Colonialism, Post, and Anti, in the Digital Age

Colonialism denies its allocation to the past. It persists, sometimes in very real modes of governance, and is resisted—whether through anti-colonial movements or by epistemological frameworks developed in the field of postcolonial studies. Its persistence demands that we ask how it has changed alongside exponential data accumulation, fast evolving mediums, accelerating advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the vast reaches of human networks. In the “digital age” broadly conceived, how do we continue to understand and resist colonialism? This workshop brings together scholars who use computational methodologies, who challenge the replication of inequalities in the digital space, who trace continuities across mediums, who observe human-AI relations, and who question the digital infrastructures of scholarship. It aims to unite the tools and knowledges of multiple disciplines to train the eye on colonialism even as it dissipates into the cloud.

Image credit: AI generated image on Midjourney using workshop title as a prompt.