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A review by bahareads
The Digital Black Atlantic by
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
4.0
The Digital Black Atlantic is a collected volumed edited by Kelly Baker-Josephs and Roopika Risam. It is comprised of a total of 19 essays, excluding the introduction. The essayists span University librarians to Historians to English Professors to the head of a Digital Humanities collective etc.
The Digital Black Atlantic is the first volume to put into conversation a cross section of Black studies and digital studies because they are often separated; it presents what a diaspora-based approach to Digital Humanities can look like.
The editors say they wanted to foster discussions from the Debates in Digital Humanities, and decided to use the inclusive term 'digital black Atlantic' to gesture toward the complex relations within and among the terms and geographic positionalities, and the interdisciplinary of the work. They acknowledge their privilege as being US based. They chose not to define but create provisional space and framework for academic conversation.
One goal of this volume was to shed light on the possibilities that define digital inquiry in African diasporic culture for digital Black Atlantic scholarship, discourse and citation. Another goal was to consider what "Black Atlantic" is as a formulation offers the study of Blackness and Digital cultures while articulating the challenges that approach offers to digital humanities.
The scholarship poses a direct challenge to the foundational assumptions of digital humanities, universality of language and parameters of access and epistemology of privilege. With the collection they ask and hope to answer the tradition of interrogating the texture and borders of the Black Atlantic that might be integrated with the negotiation of digital identities, tools, methods, and aspirations.
The chapters of this volume contribute to discourse and conversations within global Digital humanities. They decenter Global North/West digital knowledge production. The volume assembles multiple perspectives on the global Black and digital studies.
The digital Black Atlantic is a product of juxtapositions within the African diaspora. But juxtaposition is a transformative alchemical movie where the sum is greater than the whole. They begin with Paul Gilroy's work about Black Atlantic as the theoretical core and the articulating principle for the volume. They also critique his work, talking about point they do not wish to reproduce.
The Digital Black Atlantic draws on existing debates within digital humanities as a way of challenging the limits of humanities scholarship and emphasising the African Diaspora Scholarship. Digital Black Alantic pushes back against the ways technology has been historical used to disempower Black communities.
The thematic divisions are supposed to resonate in Black studies rather than the traditional ones in the Digital Humanities
1. Memory situates histories of and contemporary archival impulses towards African diasporic experiences
2. Crossings encompasses the fluid and flexible ways that BA DH negotiates movement across time and space, forging varied spatial and temporal relationships
3. Relations, derived from Edouard Glissant's conception of networked creolized cultures, reveals the rhizomatic connections created via exchanges in BA spaces.
4. Becomings outlines the dreams and aspirations of the DBA as scholars continue to create and imagine new configurations for the African diaspora.
- each concept is interdisciplinary, grounded in specific histories in BA studies while transcending traditional disciplines by spanning a variety of academic fields.
The editors say the attempts to represent and transform Black life with Digital Humanities must push against limits of traditions.
I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to go back and purchase a physical copy later. I've interacted with several of the people in volume at the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective over the summer.
The Digital Black Atlantic is the first volume to put into conversation a cross section of Black studies and digital studies because they are often separated; it presents what a diaspora-based approach to Digital Humanities can look like.
The editors say they wanted to foster discussions from the Debates in Digital Humanities, and decided to use the inclusive term 'digital black Atlantic' to gesture toward the complex relations within and among the terms and geographic positionalities, and the interdisciplinary of the work. They acknowledge their privilege as being US based. They chose not to define but create provisional space and framework for academic conversation.
One goal of this volume was to shed light on the possibilities that define digital inquiry in African diasporic culture for digital Black Atlantic scholarship, discourse and citation. Another goal was to consider what "Black Atlantic" is as a formulation offers the study of Blackness and Digital cultures while articulating the challenges that approach offers to digital humanities.
The scholarship poses a direct challenge to the foundational assumptions of digital humanities, universality of language and parameters of access and epistemology of privilege. With the collection they ask and hope to answer the tradition of interrogating the texture and borders of the Black Atlantic that might be integrated with the negotiation of digital identities, tools, methods, and aspirations.
The chapters of this volume contribute to discourse and conversations within global Digital humanities. They decenter Global North/West digital knowledge production. The volume assembles multiple perspectives on the global Black and digital studies.
The digital Black Atlantic is a product of juxtapositions within the African diaspora. But juxtaposition is a transformative alchemical movie where the sum is greater than the whole. They begin with Paul Gilroy's work about Black Atlantic as the theoretical core and the articulating principle for the volume. They also critique his work, talking about point they do not wish to reproduce.
The Digital Black Atlantic draws on existing debates within digital humanities as a way of challenging the limits of humanities scholarship and emphasising the African Diaspora Scholarship. Digital Black Alantic pushes back against the ways technology has been historical used to disempower Black communities.
The thematic divisions are supposed to resonate in Black studies rather than the traditional ones in the Digital Humanities
1. Memory situates histories of and contemporary archival impulses towards African diasporic experiences
2. Crossings encompasses the fluid and flexible ways that BA DH negotiates movement across time and space, forging varied spatial and temporal relationships
3. Relations, derived from Edouard Glissant's conception of networked creolized cultures, reveals the rhizomatic connections created via exchanges in BA spaces.
4. Becomings outlines the dreams and aspirations of the DBA as scholars continue to create and imagine new configurations for the African diaspora.
- each concept is interdisciplinary, grounded in specific histories in BA studies while transcending traditional disciplines by spanning a variety of academic fields.
The editors say the attempts to represent and transform Black life with Digital Humanities must push against limits of traditions.
I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to go back and purchase a physical copy later. I've interacted with several of the people in volume at the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective over the summer.