Afrolatin@ Digital Humanities or Rethinking Inclusion in the Digital Humanities

Abstract

Through the study of digital projects developed by Afrolatin@ and Afro-Latin American communities and agents in the Americas, this chapter argues for a rethinking of inclusion as a notion widely discussed in fields such as the digital humanities. Departing from myths of digital universalism and digital neutrality, the text discusses how technologies—in particular, digital technologies—are repurposed by these communities to pursue diverse political, cultural, and symbolic objectives in assorted geographic and cultural contexts. In that sense, the chapter proposes the reconsideration of the digital humanities and digital studies as expansive fields of practice, in which there is space for what the author calls Afrolatin@ digital humanities. Studied projects reveal that such expansion of the digital humanities is less concerned with textual analysis and digitization of canonical material, and more centered around the combination of computer applications and analog practices to challenge colonial and neo-colonial orders embedded in global neoliberal designs. Likewise, those projects propose diverse conceptions of humanity that challenge the universal conception of human centered around western male conceptions.