ABSTRACT
Black feminists have poured substantial amounts of energy into the invention, production, and circulation of persuasive messages that could resist and transform centuries of negative representations of black people. The physical and mental work of representation involves the use of every emerging media technology, from the phonograph and the radio to the television and the internet. This chapter examines how the technological politics of the internet and social media affects black feminists’ representation and the labor of resistance. In particular, Lockett utilizes rhetorical and discourse analyses to compare three powerful examples of black women’s digital labor: the hashtag syllabus (e.g. #BlkWomenSyllabus, #FergusonSyllabus, #LemonadeSyllabus, and #Trump2.0Syllabus), as well as the #CiteBlackWomen and #SayHerName campaigns. These examples, created and/or popularized by black women, are part of a long tradition of black women doing the intellectual work of resisting their absence and/or erasure. By evaluating black women’s knowledge production, this chapter raises questions about the labor of living and learning in current media ecologies. Lockett reveals how digital black feminisms contribute to the intellectual past and present of Black Women and enable us to more comprehensively theorize digital labor.
