This article argues that an array of contemporary novels explore Black experiences with digital media, showing how they affect the production of knowledge, the constitution of the self, and the formation of collectives. The novels by Candice Carty-Williams, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yomi Adegoke, Teju Cole, Onyi Nwabineli, and their peers energetically challenge the notion of digital space as a neutral, colour-blind sphere of interaction, spotlighting the precarious intersections between race and platform capitalism. The article zooms in on two novels by Black writers — Onyi Nwabineli and Teju Cole — to analyze how they stage the relationship between Blackness and the digital. Highlighting the ambivalent potential of digital connectivity, these novels expose how Black individuals are subjected to technologically mediated and at times profitable forms of racism within the platform economy, reflecting the discriminatory logics of hegemonically White societies. To allow for nuanced understandings of the relationship between digital media and race, the essay engages with the burgeoning field of Black Digital Studies. Yet it is clear that literary configurations inevitably exceed theoretical insights, and that the performative potential of literature needs to be taken seriously. To do justice to the specific interventions made by literary texts, the essay draws on notions of intermediality, illustrating how novels probe their necessarily open and at times conflictual relation with the digital.
Birgit Neumann (Tue,) studied this question.