This dissertation is situated at the intersection of critical philosophy of race, affect theory, and new media studies. The dominant questions of my research consider what new problems and avenues of thought the digital age and social media open up for the study of race. This focus includes the ways the formation of race adapts to digital forms of sociality, as well as the new kinds of concerns or points of emphasis that may be raised if our analysis of race takes into account the non-local and often extra-national networks enabled by digital communication. In my dissertation, I conceptualize the constitutive factors of the crisis of white hegemony that has taken shape in the digital age. To account for the ways these shifts actually constitute crisis, my project constructs an alternate theoretical framework through which to think race, arguing for the virtuality of race and the affective modes of its proliferation. Using affect theory, my analysis details the ways race operates nonrepresentationally. My project then applies this reading of race to several viral events, memes, and digital performances, both staged and spontaneous to examine the virtual processes through which race is reproduced in the era of the internet. The performances and popular cultural materials that constitute my social media and internet archive not only demonstrate where whiteness is grappling with the terms of Western racial hegemony, but reveal the modes through which racial governance is adapting in the wake of social mediatization to maintain the coherence of its domination.

Last modified

• 10/28/2019

Creator

• Christine Goding-Doty

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-8vxb-2222

Subject

• African-American Studies

Keyword

• Whiteness
• Race
• Affect

Date created

• 2018-01-01

Rights statement

• In Copyright