Raven Maragh-Lloyd on Black Networked Resistance

[00:00:00] Cathy Hannabach: Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, the podcast about bridging art, activism, and academia to build more just futures.

[00:00:12] I’m Cathy Hannabach, and today I’m talking with media studies scholar Raven Maragh-Lloyd about the historical contours of University digital resistance.

[00:00:21] The Ideas on Fire team was honored to work with Raven on her new book, Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age.

[00:00:30] This book offers an insightful analysis of how Black technology users adapt and reshape resistance strategies and forge Black publics in the digital era. The book is out now from the University of California Press.

[00:00:43] In our conversation, Raven and I chat about how digital resistance is best understood as a creative process, rather than just an outcome of specific digital practices, and specifically how Black communities create and sustain that process across different time periods and platforms.

[00:01:00] We dive into a bunch of different examples of this, everything from Instagram archiving around Juneteenth and Black women’s networks of care in online forums to the politics of cancel culture and where Black Twitter is migrating in the wake of the platform’s demise.

[00:01:16] We close out the episode with Raven’s vision for critical hopefulness in digital spaces, a critical hopefulness that reckons with the violences of the past and forges more just futures.

[00:01:29] Thank you so much for being with us today.

[00:01:31] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:33] Cathy Hannabach: So in this amazing new book you examine a pretty wide range of creative resistance strategies deployed by Black digital media makers. What I find particularly interesting is you focus on the process of resistance rather than just the outcomes of that resistance. What does that emphasis on process do? And what are some of your favorite examples that you found in your research?

[00:01:56] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Yeah, so resistance as process for me helps us to connect and reflect on the past with the present. I think, especially when it comes to technology and digital technology, we tend to think that every issue is brand new, or this is the first time we’re seeing something.

[00:02:19] But Black publics have long been showing us the different faces of, for example, oppression for a long time. So the aim might have changed when it comes to resistance, but the process is actually quite ingrained to a particular group’s history.

[00:02:34] One of my favorite examples is from the cancel culture chapter, where I trace the history of canceling and I’m in conversation with brilliant folks like Meredith Clark who write about this. There were strategies in the 1960s, like economic divestment and boycotting, the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaign in Chicago or Selective Patronage in Philadelphia.

[00:02:57] And these economic divestment strategies moved, then, into attention divestment online, what we understand as canceling. So, you know, taking our attention away from somebody like Cardi B, who was going through accusations of sexual assault at the time. So connecting the past and the present is one thing.

[00:03:17] And then the second thing when it comes to resistance as process I think that framework acts as a sort of archive for online Black resistance efforts. I purposefully in the book use resistance over activism throughout the book because many of the strategies I examine aren’t traditional activist strategies, like organizing or economic divestment, they’re resistance efforts that I think on the face are easily written off as just jokes or they’re made invisible, like the care networks of Black women.

[00:03:50] So for me, this is a sort of academic legitimation of these kinds of nontraditional resistance efforts. And I say academic because Black women care networks have been legitimate and these women know they’re legitimate, but I think in our spaces of academia it’s important to archive and make legitimate these resistance efforts.

[00:04:09] Cathy Hannabach: So in the chapter about Instagram archiving around Juneteenth, you write that quote, “archiving interrupts by allowing for a collection of the past to be read through multiple lenses in the present and the future,” end quote.

[00:04:23] And this gets at that temporality question that you were just mentioning. What are some of the ways that Instagram archivists and other kinds of digital archivists that you look at mobilize platforms as a method of resistance?

[00:04:36] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: That’s such a good question. I enjoyed writing about Instagram. I don’t think we give as much attention to visuality, perhaps, as we should, because text sometimes is more prominent in some of our research.

[00:04:49] Instagram gives us the visual aspects of a platform that I argue Black publics mobilize. So in thinking about Juneteenth, we bring history to life. These Black historians that I analyzed brought photos from the 1800s into a context of the 21st century, where we’re seeing these historical figures, I call them, like, serving face.

[00:05:13] Like, we see them in the, in the cultural landscape of selfies and, like, the interiority and intimacy of Instagram. So it’s moving these museum-like photos into the everyday.

[00:05:26] And then the second thing is the interactive features of Instagram. So the ability to add prominent figures into these conversations that we’ve seen in digital media research when it comes to Twitter or X, but I saw a lot of these Black digital historians adding Republican senators, for example, around certain bills that were being passed at the time.

[00:05:48] And so there was this element of interfacing with public prominent figures that often gets overlooked when it comes to Instagram.

[00:05:55] Cathy Hannabach: I’m wondering if we could go back to what you were saying about cancel culture, because I think obviously this is a topic that a lot of people have thoughts on, often divergent thoughts on even within the same person.

[00:06:08] But I think you treat it really interestingly in this book, both naming it as a resistance strategy, as it clearly is, but also teasing out how digital media affordances play a role in how cancel culture works and who uses it and its effects like that. So I’m curious how affordances like scalability, persistence, those kinds of things, shape that particular form of resistance strategy and the impact that it has.

[00:06:37] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Yeah. This was an interesting chapter for me. I forget if I said it in the book, but I wanted to do anything else but write about cancel culture. I did not want to do it, exactly because of what you say, like, it’s so, divergent in terms of people’s opinions and complex. But I had to contend with the complexities of canceling and cancel culture because I’m writing about resistance online.

[00:07:03] And so, in some way, I treat canceling and cancel culture as showcasing some of the limitations of digital resistance online, because it’s messy, right? It’s not as straightforward many times as we like to think.

[00:07:16] So, in terms of the affordances of scalability and persistence, with scalability or visibility, and I’m writing with folks like danah boyd here, scalability gives us a greater range of visibility.

[00:07:27] When you hit post, your followers can see what you post, right? And depending on how public or private your profile is, you can be retweeted, you can be searched for, you can even like move beyond just your followers to a whole host of other people you have no idea about, but also you can be screenshot, right? And like, you have no idea where your post ends up.

[00:07:49] So the visibility of these affordances is definitely heightened when it comes to social network sites. So this high visibility I write about in the chapter adds an interesting element when it comes to holding someone in power accountable. Like all of a sudden, it’s not just one person, entering into the conversation of, for example, hashtag #MeToo. We’ve got millions of people and there’s some sort of importance and power when it comes to visibility like that.

[00:08:17] But at the same time, this high visibility gets confusing, maybe, when we don’t have fact checkers for certain situations. We see folks on the alt-right who have co-opted conversations like Me Too with this exact piece in mind.

[00:08:31] Or when the situation is still developing and there’s a lot of conversations, sort of like with R. Kelly, which folks like Briana Barner have written about, when it comes to holding each other accountable and also grappling with very public teardowns of Black men. There’s a whole history of this that we absolutely should hold him accountable and there’s the complex piece of race loyalty that, when it comes to cancel culture, we’re dealing with in unique ways.

[00:09:02] So that’s scalability and then persistence or permanence. We know that online content sticks around and that’s why platforms like Snapchat were so powerful or so popular, in the beginning anyway, because for the first time, we’re seeing the popularization of a platform where content just, in theory, anyway, just goes away. We’re like, whoa, what happens when content is not permanent anymore?

[00:09:30] So, in this sense, we can hold people accountable, people in power accountable, for their past actions because of this affordance of permanence. But again, there’s complications here because this brings questions about somebody’s growth. And this gets into the divergent piece you mentioned. Like, even within ourselves, we’re confused. Like, how do I feel about cancel culture? Because are we saying we can’t grow from the past? I don’t think it’s a black and white issue. It’s not a good or bad, black and white issue, but it’s complex.

[00:10:00] Cathy Hannabach: You talk a lot in the book about Black Twitter and for obvious reasons, and you point out how central Twitter has been and Black Twitter in particular to the resistance strategies that you analyze. And I think you also show much broader conversations about what digital media can do for marginalized groups.

[00:10:19] I’m really curious to know where you see those resistance strategies or frameworks going in the future, particularly given the mass demise of Twitter or X. And I know this is, you know, everyone’s getting this question right now, but I think it’s interesting to think through, like, where does all that energy go?

[00:10:39] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, Black Twitter came about at a particular time and using a particular platform and its affordances, such as the short character limits at the onset in the early 2000s. Folks like André Brock have written about Black folks retrofitting our linguistic styles, such as call and response, into these short character limits.

[00:11:03] So that’s what made Black Twitter what it is, what we know it to be now. Meredith Clark has a book on Black Twitter coming out, which I’m so excited about. But the bigger picture of Black folks coming around and coalescing around particular media platforms is not new. We see that Black folks rejuvenate time and time again and across multiple media platforms, whether we’re talking about the Black press or we’re talking about social network sites, we see this sort of rejuvenation time and time again.

[00:11:35] And so what I hope that the book shows is that Black Twitter or Twitter X can come and go. But the cultural makeup of marginalized groups move across platforms. We know that these platforms were never here to serve us to begin with. And so, with that in mind, we retrofit our, for example, linguistic practices to a particular platform with the knowledge that that platform might not be here tomorrow. I hope that answers that question.

[00:12:04] Cathy Hannabach: Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially since so many of the platforms that claim to potentially replace Twitter, like, we don’t know where they’re going to go either, right? So we invest in them tentatively in different ways and different communities do it to differing degrees, but who knows what it’s going to be tomorrow.

[00:12:22] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Exactly. Yeah. So I think it’s just helpful to like take the bird’s eye view on that one. Like it’s less about the platform and more about our cultural practices.

[00:12:32] Cathy Hannabach: One of my favorite chapters of this book you alluded to earlier a bit, it looks at Black women’s networks of care in these digital spaces. And you point out that this is a topic that is largely absent in most of the debates around the politics of technology and resistance and digital media.

[00:12:51] What are some of the strategies at work in those networks of care? And how do you see them pushing back on some of the violences or potential violences of digital media?

[00:13:01] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Yeah, this chapter came about through focus group data at two different points in time. So it was 2017 when I was finishing up my dissertation, and then again in 2021. And those times are, I think, important when we’re thinking about post–Mike Brown and in 2017, and then post-2020 and 2021.

[00:13:25] I was really interested in talking to women who don’t consider themselves traditional activists but found themselves in the realm of digital media doing something at these particular moments in time. And so what came up time and time again was this idea of care. For example, the women across both focus groups, talked about using the knowledge of the algorithm. In 2021, it was mostly TikTok. In 2017, it was mostly Twitter, but using the knowledge of the algorithm to support and make visible other Black women and femmes. So particularly at times where we’re seeing the reproducibility of Black death, I’m thinking of Tonia Sutherland’s work here, these Black women make content visible that challenges the reproducibility of Black death. They explain that they know that algorithms favor content that is highly emotional and highly spreadable, right? And so, what the women do is make sure to do something as simple as reproduce content that challenges subjugation and death. And I thought that was beautiful.

[00:14:32] The second thing I noticed across the focus groups was the Black woman talking about not talking back. Particularly online, when we have information overload, we have lots of hot takes about everything. And the women mentioned the burden to educate others. Especially when you hold a marginalized position, you see something on the online, you’re like, No, that’s not what it is, right? That’s not my experience. And some of the women even mentioned being castigated for not posting, for example, in 2020, not putting the Black square up.

[00:15:06] And what they mentioned was, I’m going to release that, release the burden to educate others. I love the metaphor that one of the women mentioned, which was Double Dutch. She mentions like, should I go in or should I not go in? Another woman mentioned like, I’m just going to close shop, right? So these Black women were well aware of the landscape that they had to deal with on- and offline, and they took agency and said I’m not talking back.

[00:15:33] I thought that was interesting, especially thinking through works like bell hooks, who writes about talking back. Like there’s an agency here in not talking back.

[00:15:42] And then the last thing I do in the chapter is thinking through care online as political and communal, through the histories of Black feminism and Black queer feminism, rather than solely individualized. And I’m thinking through individualization through the frame of digital neoliberalism.

[00:16:00] So in the chapter I write about the iPhone, for example, and the onus that is put on the individual to limit our screen time. Like it’s our job to make sure that we move away from technology to take care of ourselves. And this is a very individualized notion of care. Same thing when we think about the, the market of selling self-care, like somehow we can reach care by buying things.

[00:16:31] And so, from a Black queer feminist perspective, thinking through works like Jennifer Nash’s love politics, or Audre Lorde, adrienne maree brown, the Combahee River Collective, bell hooks. Black feminists have long written about the self as inextricably tied to the whole, and that’s what I saw come up in these focus groups. The women mentioned what I do or don’t do impacts other Black women. That’s the algorithm example I gave earlier. So yeah, those are some of the themes that came up in that chapter.

[00:17:02] Cathy Hannabach: This brings me to my favorite question that really gets at the heart of why you do this kind of research and why you write these kind of books and why you talk with students about these kinds of issues. What is the world that you’re working toward? What kind of world do you want?

[00:17:16] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Yeah. This was good. This was a good question that took me a minute to like really sit with, I’d say critical hopefulness. I hope that this book and my work builds on folks like bell hooks in thinking about critical hopefulness.

[00:17:34] I want to pay attention and I want to do the work of critiquing things like digital neoliberalism, but I also want to do the work of being hopeful about the present and the future and do the work of hopeful imagination.

[00:17:50] I love Ruha Benjamin’s new book on imagination. And I think about this work that you’re doing, Cathy, in this podcast, it’s all about imagining. I love that.

[00:17:58] Cathy Hannabach: Well, thank you so much for being with us and for writing this awesome book—there will be links to it in the show notes for this episode.

[00:18:04] And thanks for sharing all these ways that you imagine otherwise.

[00:18:08] Raven Maragh-Lloyd: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:18:14] Cathy Hannabach: Thanks for joining me for this episode of Imagine Otherwise. A big thanks to Raven as well for sharing her work.

[00:18:20] Our team had a blast working with Raven on her book, Black Networked Resistance, which is out now from the University of California Press. You can discover more about the book and grab your copy in the episode show notes on our website, which also have a detailed transcript, related books and interviews, and a teaching guide for this episode.

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[00:19:00] This episode of Imagine Otherwise was produced and edited by me, Cathy Hannabach.

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