Short abstract:

In this project, we propose to submit a one-page position paper and multimedia website prototype that reflects on the lessons learned from attempted solidarities that were forged at the “Resisting Big Tech & Casteist/Racial Capitalism” workshop (Jan 2024).

Long abstract:

Solidarity requires suturing these open wounds and attending to each other’s pain without what Frank Wilderson describes as “the ruse of analogy” (meaning sincere intimacy requires us to differentiate between anti-Blackness and caste violence)"

– Logic(s) Magazine Editorial Team

On January 25-26, 2024, the Ida B Wells Just Data Lab (JDL) & Criminal Justice & Police Accountability Project (CPA) co-organized a virtual workshop entitled “Resisting Big Tech & Casteist/Racial Capitalism.” With twenty participants and live translation in Hindi and English, our aim was to flesh out the possibility of transnational convergences between brahminical and anti-Black surveillance. We hoped to challenge the predominantly casteless framing of technology in India, in pursuit of a broader vision of anti-caste and anti-racist digital futures.

A primary motivation for this workshop was to push back against the reductive framings of “caste” and “race” as merely interchangeable categories and avoid over-determining solidarities by attending to their respective contexts with care. Despite this goal, we found ourselves reproducing this “ruse of analogy” and inadvertently collapsing disparate geographies to artificially forge solidarities against global AI policing. It became clear that a meaningful, contextually-grounded, and multilingual lexicon for these conversations is yet to be created.

In this project, we propose to submit a one-page position paper and multimedia website prototype that reflects on the lessons learned from these attempted solidarities. The website will include excerpts from the workshop’s participants on the (im)possibilities of global AI solidarity, displayed in both Hindi and English to underscore the difficulties of transnational meaning-making.