ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a central question: How does Black rhetorical production respond to the tension between the possibilities for collective action, community building, and everyday expression that our increased reliance on technology enables and the complicity of technologies in racialized systems of oppression? It is a remixing of the old issue of whether there is reason to believe that the grand experiment of American democracy can ever truly work. Black engagements with technologies and technology issues show in yet another way that African-American rhetoric reflects the struggles of living an existence that consistently vacillates between American Dream and American Nightmare, with some elements of both being always present. Using an intersectional and multimodal view to exigency and production, the authors explore connections between technology and African-American rhetoric. Typical of their approach, they draw on anecdotes from expressive culture, including the legend of John Henry and the example of Stevie Wonder and his relationship to the trope of the talking book.
