Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age by Brian Jefferson, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2020, 264 pp., paperback $34.65 (ISBN 978‐1517909239)

Jefferson, Brian Jordan

doi:10.1111/cag.12687

Cited by 23 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Cedric J Robinson calls this logic of regulating the social relations of Black liberation movements in the name of state security "the terms of order" (Robinson, 1980). Indeed, the pursuit for knowledge through the development of technology and digitality did not evolve into its current instituted, networked, and racialized form for knowledge's sake but rather was always oriented to crush liberation movements across difference and geography (Gilmore and Gilmore, 2013;Jefferson, 2020).…”

Section: The Colonial Entanglement Of Visual-digital Geographic Knowl...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The entanglement of digital practices in the form of cartography is demonstrated in Western modes of surveying and classifying the world, including through instruments such as the cadastral survey and the grid (Harris, 2004;Blomley, 2003;Jefferson, 2020). The enlightenment era that forged cartographic reason produced the rationale behind the subjectification of entire lands and peoples under European epistemologies and ontologies (Duarte, 2017;Pickles, 2004).…”

Section: The Colonial Entanglement Of Visual-digital Geographic Knowl...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Digital geographies’ have generated language for apprehending myriad implications of digital technologies on society, including multiscaler and heterogeneous impacts on spatialities, geopolitics, subjectivities, cultures, economies, and knowledge politics (Ash et al, 2018). Digital geographers have traced the epistemological and ontological underpinnings that shape the relationship between technology and space, including its colonial and carceral features that continue to shape digital-visual regimes and sociospatial relations (Ash, 2017; Jefferson, 2020; Schuurman, 2006; Rose-Redwood et al, 2020; Harley, 1992). This includes the vast terrain of scholarship in which space and technology coalesce to assemble meaning, ideology, place, and the boundaries of the geographic itself (León and Rosen, 2020; Zook and Graham, 2007a; McElroy, 2020; McKittrick and Woods, 2007; McKittrick, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Undoing settler imaginaries: (Re)imagining digital knowledge politics

Rivera

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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Geography as a discipline is entangled in settler colonial regimes that continue to shape geographic practice and the boundaries of geographical knowledge. Digital technologies play an instrumental role in shaping the view of geography and sociospatial relations. This paper traces the construction of the settler imaginary in geographic thought through scholarship in digital geographies and anticolonialism. By bridging anticolonial scholarship in digital geographies, this paper contributes to debates on anticolonial and decolonial refusal politics and its role in realizing reciprocal land-life relations. The (re)imagining of digital knowledge politics begins with accountable digital geographic practices on the terms of Indigenous peoples’.

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Section: The Colonial Entanglement Of Visual-digital Geographic Knowl...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Colonial Entanglement Of Visual-digital Geographic Knowl...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Undoing settler imaginaries: (Re)imagining digital knowledge politics

Rivera

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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“…Seeking to answer these and related questions, this paper critically examines the Centre for Urban Transformation through an infrastructural lens, focusing on the institutional coordination and co-production of sociotechnical discourses for the socalled "cities of tomorrow." Drawing together critical studies of infrastructure (Easterling, 2014;Star, 1999;Star & Ruhleder, 1996), science and technology (STS; Bijker et al, 2012;Jasanoff, 2004), and urban and carceral geographies (Gilmore, 2007;Jefferson, 2020), this study performs a poststructural discourse analysis of the Centre's source materials (e.g., webpages, partnership documents, press releases, marketing content, etc. ; Graham, 2011).…”

Section: Imagined Infrastructures Of the Smart (Neo-colonial) Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Underside of Technology: Lifecycles of Liberación in the Digital Age

O'Connell

Wiele

Garcia

et al. 2023

SPIR

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In The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor, and the Philosophy of Liberation (1996), Enrique Dussel prescribes a philosophical pushback to what Eduardo Mendieta calls the ‘discourses of Modernity.’ Emanating from the global south, as both proximate and philosophical situations, Dussel elegantly unravels a metaphysical prescription of Modernity as the blueprint of empire articulated via political, religious, and cultural hegemonic universality. The goal is to reimagine the ethics of liberation outside of Modernity’s stranglehold on philosophy. Dussel’s thesis is simple: resistance to dominant hegemonic frames which center Western Modernity as that which must be repelled passively accepts those frames as a starting point. In other words, framing resistance as negation (i.e., postmodernism) upholds a binary of dominance/resistance wherein the myth of Modernity remains dialectically centered. What Dussel advocates for is a lens enabling us “...to stand outside the reality within which we live in order to critically understand it” (Burton & Osario, 2011, p. 26). To this end, he proposes a ‘transmodern’ position that privileges practices of the ‘Other’—on outskirts of the Modern colonial scheme—as focal points of liberation philosophy. In his ‘analectic’ method, Dussel decenters the Modern as a starting point of investigation and/or resistance, privileging the material realities of the ‘Other’ as locus of cultural knowledge. In the vein of decolonial inquiry, the ‘Other’ is of the anterior of hegemonic frames, a subject on/of the outskirts that, when face-to-face with dominant hegemony, presents a new way of understanding systems, universalities (which Dussel believes exist, just not as prescribed by Modernity), and the very prescription of the Modern subject. In defining liberation as praxis, the analectic method accounts for the complex realities of the colonized as targets of, and transgressors to, systems of colonization, depending upon material context. Our panel draws inspiration from the analectical approach and includes papers that elucidate the material realities of Otherness on the underside of technology. In an age of technological globalization tethered to neoliberal market principles, we argue that approaching questions of technological expansionism via traditional ‘discourses of technology’ that perpetuate the dominance/resistance binary is insufficient if the aim of decolonizing the internet, the systems which support it, and the artefacts which connect us to it is to be achieved. By focusing instead on individual acts of resistance to totalizing technological systems, we investigate the complexities of living within the landscape of technological hegemony from the lens of the user. From migrants of the global south who both rely upon, and transgress, mobile technologies and the critical infrastructure which supports it, to everyday consumers of technology that often universalize and therefore industrialize lived experiences, the metaphor of existing within and simultaneously reacting to systems of colonization persists. Specifically, we clarify the lifecycle of technological expansionism, from the act of occupation to individual acts of resistance in specific panel presentations that discuss: - Imagined infrastructures of the ‘smart’ (neo-colonial) city. - The push and pull of maintaining Latinx identity within homogeneous digital platforms. - The emotional and physical labor of Asian American women in countering Western narratives which totalize “Asian” identity as monolithic. - The South American migrant experience as dependent upon and reactionary to critical infrastructure. - Corporeal memorialization as resistance to industrialized memory. Each panel topic identifies technological systems, platforms, and/or infrastructures as modern-day instantiations of colonialism as a basis of investigation. For example, multiple papers clarify technological systems and infrastructures as conduits of cultural imperialism, evident in global urban transformation projects and the industrialization of memory, while others query the role of platform affordances in perpetuating inequity and encouraging monolithic identity. As pushback to this totalization, multiple papers highlight the liminal experience of ‘Otherness,’ caught between the tensions of material reality and the opacity of dominant technological systems that often shape, steer, and ultimately universalize human experience. Centering the lens of the individual, we investigate the necessary utility of global technologies (the ‘realities within which we live’) while articulating how actual experience with, and consumption of, these technologies by those on the periphery (those who ‘stand outside’ that reality) can inform a critical understanding of their socio-technical impact. These research topics identify the importance and relevance of decolonial philosophy as a primary framework for understanding the path to liberation from the enveloping forces of global technological systems. In encouraging an analectic, transmodern approach to questions of technological hegemony, we decenter the discourses of Modernity, and by extension the circular dominance/resistance feedback loop which informs much traditional critical scholarship. This panel offers a glimpse from the outskirts, from the periphery of the colonial horizon, situating praxis as foundational to clarifying our socio-technical ontologies. References Burton, M., & Osorio, J. M. F. (2011). Introducing Dussel: The philosophy of liberation and a really social psychology. Psychology in Society, (41), 20-39.

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“…This future never materialized, however, and decades later systemic problems in rape kit testing have prompted a new wave of rape kit activism aimed at tackling the backlog of untested kits (e.g., End the Backlog n.d.). Mirroring earlier normative stances, contemporary backlog activism is driven by a techno-optimism that Quinlan (2020, 6) describes as “tied to a broader faith in technology to rectify the injustices of discriminatory and prejudicial policing, bring justice to victims, and prevent future crime, as well as a trust in American criminal justice institutions to solve social problems.” Here, the pro-punishment discourse that police and law are the proper response to sexual violence (Richie 2012; Kim 2020) collides with the belief that using carceral technology leads to crime reduction and other social optimizations (Jefferson 2020; Carceral Tech Resistance Network 2021), despite evidence to the contrary.…”

Section: Sociotechnical Imaginaries As Performances Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Technology, Sexual Violence, and Power-Evasive Politics: Mapping the Anti-violence Sociotechnical Imaginary

Shelby

2021

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Recent discussions on technology and gender-violence prevention emphasize that technoscientific applications often advance pro-punishment logics that enact gendered inequalities. Less attention has focused on racialized dimensions and how technology might advance abolitionist and transformative justice agendas. In response, this article considers how inventors mobilize technology as a frontline response to sexual violence, in which technoscience—rather than police—enables individuals, friends, and family to provide safety and mutual aid. Through analysis of seven popular technologies produced between 2010 and 2020, this paper documents how their “abolitionist sensibility” is accompanied by fellow-traveler discourses that are unattuned to intersecting power relations. Findings suggest that while this sociotechnical imaginary is reacting to state power, it reinforces a race-neutral and techno-optimistic vision for building a violence-free future. These power-evasive politics may thus signal increased susceptibility to carceral creep and coercive surveillant regimes. After discussing these double-edge politics, I conclude by discussing power formations that are left unexamined in the imaginary and how to cultivate a counter-carceral praxis in line with transformative justice goals.

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Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age by Brian Jefferson, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2020, 264 pp., paperback $34.65 (ISBN 978‐1517909239)

Cited by 23 publications

References 7 publications

Undoing settler imaginaries: (Re)imagining digital knowledge politics

Undoing settler imaginaries: (Re)imagining digital knowledge politics

The Underside of Technology: Lifecycles of Liberación in the Digital Age

Technology, Sexual Violence, and Power-Evasive Politics: Mapping the Anti-violence Sociotechnical Imaginary

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