PretaLab: Afro-Brazilian Women’s Digital Autonomy

• In Event: Digital Encounters in Contemporary Latin American Cultural Production

Abstract

Our discussions of digital culture have long celebrated the value of connectivity as a way to share worldviews and experiences, often with the ultimate goal of fostering emergent social movements and identities. As I have argued elsewhere, this influx of digital tools and dynamics has helped Afro-descendant social movements in the Americas (and elsewhere) to showcase born-digital initiatives with concrete effects in the offline sphere. However, such connectivity has also been questioned by Afrolatinx communities who understand the potential benefits of digitally connecting with others who share similar values and experiences, yet also recognize the risks posed by surveillance and algorithmic determinism. As such, some of these groups have shifted towards a more critical and strategic use of digital tools and platforms to produce cultural artifacts through which they can both impact policy and pursue autonomy (Freire).
To explore these questions in the context of knowledge production and gender/race representations, I examine the work of PretaLab, a digital lab in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro that explores how Black and Indigenous Brazilian women in the periphery interact with digital tools and data-driven technologies. I will discuss the hybridization of digital and analog traditional practices, a process that creates “social technologies”, in the words of Silvana Bahia, the director of PretaLab. Likewise, I will explore Pretalab’s promotion of popular media initiatives that use data analysis to impact policy and claim the auto-determination they have been historically denied as Black and Indigenous women in the Global South.

Author

• Eduard A Arriaga, University of Indianapolis