Beyond rights as recognition: Black Twitter and posthuman coalitional possibilities

Abstract

This essay analyzes the Black Twitter hashtags #IfTheyGunnedMeDown and #AliveWhileBlack to develop a revisionary theory of anti-racist activism that reveals how certain socially mediated protest movements, in insisting on the ability of the Black body and human to “matter,” encourage the recognition of alternative forms of humanity and embodiment to those offered by humanist, economic, and juridical models. I argue that the embedded, distributed modes of collectivity on Twitter can create critical posthuman coalitions and affirmative bonds (Braidotti, Chavez), not only by decentering hegemonic models of human value that often depend on the dehumanization of Black bodies, but also by disidentifying with the hypercapitalist composing practices of digital spaces. Ultimately, I argue that an epistemological framework for recognizing social protest that moves beyond a discourse of rights allows us to witness how activists build alternative rhetorical imaginaries and possibilities, even if they might sometimes draw from both inclusionary and utopian politics to cultivate new forms of recognition and possibilities for coalition.