Kristen Reynolds' Ph.D. Final Defense

The (hu)Man in the Machine: Black Speculation and Revolutionary Technocultures Beyond Man, brings speculative literature and culture to bear on the study of Man’s production of data colonialism, biometric surveillance, and generative AI. Sylvia Wynter argues that Man is an anti-black figure that is shaped by institutions of natural science, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, and the social and racial hierarchies they produce. Following this, I argue that digital systems that purport to mimic or exceed human cognition build upon the legacy of Man through their reification of so-called human norms and ensuing production of a universal human. I then turn to Black speculative literature and culture to identify how this genre imagines new philosophies for technology that resist Man by relying on Black radical interpretations of being through history and philosophy. Using Octavia E. Butler’s concept of HistoFuturism as a frame, The (hu)Man in the Machine excavates how Black womxn’s literature and culture contests the onto-epistemological infrastructure of Man organizing today’s digital and computational technologies. In so doing, I argue that Black speculative literature and culture advocates for new genres of being human, one’s which usher forth revolutionary technocultures that secure Black futures. 

Kristen Reynolds is a speculative fiction writer and doctoral candidate in the department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Her research utilizes Black speculative literature and culture to interrogate how digital and computational technologies reproduce antiblackness through their coherence around Sylvia Wynter’s articulation of “Man, overrepresented as the human.” Her work thereby seeks to demonstrate how Black speculative literature and culture posits new genres of man and frameworks for developing technologies that promote Black futures. She specifically explores data colonialism, generative AI, cand biometric surveillance. She is published in Fiyah Literary Magazine and continues to explore opportunities to place her creative and academic work in conversation. 

For Zoom information, please contact Tamara Hageman (hageman@umn.edu).