Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age

by Raven Maragh-Lloyd

Black Networked Resistance​ explores the creative range of Black digital users and their responses to varying forms of oppression, utilizing cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads both on and offline. Raven Maragh-Lloyd demonstrates how Black users strategically rearticulate their responses to oppression in ways that highlight Black publics’ historically rich traditions and reveal the shifting nature of both dominance and resistance, particularly in the digital age. Through case studies and interviews, Maragh-Lloyd reveals the malleable ways resistance can take shape and the ways Black users artfully demonstrate such modifications of resistance through strategies of survival, reprieve, and community online. Each chapter grounds itself in a resistance strategy, such as Black humor, care, or archiving, to show the ways that Black publics reshape strategies of resistance over time and across media platforms. Linking singular digital resistance movements while arguing for Black publics as strategic content creators who connect resistance strategies from our past to suit our present needs, Black Networked Resistance  encourages readers to create and cultivate lasting communities necessary for social and political change by imagining a future of joy, community, and agency through their digital media practices.
 

183 pages, Paperback

Published January 23, 2024

Reviews

[Cameron Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to break out my laptop to type up this review because *oh my actual god* this book is so incredible and it would take too much to type out through the app on my phone. Cards on the table, I have had the honor of meeting and hanging out with Dr. Maragh-Lloyd and while I am biased, this is review will not be. Dr. ML's book, Black Networked Resistance, is an enlightening and liberating reading from digital media scholars (especially those of us early on in our careers). In my own words, her book is a deft and clever exploration of how Black digital publics draw on historical resistance practices used by Black Americans. She not only explains the origins of the practice and how it is being rearticulated in digital contexts, but Dr. ML uses these case studies to show how these practices indicated and inform possible futures for Black resistance. Dr. ML's case studies were accessible and expertly analyzed to make explicit their connection to her argument(s) and her writing so intimately mimics her actual voice that it felt like I was sitting with her over drinks. Normally, the notion that "there's nothing new under the sun" can feel discouraging and stifling (at least to me); Dr. Maragh-Lloyd's take on this notion is the exact opposite: intriguing, freeing, and motivating.