Distributed Blackness: African American cybercultures

Introduction -- Distributing blackness: ayo technology! texts, identities, and blackness -- Information inspirations: the web browser as racial technology -- "The black purposes of space travel": black twitter as black technoculture -- Back online discourse, part 1: ratchetry and racism -- Black online discourse, part 2: respectability -- Making a way out of no way: black cyberculture and the black technocultural matrix -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the author.

Cover -- DISTRIBUTED BLACKNESS -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- 1. Distributing Blackness: Ayo Technology! Texts, Identities, and Blackness -- 2. Information Inspirations: The Web Browser as Racial Technology -- 3. "The Black Purposes of Space Travel": Black Twitter as Black Technoculture -- 4. Black Online Discourse, Part 1: Ratchetry and Racism -- 5. Black Online Discourse, Part 2: Respectability -- 6. Making a Way out of No Way: Black Cyberculture and the Black Technocultural Matrix -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Author.

This book addresses Black culture, Web 2.0, and social networks from new methodological perspectives. Using critical technocultural discourse analysis, the chapters within examine Black-designed digital technologies, Black-authored websites, and Black-dominated social media services such as Black Twitter. Distributed Blackness also features an innovative theoretical approach to Black digital practice. The book uses libidinal economy to examine Black discourse and Black users from a joyful/surplus perspective, eschewing deficit models (including respectability politics) to better place online Blackness as a mode of existing in the "postpresent," or a joyous disregard for modernity and capitalism. This approach also adds nuanced analysis to the energies powering Black online activism and Black identity.