It’s week 11 of my module “(Me)me, Myself, and I: The Power and Politics of Digital Remix Culture and Online Inequalities”, and recently we were lucky to learn from the brilliant research of keisha bruce (PhD researcher, University of Nottingham) who spoke about “Cartoon Memes and Black Femme Aesthetics” (Big thank you, keisha!). keisha’s s guest lecture session explored how memes are made and circulate as part of Black everyday cultural politics, pleasure, celebrations, and expressions of joy. More specifically, keisha spoke about the different ways that Black Femme aesthetics are remixed and (re)presented as part of cartoon meme culture (think altered Arthur, SpongeBob, and Winnie the Pooh images) and the ways that people attempt to project and convey their identities online.
keisha’s insightful guest lecture involved her outlining the relationship between meme culture and remixing which connects to the particularities of sampling in hip-hop culture. Some of the many words and statements that keisha shared during her guest lecture include “nostalgia”, “permanence”, “appreciation”, “adaptation”, “snippets”, “self-reflections”, and “visual references that resonate with Black diasporic folx”.
In addition to speaking about how memes are used as part of the formation and communication of in-group cultural knowledge, keisha explained how many components of Black digital creativity become a larger part of the “mainstream” digital public, including as a result of people appropriating Black Femme aesthetics through cartoon memes which obscure individual identities, allowing multiple people to project and/or rework their own identity through memes. This brilliant guest session on the module offered a way to gain an understanding of how we might theorise elements of meme culture through the language of hip-hop culture, and a lens that accounts for the specifics of Black people’s lives–especially Black Femmes.
During the same week (w/c 30 Nov 2020) as keisha’s guest lecture I attended an online workshop, “Privacy in the New Public Sphere (2)”, led by the research investigators behind “Norms for the New Public Sphere” which is an AHRC-funded philosophy project (2019-2022). The online event focused on questions and considerations concerning privacy in digital spaces. This event involved some discussions about the notion of digital remixing (e.g. what it is and isn’t, whether it is a form of work and labour, and if such processes lead to output that can be owned as opposed to just authored). When speaking about my own work and thoughts on these matters I tend to avoid broadly calling for people to be able to privately own/copyright a lot of digitally remixed content (e.g. memes, GIFs etc.). However, I try to acknowledge the different desires and interests of content creators, particularly Black people whose labour experiences are always raced, gendered, and classed, and whose digital content and work has been monetised and/or co-opted by others, resulting in them seeking more opportunities to receive fair credit and compensation for the content that they create online.
In other words, when considering the different ways that digital experiences are (and aren’t) regulated and restricted, and who gets to author and/or own content, I feel it is important to think about such experiences in a way that involves considering them on a case by case basis and avoids the use of blanket claims such as “no content creators want or should be able to ‘own’ their work” or “the collective and collaborative nature of a lot of digitally remixed content means that people are not interested in individual recognition”. The term “content creator” is often applied to a wide range of people and careless use of this term without adequate acknowledgment of the differences between such people who are referred to this way can result in ineffective and homogenising assumptions about a) who is a content creator, b) what content creation involves, c) what content creators do (or don’t want) in terms of credit and their rights.
Arguably, the capitalist structures that digital content creators frequently find themselves navigating are inherently racist (and, more precisely, anti-Black) in ways that inevitably shape digital content creation landscapes and the distinctly different (and sometimes extremely harmful ways) that content creators are treated. For these reasons, for me, questions and concerns to do with digital privacy, collectiveness, anonymity, authorship, and ownership are always also questions and concerns to do with racial capitalism and intersecting oppressions and inequalities which significantly impact the most marginalised content creators and exploitative work and labour experiences that they deal with.
When reflecting on the “Privacy in the New Public Sphere (2)” workshop, as well as keisha’s fantastic talk, I found myself making notes in an attempt to think through various ideas and questions to do with memes and digital remix culture. Below are two colourful “mind-maps” of notes that I made when doing this.
One of the key questions that keeps emerging is to what extent digital remix culture can/should be “regulated” as part of efforts to combat online harassment, hate, and harm? The concept and experiences of privacy are socially constructed and shaped by a wide range of factors, including the norms of certain geo-cultural contexts and who is (and is not) meaningfully regarded as human and therefore is or (is not) able to benefit from a human rights framework. I am interested in how terms such as “privacy” and “anonymity” are defined and used, including in ways that are connected to ideas about identity that are sometimes based on the assumption that the visibility (online or otherwise) of a person results in knowing who they are. I am also interested in whose experiences of trauma and retraumatisation online are typically overlooked amid political, policy, and legal discussions and debates dealing with digital experiences and forms of online danger and abuse.
As I inch closer to the end of the Autumn semester, and the end of the first year of this module, several other questions that I continue to think about include the following:
- Whose sense of morality and perception of “harm” is typically foregrounded as part of digital policy-making processes, and how, and why?
- If notions of “harm” and “wrongdoing” are socially constructed, context dependent, and based on dominant perspectives that are raced, gendered, and classed etc., how might this shape regulations and legislation concerning digital experiences?
- What are similarities and differences between the notions of “aesthetics” and “visual articulations”?
- What are similarities and differences between being a digital witness, observer, and/or bystander?
- What is the relationship between ownership and authorship, and how is it digitally mediated in the context of meme and digital remix culture?
- What is the “digital” in digital remix culture?
- Why is credibility sometimes associated with visibility online?
- How are attempts to “regulate” digital spaces and online experiences raced, gendered, classed etc.?
- How are ideas and assumptions regarding who is a “content creator” and what content creation involves shaped by issues to do with race, gender, class, and socio-political power dynamics?
Margins 