Racialised Publics: Coloniality, Technology and Imaginaries

The notion of the ‘public sphere’ remains one of the key concepts in the field of media and communications studies. The book that coined the term, Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, can be considered as one of the most frequently cited and canonical texts of our field. Habermas linked the public sphere that emerged in 17th and 18th century Europe to the emergence of capitalism and democracy but neglected to discuss how these strongly relied on slavery, slave trade and colonialism. Racialised publics refer to both the infrastructures that have constituted such spaces historically as well as the discourses that have circulated through the spaces enabled by the infrastructures. Social media are often seen as inaugurating transnational encounters and spaces of conversation as well as new forms of global racial consciousness. This interest in change ―in understanding what ‘difference’ the digital makes― characterises much of the scholarship on digital media. However, given the long histories of genocide, slavery and colonialism, racialised publics have always been shaped by the circulation of texts, discourses, technologies and infrastructures across national borders. In contrast to chasing the latest, this presentation makes a case in favour of slowing down in order to address the short memory of digital media studies. Hence, it considers digital publics as part of much longer histories of change but also continuity. A question less frequently asked is what remains the same and which media forms persist. Empirically, I interrogate these questions in the context of Southern Africa, and Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa in particular, where I have lived, worked and researched during different periods in the past 25 years. I reflect on how examining the history of racialised publics from Southern Africa might help us shed light on processes of racialisation elsewhere. In this presentation, I discuss the three key arguments that are part of my current book project on this topic: (1) the racialised nature of conceptualising publics; (2) the colonial infrastructuring of racialised publics; and (3) the transnational nature of racialised publics.