Black Hauntography as Critical Memory: Visualizing Absent Infrastructures in Virtual Reality

Abstract

In this article, I consider the role of emerging digital media technologies in contexts where a scarcity of memory infrastructure contributes to the marginalization of historical figures, places, or events. To do so, I examine Red Summers, a collection of 360-degree virtual reality (360 VR) documentaries that bring to light the impact of domestic White supremacist terrorism on Black communities in incidents across the U.S. occurring between 1917 and 1921. I argue the series relies on a strategy of visual cultural production I deem Black hauntography, which capacities collective acts of critical memory by directing audience visions toward the multiple layers of infrastructural absences left in the aftermath of racial violence. I trace how the series produces a memory of loss which may mediate more truthful, inspired encounters with the weight of history, thereby operating as a critical memory infrastructure suitable for amending amnesiac relations to past injustice.