This chapter seeks to link digital humanities and African American/Black studies to question “how humanity is framed in the digital humanities” with the purpose to explore the ways that technology create humanities as a racialized social construct (1). It seeks to intervene in the racialized systems of power in our understanding of digital humanities and how to utilize technological techniques for this purpose. It contributes to archive ethnographic theory and practice by drawing from Alexander Weheliye to challenge categorization of humanity, thinking critically about how people are marginalized through studies of interest. The text focuses particularly on technology of recovery, “the construction of humanity that has been historically excluded”, a main topic for black digital studies to connect black studies and digital humanities (3). With these two in mind, the text suggests that technology, applying to archives as well, can categorize humanity as well as build alternate human modalities that are politically based or social movement oriented.
The text largely advances Alexander Weheliye’s critical reflection on the human category.
The types of analysis this text suggests for my work is to consider the political agenda that my project may be involved. Also, I also think that Weheliye’s considerations of the human are applicable to my topic of interest: privacy. Privacy as a human right brings to question who are marginalized by what technology and what alternative futures exist.
An exemplary quote, “Digital tools and platforms should be mobilized to interrogate and disclose how the humanities are developed out of systems of power. The black digital humanities reveals how methodological approaches for studying and thinking about the category of blackness may come to bear on and transform the digital processes and tools used to study humanity” (4).
The evidence supporting the main argument are historical in that interruptions to humanity for African Americans through racialization by “oppressive systems of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and police brutality” (3). They also discuss contemporary digital tools like to which recovery operates such as social media networks and digital academic projects.
The main argument is that recovery, as drawn from Black Studies, should be foundational to black digital humanities. Recovery seeks “to restore the humanity of black people lost and stolen through systemic global racialization” (2). Through the application of restoration, the politics of recovery, data collection, and curation in digital humanities is critically reconsidered.
The University of Minnesota was established in 1925 and has a “commitment to publishing books on the people, history, and natural environment of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest”. It is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Kim Gallon is an Associate Professor of the History Department, Affiliated Faculty of African American Studies, American Studies, and Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies at Purdue University. Their specializations include African American Studies, African Diaspora, Sub-Saharan Africa, Journalism History, Black Digital Humanities, and Learning Design & Technology.
Gold, M., &; Klein, L. (2016). Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities. In Debates in the Digital Humanities. essay, University of Minnesota Press.