What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
Gallon examines the relationship between the digital humanities and Black studies, emphasizing the racialization of “humanity” within the humanities and how racialized systems of power continue to shape “blackness” and marginalize the voices of black peoples within both the fields of the humanities and digital studies. Gallon argues that through Black Digital Studies, the intersection of digital humanities and Black studies, scholars can “bring forth the humanity of marginalized peoples through the use of digital platforms and tools” (p. 2). In particular, Gallon suggests that one way to do this is through, what they term, a “technology of recovery.” In terms of the Black Digital Humanities, this “recovery” consists of using digital tools to delve into archival and historical silences caused by “systemic global racialization” to restore marginalized voices and histories (p. 2).
Exemplary quotes or images?
I found the following quote to be very important for understanding Gallon’s argument: “The black digital humanities therefore foregrounds the digital as a mutual host for racism and resistance and brings to light the “role of race as a metalanguage” that shapes the digital terrain, fostering hegemonic structures that are both new and old and replicate and transcend analog ones” (p. 4).
Gallon connects the digital humanities to Black studies by using the concept of technology as a space for “expos[ing] humanity as a racialized social construction” (Gallon 2016, 1). Pointing to the nearly nonexistent literature on Black studies represented through the digital humanities, Gallon makes a case for considering technology as a moment in a longstanding mode of Black resistance within practices of Eurocentric oppression. I liked especially that Gallon points out practices of “black technophobia” within academia – the idea that Black people have an aversion to technology. I was not aware of this term before reading this piece, and I found it both surprising and unsurprising – in an age of employing Instagram and Twitter infographics in order to disseminate racial, gendered, and sexual theories on resistance and oppression, I imagine that many Black people and people of color are actually providing an abundance of emotional labor. In the same vein, it is unsurprising that this emotional labor remains unrecognized in a world structured on racialized hierarchy.
The primary argument that the author puts forward in the essay is two fold:
1. There needs to be a concerted effort to draw connections between African American studies and digital humanities in order to reveal the politics of race and power that constructs the tools of the former as well as the entire itself. Digital humanities, without such interrogation and engagement, would essentially be a "white" driven field, one that is built on the assumption of a 'natural reality' that is predominantly built on the predominance of the white experience at the expense or marginalization of all others.
2. If efforts are made to build these engagements and connections, then it could lead to a 'revitilzation' of the discipline itself, where the experiences of the marginalized are centered, racial power dynamics exposed and the deconstruction of the assumed 'natural' that defines digital humanities can take place. Therefore a 'technology of recovery' is required, where digital spaces that have been shut off to the black experience and agency can be reclaimed and re-engaged by considering "the intersections between the digital and blackness" (pg 2)