Description
Book SynopsisThe first critical examination of death and remembrance in the digital ageand an invitation to imagine Black digital sovereignty in life and death. In Resurrecting the Black Body, Tonia Sutherland considers the consequences of digitally raising the dead. Attending to the violent deaths of Black Americansand the records that document themfrom slavery through the social media age, Sutherland explores media evidence, digital acts of remembering, and the right and desire to be forgotten. From the popular image of Gordon (also known as Whipped Peter) to photographs of the lynching of Jesse Washington to the video of George Floyd's murder, from DNA to holograms to posthumous communication, this book traces the commodification of Black bodies and lives across time. Through the lens of (anti-)Blackness in the United States, Sutherland interrogates the intersections of life, death, personal data, and human autonomy in the era of Google, Twitter, and Facebook, and presents a critique of digital resurrection technologies. If the Black digital afterlife is rooted in bigotry and inspires new forms of racialized aggression, Resurrecting the Black Body asks what other visions of life and remembrance are possible, illuminating the unique ways that Black cultures have fought against erasure and oblivion.
Trade Review"In
Resurrecting the Black Body, Tonia Sutherland intricately examines Black embodiment, death and remembering, specifically the effects that inclusion and visibility within the digital archival record can have on individuals and the collective. Sutherland argues for autonomy and imagination in determining the Black digital afterlife." * Ms. Magazine *
Table of ContentsContents
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Trouble These Waters
Part I RECORDS
1. Recording Trauma
2. Recording Hate
Part II RESURRECTION
3. The Resurrection of Henrietta Lacks
4. The Resurrection of Tupac Shakur
Part III RIGHTS
5. The Right to Be Forgotten
6. The Right to Be Remembered
Conclusion: Homegoing
Notes
Bibliography
Index
