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Critical Cultural Communication
Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures
An explanation of the digital practices of the black Internet
From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places blackness at the very center of internet culture. Andre Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how "blackness" gets worked out in various technological domains.
As Brock demonstrates, there's nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of black beliefs about technology. In explaining black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being black online now.
From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places blackness at the very center of internet culture. Andre Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how "blackness" gets worked out in various technological domains.
As Brock demonstrates, there's nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of black beliefs about technology. In explaining black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being black online now.
288 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 25, 2020
Andre Brock Jr is a Baaad Mother Fucker. Distributed Blackness knocks like the first time I heard the bass drop on Low End Theory by TCQ. This work delivers a vocabulary, syntax and flow to articulate what manny of us feel daily while scrolling through racist mock of digitized algorithmic minstrelsy. I’m putting this on a special shelf with Paul Gilroy, Kodwo Eshun, Franz Fanon, Ruha Benjamin, bell hooks and them. 5 mics
May 12, 2020
Needed a better editor
I tried to really appreciate and like this book. However I was consistently held back by the writing style of the author and the lack of overall editing to ensure a tolerable experience by the reader. I’d also cut down all the proverbial higher education vernacular that’s used persistently throughout the book.
Maybe the author can get a better editor, simplify, and try again. Until then I wouldn’t recommend.
I tried to really appreciate and like this book. However I was consistently held back by the writing style of the author and the lack of overall editing to ensure a tolerable experience by the reader. I’d also cut down all the proverbial higher education vernacular that’s used persistently throughout the book.
Maybe the author can get a better editor, simplify, and try again. Until then I wouldn’t recommend.
August 26, 2020
A terrifically rich book full of excellent scholarship and vibrantly original ideas. The writing is very direct and accessible, though there is quite a lot of (sometimes repetitive) explicit reflection on choices made (and not made) that slow down the pace in some chapters.
October 26, 2020
great book that theorizes Blackness as practiced and made manifest in digital worlds, with some great critiques (of afrofuturism) and interventions (primarily into dubois) along the way!
November 16, 2020
Tough reading. Lots of big words.
September 7, 2022
Brock practices what he preaches in this book, delivering an effusive, far-reaching, erudite analysis of black digital practice. If Black Twitter is the Black purpose for space travel, then this book is the product of Black info studies scholarship. This book sets a challenging tone for info studies more broadly — we cannot just pander to cultural context but need to center this in our arguments.
I had read some of Brock’s articles, specifically his analysis of the Blackbird browser, and I was interested to see what argument he would develop across a full book. The argument does not always cohere but I think that’s part of Brock’s aim — he doesn’t want to simplify Black digital practice or reduce it’s signifyin’ capacity, but rather wants to open it up to a million different analytical lenses and trajectories.
While I appreciated Brock’s wide range of sources, all of which had something to contribute to his analysis, there are points where this feels like under-editing rather than enjoyable scholastic plenitude. I think this is Brock’s first book (apologies if I’m wrong on that) but it feels at times like he’s trying to get everything he wants to say into this one, in case he doesn’t get a chance at a second book. While there are times where we meander into different theoretical gardens, the gardens are quite thought-provoking.
I had read some of Brock’s articles, specifically his analysis of the Blackbird browser, and I was interested to see what argument he would develop across a full book. The argument does not always cohere but I think that’s part of Brock’s aim — he doesn’t want to simplify Black digital practice or reduce it’s signifyin’ capacity, but rather wants to open it up to a million different analytical lenses and trajectories.
While I appreciated Brock’s wide range of sources, all of which had something to contribute to his analysis, there are points where this feels like under-editing rather than enjoyable scholastic plenitude. I think this is Brock’s first book (apologies if I’m wrong on that) but it feels at times like he’s trying to get everything he wants to say into this one, in case he doesn’t get a chance at a second book. While there are times where we meander into different theoretical gardens, the gardens are quite thought-provoking.
May 11, 2021
Obscurantist at best.
April 17, 2023
Amazing look into Blacktechnoculture in the US
July 1, 2021
Tedious. So many words with so little said. Really needed stronger editing to cut down on length, minimize the endless self-references, and render it more coherent instead of each chapter as an assemblage of lit review mixed with authorial opinion.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews