Black Poetics as Technology: Anagrammatical Digital Praxis

• In Event: Re-Envisioning Baldwin and Octavia in the Age of Digital Praxis

Abstract

Black poetics is a technology of making Black sense amid antiblack violence. In this presentation I will pair poetry with Black philosophy and Black media theory to argue for Black poetics as site of critical technology that counters the abstractions of race and colonization and clarifies the ontological stakes of antiblackness. I read poets Sonia Sanchez and Saul Williams with theorists Christina Sharpe and Andre Brock to establish Black poetics as an example of Black Anagrammatical Digital Praxis. BDAP is a term I have coined to create a space to explore the generative conversation between Black studies, Black poetics, and Black technoculture.
My central argument is that the internet is not simply a source of freedom or agency for Black people. I argue that Black poetics is a technology of coded communication (Hall 1980) requiring decoding and contextualization. As companies like Twitter and TikTok attempt to corral Black creativity for virality and profit, I wish to draw out attention to oppositional practices within Black poetics when analyzed as a technology. In these frameworks, Black poets are cultural workers that refuse to translate their experiences with antiblackness within a logic of rationality or coherency. From the digital word processing page to the emergence of social media, Black poets have turned to digital technologies to circulate their work without succumbing to the logics of white time and western rationality. While the digital seems interested in reproducing many of the same technologies of surveillance and capture, the digital affords new registers to counter the tacit reproduction of antiblackness.

Author

• Vincente Perez, UC Berkeley