Blackness Narratives in Technology, Speculative Fiction, and Digital
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Black Cyborgs: Blackness Narratives in Technology, Speculative Fiction, and Digital Cultures A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Caitlin Gunn IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Catherine Squires and Dr. Annie Hill June 2020 © Copyright by Caitlin Gunn 2020 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to those who have helped shape the growth and development of this project. My advisors, Dr. Catherine Squires and Dr. Annie Hill, have helped me develop as a scholar and a person through this project. I cannot thank them enough for their time and their eyes on my work. I’d like to express my gratitude to my committee members for your support and encouragement: Dr. Jigna Desai, Dr. Duchess Harris, and Dr. Zenzele Isoke. Particular thanks to my interview participants, talented writers who took time to talk to me about their lives, process, and deeply important work: Walidah Imarisha, adrienne maree brown, Brittney Morris, K. Tempest Bradford, and LaShawn Wanak. This would not have been possible without your contributions and time. My family and friends have been endlessly supportive. An incomplete list of those I’d like to thank: my father Paul Gunn, my grandmother Clementine Simpson, and my aunt Linda Welch. Thank you to Andrew Schumacher Bethke, Sarah Clinton- McCausland, Dr. Tia-Simone Gardner, Caty Taborda-Whitt, Dr. Lars Mackenzie, Paula Diamond, Dr. Garrett Hoffman, Dr. Darrah Chavey, and Sally Wiedenbeck. Many thanks to my personal mentors, Dr. Nicole Truesdell, Naomi Scheman, and Dr. Aida Martinez-Freeman. i Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother: Dr. Rhonda Naomi Simpson, Black nerd extraordinaire, 1956-2018 ii Abstract This project draws from the deep well of Black science fiction, original interviews with Black science fiction authors, and popular media case studies and analysis to generate new discourses about Black people and technology. Exploring the ways Black people have taken up both science fiction and technology, I argue that Black feminist thinkers can use both as blueprints for survival, joy, and community-building. Seeking to find strategies for effective communication within our shared political and technosocial lives, this project advances speculative fiction and cyborg theory as dynamic tools which we must utilize to build the future of feminist studies, Black studies, and digital political organizing. Beginning with Donna Haraway’s essay “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” and expanding to recent explorations of the cyborg from women of color theorists like Joy James and Jasbir Puar, I situate Black feminist cyborgs in the current field of feminist cyborg theory. I offer a “part-time” Black feminist cyborg theory, a practical aesthetic which aids Black people’s movement and theorizing in digital spaces, chronicled by hashtags and characterized by the fast- paced nature of digital communication. To illustrate the possibilities of such an aesthetic, I engage Chicana philosopher Maria Lugones’ theory of traveling to the metaphorical “worlds” of other women. I extend her work, envisioning a part-time Black feminist cyborg optimized for travel to and through the digital worlds of social media like Facebook and Twitter, asking how Black people arrive in these worlds and what they experience once there. Illuminating a tradition of technological engagement by Black communities and calling attention to dreams of futures free of oppression, my iii interdisciplinary project shapes the future directions of Black feminist theory, digital organizing, and political resistance to entrenched and renewed white supremacy. iv Table of Contents Dedication...........................................................................................................................ii Abstract.............................................................................................................................iii Table of Figures................................................................................................................vii Introduction: Blueprints for Black Futures....................................................................1 Interviews: When Lab Rats Do the Writing.............................................................5 White Science Fiction, Black Speculative Fiction: Developing Black Cyborgs...14 Chapter Overview..................................................................................................18 Chapter One: Toward Black Cyborgs: Black Futurity and World Traveling...........30 World Traveling and Speculative Play...................................................................33 Arrogant vs. Loving Perception in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Works...............44 (Re-)assembling the Cyborg for Black Feminist Futures......................................63 Technological Tools, Technological Weapons.......................................................71 K. Tempest Bradford on Androids and Allegory...................................................77 Chapter Two: Cyborgs and Other Dirty Computers: Untangling the Dreamer and the Dream.........................................................................................................................82 On the Subject of Star Trek....................................................................................82 Black Dreamers, Black Dreams.............................................................................92 Coding Survival: Cultural Memory and Encounters with the State in Dirty Computer................................................................................................................96 Otherhood, Surrealism, Haunting, and Black Futurism: carrington’s Model for the Black Speculative.................................................................................................106 Walidah Imarisha on Technology, Cyborgs, and Bio-hacking.............................113 Chapter Three: How to Treat Your Host: HBO’s Westworld and Arrogant Perception.......................................................................................................................117 “Welcome to Westworld”.....................................................................................121 Instrument of Arrogant Perception: Bernard Lowe.............................................125 Strong Black Cyborg: Maeve Millay...................................................................133 Black Hosts, White Men: Ford’s Arrogant Perception of Black Cyborgs...........139 K. Tempest Bradford on Grief and Labor............................................................144 v Chapter Four: Navigating Digital and Speculative Worlds.......................................149 Brittney Morris and Part-Time Twitter Hustling.................................................149 Blending Black Physical and Virtual: Reading LaShawn Wanak’s “She’s All Light”...................................................................................................................157 Black Twitter and Black Cyberfeminism.............................................................165 Coming to Voice in Digital Space........................................................................177 The Case of #McKinney: Twitter as Mourning and Healing Gathering Space...181 Theorizing Black Feminist Pain on Twitter.........................................................185 “I Lost an Arm on my Last Trip Home”: Black Feminist Responses to Slavery Fantasies...............................................................................................................199 Tempest Bradford and the “Tempest Challenge”.................................................210 Conclusion: Harvests of Survivors...............................................................................218 Bibliography...................................................................................................................222 vi Table of Figures Figure 1: Gunn-Simpson Family Home, Corvallis, OR (before)........................................1 Figure 2: Gunn-Simpson Family Home, Corvallis, OR (after)..........................................1 Figure 3: @BenaminPDixon, 12 August 2017...............................................................193 Figure 4: @Nsilverberg, 20 July 2017............................................................................197 vii Introduction: Blueprints for Black Futures My father is a retired architectural engineer. I grew up watching him design and execute Figure 1: Gunn-Simpson Family Home, Figure 2: Gunn-Simpson Family Home, Corvallis, OR (before) Corvallis, OR (after) different projects, from furniture to complex buildings. The materials varied: pre-cast concrete bridges peppered throughout the Pacific Northwest, cherry wood Shaker-style end tables for my first apartment, salvaged tile and stone throughout my childhood home. Sketching by hand or on design software downloaded onto thick, heavy laptops, he could see elegance in all of the math and calculations long before that elegance revealed itself to other people. Once, my mother and I returned home to our fireplace completely destroyed, crumbled brick covering the floor. His face was a mixture of chagrin and determination as he insisted that we would understand once he rebuilt it, because he had a plan, he had a vision, it would be worth it, not to worry. As with most of his plans, he was redeemed. Dad was meticulous