Technocapitalism and Race: Toward a Binary of Whiteness

• In Event: 29.071 - Communist Study: Theorizing and Enacting the Pedagogy of Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

Whiteness is so pervasive that it is interwoven within and throughout the binary code of new technology. But it may not be so readily apparent in democratically strained capitalist societies, where struggle exists between subjectivity (and its manifestations through race and whiteness, etc.) and the mode of production. Indeed, subjectivity internalizes its contradiction which leads to reproduction—but, it also leads to the possibility for revolution, where exploitation haunts surplus value, threatening the inevitable revolution to something else as subjectivity opens itself “up to the possibility that things can be otherwise than they are, that a world without exploitation and oppression can exist, and that, through struggle, we can create that world” (Ford, 2016, p. 4). As the capitalist mode of production evolves, so too does the need for the subjectivity of struggle. More recently, this struggle has extended to new technology and social media (Fisher, 2010, 2015). These new conditions of subjectivity lead to two questions for this analytical paper: how does new technology and social media generate surplus value and exploitation? And, what’s the relationship between new technology and whiteness?
In this analytic paper, I analyze the conditions of subjectivity as it relates to the new technology and social media, particularly Google, and race. I extend contemporary radical conceptions of subjectivity by considering the economic conditions of technology and race. First, to analyze new technology, I draw on the theoretical perspective of the political economy of social media (Fisher, 2010, 2015). Second, by conducting document analysis of purposefully selected popular media texts and by drawing on the theoretical perspective of the multidimensional nature of race and whiteness (Leonardo, 2009, 2013), I provide an analysis of techno-capital subjectivity by examining a case in which Google's facial recognition software identified two Black lives as “Gorillas” (Garvie & Frankle, 2016). I argue that the political economic conditions of new technology and race and whiteness give rise to the central importance of subjectivity—not for revolutionary potential, but rather for user-generated exploitation through the concept of what I call the binary of whiteness. I draw parallels of this case to how early film stocks in photography were designed for white people until it became profitable to accommodate other shades of skin color.
This analytic paper is significant for several reasons. First, it is one of the first to examine new technology and social media (as an emerging area of research) and its inextricable relationship to the racism of whiteness—which is why it can only be decoded through its instances. Second, it illustrates that in new technology and social media, surplus value of exploitation poses new challenges for subjectivity and revolution precisely because it's based on the inclusion of all subjectivities. And lastly, because new technology and social media require the inclusion of all individuals for exploitation, it holds the fruits of political destruction through organization.

Author

• Zane Wubbena, Texas State University