscoming around and coalescing around
particular media platforms is not new.
(11:21):
We see that Black folks rejuvenate timeand time again and across multiple media
platforms, whether we're talking aboutthe Black press or we're talking about
social network sites, we see this sortof rejuvenation time and time again.
And so what I hope that thebook shows is that Black Twitter
(11:41):
or Twitter X can come and go.
But the cultural makeup of marginalizedgroups move across platforms.
We know that these platforms werenever here to serve us to begin with.
And so, with that in mind, weretrofit our, for example, linguistic
practices to a particular platformwith the knowledge that that
(12:01):
platform might not be here tomorrow.
I hope that answers that question.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, especially since so many of theplatforms that claim to, potentially
replace Twitter, like, we don't knowwhere they're going to go either, right?
So we invest in them tentatively indifferent ways and different communities
do it to differing degrees, but whoknows what it's going to be tomorrow.
(12:22):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I think it's just helpful to liketake the bird's eye view on that one.
Like it's less about the platform andmore about our cultural practices.
One of my favorite chapters of thisbook you alluded to earlier a bit,
it looks at Black women's networksof care in these digital spaces.
And you point out that this is a topicthat is largely absent in most of the
(12:46):
debates around the politics of technologyand resistance and digital media.
What are some of the strategiesat work in those networks of care?
And how do you see them pushingback on some of the violences or
potential violences of digital media?
Yeah, this chapter came aboutthrough focus group data at
(13:06):
two different points in time.
So it was 2017 when I was finishing upmy dissertation, and then again in 2021.
And those times are, I think, importantwhen we're thinking about post–Mike Brown
and in 2017, and then post-2020 and 2021.
I was really interested in talkingto women who don't consider
(13:28):
themselves traditional activistsbut found themselves in the realm
of digital media doing something atthese particular moments in time.
And so what came up time andtime again was this idea of care.
For example, the women across bothfocus groups, talked about using
(13:48):
the knowledge of the algorithm.
In 2021, it was mostly TikTok.
In 2017, it was mostly Twitter,but using the knowledge of the
algorithm to support and makevisible other Black women and femmes.
So particularly at times where we'reseeing the reproducibility of Black
death, I'm thinking of Tonia Sutherland'swork here, these Black women make
(14:11):
content visible that challengesthe reproducibility of Black death.
They explain that they know thatalgorithms favor content that is highly
emotional and highly spreadable, right?
And so, what the women do ismake sure to do something as
simple as reproduce content thatchallenges subjugation and death.
And I thought that was beautiful.
(14:32):
The second thing I noticed acrossthe focus groups was the Black woman
talking about not talking back.
Particularly online, when we haveinformation overload, we have lots
of hot takes about everything.
And the women mentioned theburden to educate others.
Especially when you hold amarginalized position, you see
(14:55):
something on the online, you're like,No, that's not what it is, right?
That's not my experience.
And some of the women even mentioned beingcastigated for not posting, for example,
in 2020, not putting the Black square up.
And what they mentioned was, I'mgoing to release that, release
the burden to educate others.
I love the metaphor that one of thewomen mentioned, which was Double Dutch.
(15:17):
She mentions like, should Igo in or should I not go in?
Another woman mentioned like, I'mjust going to close shop, right?
So these Black women were well awareof the landscape that they had to deal
with on- and offline, and they tookagency and said I'm not talking back.
I thought that was interesting, especiallythinking through works like bell
(15:37):
hooks, who writes about talking back.
Like there's an agencyhere in not talking back.
And then the last thing I do in thechapter is thinking through care
online as political and communal,through the histories of Black
feminism and Black queer feminism,rather than solely individualized.
And I'm thinking throughindividualization through the
(15:58):
frame of digital neoliberalism.
So in the chapter I write aboutthe iPhone, for example, and the
onus that is put on the individualto limit our screen time.
Like it's our job to make surethat we move away from technology
to take care of ourselves.
And this is a veryindividualized notion of care.
(16:21):
Same thing when we think about the, themarket of selling self-care, like somehow
we can reach care by buying things.
And so, from a Black queer feministperspective, thinking through works
like Jennifer Nash's love politics, orAudre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, the
Combahee River Collective, bell hooks.
(16:42):
Black feminists have long writtenabout the self as inextricably tied
to the whole, and that's what Isaw come up in these focus groups.
The women mentioned what I do ordon't do impacts other Black women.
That's the algorithmexample I gave earlier.
So yeah, those are some of thethemes that came up in that chapter.
This brings me to my favorite questionthat really gets at the heart of why you
(17:07):
do this kind of research and why you writethese kind of books and why you talk with
students about these kinds of issues.
What is the world thatyou're working toward?
What kind of world do you want?
Yeah.
This was good.
This was a good question that tookme a minute to like really sit
with, I'd say critical hopefulness.
(17:27):
I hope that this book and my workbuilds on folks like bell hooks in
thinking about critical hopefulness.
I want to pay attention and I wantto do the work of critiquing, things
like digital neoliberalism, but I alsowant to do the work of being hopeful
about the present and the future anddo the work of hopeful imagination.
(17:50):
I love Ruha Benjamin'snew book on imagination.
And I think about this work thatyou're doing, Cathy, in this
podcast, it's all about imagining.
I love that.
Well, thank you so much for beingwith us and for writing this awesome
book—there will be links to it inthe show notes for this episode.
And thanks for sharing all theseways that you imagine otherwise.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
(18:14):
Thanks for joining me for thisepisode of Imagine Otherwise.
A big thanks to Raven aswell for sharing her work.
Our team had a blast working withRaven on her book, Black Networked
Resistance, which is out now fromthe University of California Press.
You can discover more about the book andgrab your copy in the episode show notes
on our website, which also have a detailedtranscript, related books and interviews,
(18:36):
and a teaching guide for this episode.
If you'd like some interdisciplinaryediting or indexing support for your own
book, we would love to hear from you.
Our team of developmental editors,copyeditors, indexers, book marketers,
and publishing consultants specialize ininterdisciplinary books like Raven's and
can help you go from draft to published.
(18:56):
You can get in touch onour website at ideasonfire.net
This episode of ImagineOtherwise was produced and
edited by me, Cathy Hannabach.
If this episode inspired you,make sure to subscribe to the
show at ideasonfire.net/podcast.
In addition to new episodes, subscribersalso get access to exclusive writing
and publishing resources, book newsfrom the Ideas on Fire author community,
(19:20):
and invitations to interdisciplinaryevents to help you imagine otherwise.
Finally, you can find Ideas on Fire onsocial media, at @ideasonfirephd, where
we share all kinds of different resourcesto help interdisciplinary scholars
write and publish awesome texts, enlivenpublic conversations like this one,
and ultimately build more just worlds.
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