Black Feminist Thought

Clareese Hill, an artist that works with various creative technological outputs, gave a guest lecture today that opened my mind to world of black female bodies taking up space in traditionally white male environments. The field of technology and the various sub-genres spawned are synonymous and flooded with white male supremacy. These structures are echoed in a variety of ways, Safiya Umoja Noble’s suggests ‘a range of digital technologies are embedded with intersectional and uneven power relations’. On a very basic level this shares the same the sentiment as the 2018 H&M debacle. H&M had a black boy under 10 years old in a green hoody with the slogan ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’.  If rooms where decisions are made continuously neglect to include differing, opposing or widening perspectives then insensitive and off-colour materials will continuously be produced.  

During the lecture Hill touched on a concept I had never heard of but was instantly drawn towards, Hood Feminism. As a Black woman who understands the hurts and connotations attached to the word ‘hood’ as well as the segregation felt in the ‘word’ feminism I immediately assumed Hood Feminism was a way to reclaim and assert power in all things deemed ‘hood’. But it much more than that.  

I also understand that Black Feminism and Womanism can be considered problematic and unnecessary as separation in times hardship are often times frowned upon. Common critique against the movement is that feminism is already anti-racist, what is the need for the separation considering all women will benefit from feminism and the work done here? And this is something I continuously grapple with as I do not use any title, fundamentally I believe in the liberation of women and women's equality but subsequent actions and beliefs I do not. With that being said, people are complex and beliefs should be able to echo this with no judgement. As an African woman my perspectives are heavily influences by this, thus my views on how I carry out feminism and ultimately interact with other African men who aren't as receptive to equality are nuanced. My African heritage also influences my emotional attachment to reading about the pillaging of Africa in the section titled ‘The New Scramble for Africa: An Intersectional Analysis of the IT Sector’. Noble informs us of the of how ‘black lives are engaged in some of the most treacherous labor essential to the growth and proliferation of the internet’ with the mining of Coltan. Coltan, ‘short for columbite-tantalite, is a mineral, more potent than steel which is needed for computers and electronics to release electrical charges in small capacitors’. The constant need for control and a continuous flurry of tech in the west are the reasons for the concealed ‘rape, violence, and loss of human life’ and sometimes funded wars in Africa. My skin colour also influences my views on the misrepresentation of black women. Nobel talks about search engines being used as a new age tool to perpetuate racist narratives in order to keep undermining the black life.  noble goes on to suggests that the hypersexualisiation of black girl and boys in google searches and other things of this nature have ties ’to the real-world circumstances that demean the value of Black women’s lives, and these images serve as justification for systemic exclusion and oppression’.  

 A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies (no date). Available at: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/safiya-umoja-noble-a-future-for-intersectional-black-feminist-technology-studies/ (Accessed: 28 January 2020). 

Disobedient objects

Lots of definition were thrown around during the Disobedient Objects (DO) discussion in class. From what I read I gathered I concluded that disobedient objects live in the realm of everyday Electroncis that protests, opposes social norms or suggest social improvements. They draw attention to issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. During class this was further expounded on suggesting that not only do they live in the real world but they are designed to cause interruption to the everyday. It can be argued that Technology slowly removes human interaction from our lives, DO works to bridge the gap between humanity and technology. In the same vain that art is used to educate, inform and touch on, DO uses this bridge to help open our minds and expand our view points.  

DO can often straddle the fence and act out the disobedience in terms of the law. They operate in the a legal grey area as a response to the frustrations of people that wish to agitate a system that cannot be burned down.  

Garet Hertz talks about there being a spectrum of technology that can add to the DO movement. There is no right or wrong proportion to how much you forgo functionally over a message or vice versa. But it is sometimes posed as a reaction to the maker culture that empowered people to make electronics and yet it puts emphasis on making with purpose. This brings up an interesting point on what is useless or useful?  Objects become disobedient when they stray from the intended use.  For example, the 79% work clock sounds when 79% of the day has gone alerting women to the gender wage gap in America. When a clock is supposed to go off when you set or just tick away, the act of it going off around 3.40pm and only then makes it disobedient or useless in the connection to your expectations of how a clock should operate and why but in a simultaneous realm it is useful as it act as a reminder.  

I worked in a group that discussed the use of social media and the growing community of users who share or post stories without checking validity or necessity. Social media seemingly has little control over what people post beyond censoring ‘hate speech’ or ‘rude’ words. They are trying to tackle these issues but my group suggested a DO that would be an interruption that monitors your usage, suggests alternative solutions for you to mull over and reminds you to check your sources. In other words, it would be a tool to inject social responsibility into a place where freedom of speech is used as an excuse to operate blindly and without tolerance. It took many forms, one was a wi-fi router that users consent to using but just like most free wi-fi providers you would in a coffee shop or bank or at work, it monitors you but in an obvious way. For example, when posting/reposting news stories on social media, a popup with appear asking if sources have been verified, or is it untrue? or if it is promoting hate, violence or intolerance? But it will allow the user to send anyway. Another instance is connecting to bank app service using unsecure public wi-fi connection, it will intrude and ask if they are aware of the amount of time they have tried to connect to unsafe connection in the past months? or they are aware this is not a secure connection? but give them the freedom to proceed anyway. All of these interruptions will be consented to through access to normal access to public internet.  

References  

Hertz, Garnet. "Disobedient Electronics." (2016).URL 

AMT Interview with Garnet Hertz (no date). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD43kCvI1wY (Accessed: 19 January 2020).