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Making Black Lives Matter: on the Circulation of Images of Black Death on Social Media

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Making Black Lives Matter: on the Circulation of Images of Black Death on Social Media Making Black Lives Matter: On the Circulation of Images of Black Death on Social Media Victor Bramble ______________________________ Adviser: Ariella Azoulay, Ph.D., Modern Culture and Media, Comparative Literature Second Reader: Barrymore A. Bogues, Ph.D., Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Africana Studies, Humanities and Critical Theory ______________________________ April 2017 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Modern Culture and Media. 1 Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Making Sense of Racialized Violence....................................................................................... 18 Meaning, Mediation, and Technology .................................................................................................... 30 Modernity, Death, and Spectacle ............................................................................................................ 33 (De)Mythology and (De)Mystification ................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 2: Networks of Feeling, Platforms of Death .................................................................................. 44 Tumblr as Platform, Tumblr as Nexus .................................................................................................... 47 “This Is Why Black People Are Pissed Off” .......................................................................................... 54 "Truly How Innocent Can a Dead Man Be?" .......................................................................................... 69 Chapter 3: Networked (A)Liveness ............................................................................................................ 82 Coming Together to Build a More Open and Connected World ............................................................ 87 Bring it Near, Inspect it Closely.............................................................................................................. 94 In Media Res ......................................................................................................................................... 101 Conclusion: Absolute Dereliction and the Imaging of Death ................................................................... 110 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 124 2 3 Acknowledgements This is the longest project I have ever attempted to write and I think the final product you are now reading reflects this fact in every way. That I was applying to and subsequently visiting potential Ph.D. programs at the time of writing has certainly not helped make this process any easier, and much of my writing had to be delayed even while I continued to read, research, and take notes. This work would not have been possible without the support of my family, my friends, and my partner, all of whom helped me continue working on this project and see its importance even when I wanted to abandon it. I especially want to thank Paige Morris for always challenging me to work harder and think more about what I wanted to say. You’ve been my rock and you have affected my life more deeply than you can know. I want to thank my two best friends Alex Karim and Myacah Sampson for all the work you put in to entertaining my nonsense over the years. You have been essential to the formation of my ideas, and I can say I wouldn’t be the person I am without having met you and grown alongside you. The same is true of all my wonderful friends both here at Brown and across the country, including Jieyi Cai, Phoebe Young, Jackie Gu, Justice Gaines, Jessica Brown, Sana Teramoto, Kristina Lee, Matt Dang, Mimi Gordor, Brian Acosta, and Yanexy Cardona. In a broader sense, I also want to thank all the people who I have had the pleasure to work alongside as they produced their own theses and capstones this year and in past years. Each of you has influenced how I think about this work and how it ultimately came to be written, and I cherish the conversations and mutual support we have shared. Further, I would like to thank you, the reader for picking this up and taking some of your time on it. Who knows where this project will end up by the time you read this, but that doesn’t change what it means to me that you would engage with me and this work, to whatever extent you are able. Thank you. Academically and technically this work wouldn’t have been possible without the support of all the faculty, staff, and graduate students who have listened to me, given me feedback, and overall shaped 4 my academic career and interests here at Brown. This project was first developed through funding provided by the Karen T. Romer Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award. I’ve continued to be able to work on it as my Honor’s Thesis with support from the department of Modern Culture and Media and the department’s wonderful faculty and staff. I have received further support from the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, the Swearer Center for Public Service Royce Fellowship, and the Cogut Center for the Humanities Undergraduate Fellowship. I credit Dr. Brandy Monk-Payton with acting as my first possibility model for what Black people in the academy could do and do for students, and I thank you for setting me on this path. During my sophomore year, Dr. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun opened space for me to begin exploring digital media and I credit her with showing me how I could integrate study of digital media with a critical focus on race, identity, and governance, both through giving me the opportunity to serve as her research assistant and through the advising she provided for my first independent research project, the basis for this thesis’s second chapter. I continue to reflect on all the things you’ve taught me and I hope one day to mentor my students similarly. My time has also been indelibly shaped by the two professors I have taken classes with the most in my time at Brown, Dr. Ariella Azoulay, and Professor John Cayley. You will see Dr. Azoulay’s effect on my thinking throughout these pages as she has been a prime influence for how I think about media, technology, and colonialism. Professor Cayley has similarly challenged me in ways I never expected, giving me expansive creative spaces to differently understand and apply the insights of the theoretical work I am still only just beginning to embark on. Additionally, I would credit Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson with fundamentally changing how I engage in academic writing. This thesis is far from perfect but all three of you played a critical role in how I ended up approaching the research and writing of this thesis, including the questions I ended up finding worth asking. Other professors and advisers I would like to acknowledge include Dr. Barrymore A. Bogues, Francisco Monar, Dean Peggy Chang, Lydia Kelow-Bennet, Dr. Rijuta Mehta, Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Dr. Alexandrina Agloro, Dr. Carey Hardin, Professor Elmo Terry-Morgan, Dr. Roquinaldo Ferreira, Dr. 5 Monica Martinez, Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, Shane Lloyd, Anne Marie Ponte, Joshua Segui, Anthony Mam, Dean Besenia Rodriguez, Dean Maitrayee Bhattacharyya, Dr. Kerrissa Heffernan, and Dr. Christopher Hill. You have all shaped my time here at Brown and I have no doubt this project would look vastly different (and far worse) without your influence, guidance, and reminders of what is truly important in doing this sort of work in the academy. None of this would exist without the hands of all these people and so many more pushing me forward. As I embark on a Ph.D. program in American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Fall I know I will continue to feel the influence of all of these people in my work, even as I embark on projects and ideas far beyond what I have been able to imagine and accomplish so far. This is dedicated to all of you and the love and support you have shown me throughout my undergraduate career. I hope to bring that love with me into the research, teaching, and mentoring I do throughout my career in the academy. Thank you. 6 7 Introduction All of my niggas is casket pretty Ain't no one safe in this happy city I hope you make it home I hope to God that my tele' don't ring Noname1 In a recent case, a man was charged with murder after prosecutors obtained a warrant to receive data from his Amazon Echo, a voice activated device that, in order to function, must always be listening and sometimes records what it hears so that it may retrieve requested information from the Internet.2 In late 2013, the Tumblr Blog Selfies at Funerals, received increasing attention, with many commentators labelling the images of people, as the name implies, photographing themselves at funerals, as superficial, inappropriate, and disrespectful.3 Alongside the documentation of death itself, an industry has already sprung up around the social media users who have and who expect to die, services ranging from deleting all of one’s accounts upon notice of death to even the algorithmic reproduction of a user’s social media activity posthumously.4 What all these have in
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