Dissertation Overview

Dissertation Abstract

Dearly Beloved, there is more than one way to instill hope for the future. Black funerary form involves memory preservation and lessons at the end of life for the living to reflect on and practice. Hope is not just emotional but built into the acts we engage in presently, including the practices of education, research, law, medicine, politics, and technology. In this dissertation, I grapple with themes of life and death, particularly as connected to technology and Blackness. This is a sermon on technology at the end of a world predicated on anti-Blackness. I work with two theoretical perspectives; the first is the existing perspective of Afrofuturism, which I use to grapple with how people work towards futures that support Black Life. The second perspective, which I offer, is Plantation Prophecy, which describes how plantation futures are not just desired through the lens of white supremacy but brought about through coordinated actions. In conversation with the interviews of 20 Black computing practitioners, I utilize the method of critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how discourse reflects how histories of Afrofuturism and Plantation Prophecy are enacted through and around technology. These computing practitioners ranged in background, including but not limited to education, stage and type of career, gender, sexuality, age, and ethnicity. I argue that it is neglectful to operate solely in optimism for life in the future without grappling with the realities of white supremacist desires for plantation futures. Particularly, plantation prophecy offers a lens on how it is advantageous for computing practitioners to be invited into educational, corporate, and military settings that have limited discussions on how technology reinforces racism, class, violence, and control. I offer recommendations for unsettling the domination of white supremacy through abolition, engagement with Black Studies, and disrupting disciplinary expectations within computing education, practice, and research design. 

Citation: Jones, S. T. (2024). Computing at the End of the World: Examining Black Life, anti-Blackness, and Liberatory Pursuits in Computing Practice and Learning,  Dissertations & Theses @ Northwestern University; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Embargoed)

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Citation: Jones, S. T. (2024). Dissertation Program - Computing at the End of the World: Examining Black Life, anti-Blackness, and Liberatory Pursuits in Computing Practice and Learning