Fugitive Decolonial Luddism – A Hauntology

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Dr Syed Mustafa Ali, lecturer in the School of Computing and convenor of the Critical Information Studies (CIS) research group, delivered a paper entitled “Fugitive Decolonial Luddism – A Hauntology” at the Intercultural Digital Ethics symposium organised by the Digital Ethics Lab based at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) on 10 December 2019.

Here is the abstract:

Engaging the theme of ‘inter-cultural digital ethics’, in this short paper I briefly sketch the contours of an ‘oppositional’ ethical-political stance toward digitalisation and related phenomena of datafication and algorithmization that I shall refer to as ‘Fugitive Decolonial Luddism’ (FDL). In arguing for this position, I build on earlier work in decolonial computing (Ali 2014, 2016, 2018) which interrogates computing and ICT phenomena from a perspective informed by critical race theory and decolonial thought, where the latter is held to foreground considerations of the ‘body-politics’ (who) and ‘geo-politics’ (where) of knowing and being, and on the basis of a preferential disposition toward thinking through conceptual frameworks emerging from the periphery (margins, borders) of the modern/colonial world system with a view to effecting compensatory/reparational action vis-à-vis the legacy systemic effects of historical colonialism that persist in the postcolonial era. In advancing FDL as a perspective on digital ethics, I suggest that Luddism, as an active, oppositional stance toward specific technological developments, is usefully retrieved through ‘entanglement’ with decolonial computing, and further enhanced by the adoption of a fugitive orientation toward surveillant datafication/algorithmization drives.

REFERENCES

Ali, S.M. (2018) Prolegomenon to the Decolonization of Internet Governance. In Internet Governance in the Global South: History, Theory and Contemporary Debates. Edited by Daniel Oppermann. São Paulo: International Relations Research Center, Núcleo de Pesquisa em Relações Internacionais (NUPRI), University of São Paulo, pp.109-183.

Ali, S.M. (2016) A Brief Introduction to Decolonial Computing. XRDS, Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students – Cultures of Computing 22(4): 16-21.

Ali, S.M. (2014) Towards a Decolonial Computing. In Ambiguous Technologies: Philosophical issues, Practical Solutions, Human Nature: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Computer Ethics –Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE 2013). Edited by Elizabeth A. Buchanan, Paul B, de Laat, Herman T. Tavani and Jenny Klucarich. Portugal: International Society of Ethics and Information Technology, pp.28-35.

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Islamic Counter-Racist Thought Food #71

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Consider this:

When we eliminate uncertainty, we forfeit the human replenishment that attaches to the challenge of asserting predictability in the face of an always-unknown future in favor of the blankness of perpetual compliance with someone else’s plan.

Extract taken from “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism” (2016) by Shoshana Zuboff.

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Islamic Counter-Racist Thought Food #63

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Consider this:

What happens when the barbarians at the gates either wish to reject pedagogical dependence or elect to construct alternative spatio-temporal horizons? (p.105)

Extract taken from Pasha, Mustapha Kamal (2017) “Decolonizing The Anarchical Society.” In ‘The Anarchical Society’ at 40. Edited by M. Carr, A. Humphreys and H. Suganami. Oxford: OUP.

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“Whitey on Mars” (I didn’t Say That)

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

The late black soul and jazz poet, Gil Scott-Heron, famously rapped about “Whitey on The Moon”:

But it seems that the moon does not suffice as a site for exploration [=colonization] by Racist Man and/or Woman:

Interesting to note that the following article which appears as shown in the graphic above when one visits the link below:

Is This The Future?

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

1. Climate Change Escalating So Fast It is ‘Beyond Point of No Return’
2. Elon Musk Announces His Plan to Colonize Mars and Save Humanity
3. UK Military will use Artificially Intelligent Lasers to Expand Britain’s Economic Empire

Despite my researvations about the necessity – let alone desirability – of embracing an ‘apocalyptic‘ outlook, if only to understand the thought, speech and/or action of Racist (White Supremacist) man and woman, I think developments such as these, viz. (1) possibly irreversible climate change, (2) extra-terrestrial expansion of colonial/modernity = systemic White Supremacy (Racism), and (3) the rise of the machines under ‘the megamachine’ that is postmodernity/postcoloniality, need to be considered in terms of their ‘entanglement’ with each other and other related developments.

Beyond this, there is the question concerning the possible relevance of the following somewhat obscure Qur’anic signs / indicators (ayaat) to consider:

(55:37) When the sky is rent asunder, and it becomes red like ointment…

(55:33) O assembly of jinn and ins. If it be that you can pass beyond the zones of the heavens and the earth, then pass. Yet not without authority shall you be able to pass.

(27:82) And when the word is fulfilled against them, we shall produce from the earth a beast to speak to them for that mankind did not believe with assurance in Our Signs.

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The(ir) Future…

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Consider the cover of the latest issue of New Scientist magazine and think about the use of the definite article in the title which implies a collapse of possible alternative – and multiple – trajectories onto a single trajectory, thereby pointing to the linear re-inscription of time-space (history-geography) under contemporary conditions of colonial modernity / White Supremacy (Racism):

Consider also the references to colonization (‘Mars Colony’), a purportedly impending emergence of the post-human ‘singularity’ (‘Super Intelligence’), the threat of (sub-)human destruction (‘population explosion’, ‘World War III’) against the ‘background’ / ‘backdrop’ of an entanglement of such developments with the long duree history of colonial modernity and its refinement / adaptation under increasing contestation of Orientalism / Eurocentrism / coloniality / White Supremacy (Racism) etc.

Peace

BOOKS: Colonialism, Colonizer and Colonized

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Interested readers are invited to check out the following works on colonialism, the colonizer and the colonized:

Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire

The Colonizer and The Colonized by Albert Memmi

1492: The Debate on Colonialism, Eurocentrism and History by J M Blaut

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