Traces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black
feminist thought
Black women are at
the forefront of some of this century’s most important discussions
about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and
influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black
women’s relationship to technology began long before the advent of
Twitter or Instagram. To truly “listen to Black women,” Steele
points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United
States and its ability to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in
a conversation about the future of technology. Using the virtual
beauty shop as a metaphor, Digital Black Feminism walks
readers through the technical skill, communicative expertise, and
entrepreneurial acumen of Black women’s labor—born of survival
strategies and economic necessity—both on and offline.
Positioning Black
women at the center of our discourse about the past, present, and
future of technology, Steele offers a through-line from the writing
of early twentieth-century Black women to the bloggers and social
media mavens of the twenty-first century. She makes connections among
the letters, news articles, and essays of Black feminist writers of
the past and a digital archive of blog posts, tweets, and Instagram
stories of some of the most well-known Black feminist writers of our
time. Linking narratives and existing literature about Black women’s
technology use in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first
century, Digital Black Feminism traverses the bounds between
historical and archival analysis and empirical internet studies,
forcing a reconciliation between fields and methods that are not
always in conversation. As the work of Black feminist writers now
reaches its widest audience online, Steele offers both hopefulness
and caution on the implications of Black feminism becoming a digital
product.