Digital Black Feminism

Critical Cultural Communication

by Catherine Knight Steele

Traces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thought

Black women are at the forefront of some of this century’s most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women’s relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly “listen to Black women,” Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in a conversation about the future of technology. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, Digital Black Feminism walks readers through the technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreneurial acumen of Black women’s labor—born of survival strategies and economic necessity—both on and offline.

Positioning Black women at the center of our discourse about the past, present, and future of technology, Steele offers a through-line from the writing of early twentieth-century Black women to the bloggers and social media mavens of the twenty-first century. She makes connections among the letters, news articles, and essays of Black feminist writers of the past and a digital archive of blog posts, tweets, and Instagram stories of some of the most well-known Black feminist writers of our time. Linking narratives and existing literature about Black women’s technology use in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century, Digital Black Feminism traverses the bounds between historical and archival analysis and empirical internet studies, forcing a reconciliation between fields and methods that are not always in conversation. As the work of Black feminist writers now reaches its widest audience online, Steele offers both hopefulness and caution on the implications of Black feminism becoming a digital product.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Theory, Race, Technology, Academic, Sociology

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 26, 2021

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knight Steele introduced, maps, analyzes, and centers Black feminist digital production in a wonderfully accessible and readable manner. The arguments and examples offered are insightful, strong, and timely. This is a good introduction to the topic and, given its recent publication, I hope for more work on this to come (especially by Knight Steele). The only thing that kept me from a five star rating, is the fact that some of the many important and highly interesting points end rather abruptly. However, this is a rather short publication and there is only so much space, so this is less negative criticism aimed at the analytical and theoretical work that’s being done in this book, than a wish for more material to read on the topic.

[Chidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve only read a few books on technoculture but Catherine Knight Steele makes arguments for why Black women, femmes and enbies to be treated as full participants in technology with our own experiences and knowledge. Not just a lazy add-on to existing theory built on white people. I found this academic book very well written and the author def put time into using accesible language.

[Eunice R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Digital Black feminist ladies forge forward using their own survival strategies to nab center stage position, not as a "sub-group" of the white suffragette victories, but in their own rite for their own rights and place to breathe and grow. My eyes were opened to what I believe is a movement in which these ladies are of digital Black feminists, moved by digital Black feminists, for digital Black feminists, moving and shaking the 'cast aside' place and making inroads and grip, "stitching together" a safer niche of world for themselves. Women who think, who strive, who succeed for themselves and not on the behalf or for benefit of others. These ladies are popping up in all echelons of "beauty shops;" literally and figuratively.

This is certainly a thought-provoking discourse on how Black women are using digital means to move forward for themselves. The author, Catherine Knight Steele, sets up her research in thesis form with many convincing proofs of data she has collected over the course of several years. Therefore, I believe this contention is a methodical, comprehensive representation on behalf of the digital Black feminists, meant to disrupt 'norm' fossilized thinking.

Due to the very academic style, and perhaps because this reviewer in not Black, it is at times challenging to fully understand the depths of the thoughts, conflicts and world of these valient, often overlooked, women, as presented in this dissertation. The good news, according to this eye-opening treatise, is that progress is being made and is sticking. May they continue to have more such successes and greater understanding, empathy and standing tall among folk, men or women, of whatever color. Find a copy, read and learn how it's all panning out.

~Eunice C., Reviewer/Blogger~

September 2021

Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the review copy sent by the publisher.

[Victoria Timpanaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book looks at the act of applying black feminist thought to the digital environment. Through explanations of theory, real world and digital examples, as well as a personal touch, the author shows what it means to her to be a digital black feminist. From blogging to social media, we see an evolution of a movement and the author's own experience. The book is both theoretical and realistic, especially in it's goals and ideals for the future.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating—5 of 5 stars

This review is long overdue, and while the details of Knight Steele’s arguments have faded in my mind a bit, her metaphor of the virtual beauty shops where Black digital feminism lives has stuck with me. She uses this metaphor to draw important connections between past and present—demonstrating how Black women have *always* been skilled technologists even as our everyday use of the word “technology” has shifted in ways that exclude their historic expertise in areas such as hair care technologies, building customer bases, and entrepreneurship. Not to mention that fact that while many white women may have been at home, Black women were often laboring in technologically laden fields, such as farming.

Knight Steele draws through lines to contemporary Black feminist bloggers who use their technological savvy to make feminist arguments that “prioritize agency, reclaim the right to self-identity, centralize gender non binary spaces of discourse, create complicated allegiances, and insert a dialectic of self and community interests” (67).

Two areas of particular interest to me while reading were Knight Steele’s explanation for how Black feminism “fucks with the gray areas,” in particular, by being comfortable with cultivating complicated allegiances and understanding self-care as a form of resistance. I also found it interesting to think about how some of these ideas have been co-opted by mainstream white feminism in recent years.

If you’re about to pick this book up, keep in mind that it’s an academic work. It explains connections to similar and earlier theoretical frame works and concepts, and explicitly addresses methodology and epistemology. In other words, it is at times quite dense, and not a journalistic-style jaunt into the topic at hand. That said, the subject matter and popular culture references probably make it a bit more interesting to a lay-reader than might otherwise be the case for an academic manuscript.

Many thanks to NYU Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.