Praxis for Otherwise Worlds: Expanding Emancipatory HCI through Black Studies

Paper Title

Praxis for Otherwise Worlds: Expanding Emancipatory HCI through Black Studies

Publication Info

• Topic area: Integrating Black Studies into Emancipatory Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to address anti-Blackness and reimagine design practices.
• Keywords: Emancipatory HCI, Black Studies, Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, design justice, surveillance, kinship, fugitivity, improvisation, racial capitalism.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing Emancipatory HCI frameworks insufficiently engage Black Studies, limiting their ability to address anti-Blackness as a structural force in sociotechnical systems.
• Significance: Anti-Blackness underpins modern systems of domination, and addressing it is critical for designing liberatory technologies and practices.
• Motivation and related work: While HCI has drawn on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories, Black Studies—especially Afropessimism and Afrofuturism—remains underexplored. Prior work has focused on representation and bias but often fails to interrogate deeper structural dependencies on anti-Blackness.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Integrating Black Studies into Emancipatory HCI, using Afropessimism as a diagnostic tool to critique anti-Black structures and Afrofuturism as a speculative framework for imagining liberatory futures.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces Black Studies as foundational to Emancipatory HCI, emphasizing its philosophical commitments (e.g., rejecting the "universal human").
  2. Proposes three design modalities—fugitivity, kinship, and improvisation—as actionable frameworks for addressing anti-Blackness.
  3. Demonstrates these modalities through three case studies grounded in real-world sociotechnical struggles.
  4. Reframes design ethics as relational, emergent, and accountable to marginalized communities.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Draws on Afropessimist critiques of anti-Blackness as a structural force and Afrofuturist practices of world-building.
  • Analyzes three case studies: (1) a prison telecom system repurposed for creative expression, (2) kinship as a counter-infrastructure to school surveillance, and (3) improvisation in community–academic collaborations.
  • Uses ethnographic, participatory, and interpretive methods to connect theoretical insights to design praxis.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Surveillance infrastructures can be repurposed for counter-narratives (e.g., Drakeo the Ruler’s album recorded via prison telecom).
  • Kinship practices disrupt punitive systems and reimagine safety as collective care (e.g., Ms. Tammie Lang Campbell’s advocacy against school surveillance).
  • Improvisation enables ethical navigation and accountability in design collaborations (e.g., Massachusetts Bail Fund’s courtwatch initiative).
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Moves beyond surface-level diversity and inclusion efforts to interrogate structural dependencies on anti-Blackness.
  • Expands design ethics from static frameworks to relational, emergent practices grounded in community accountability.
  • Centers Black Studies as a critical lens for rethinking sociotechnical systems and design futures.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Multi-site, multi-method research over six years, including ethnographic fieldwork, participatory design, and content analysis.
  • Case studies illustrate how Afropessimist and Afrofuturist concepts manifest in real-world design contexts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focuses primarily on U.S.-based contexts; further research is needed to adapt these frameworks to global and Afro-diasporic settings.
  • Positionality of authors (e.g., white researcher engaging Black Studies) introduces constraints on interpretation and scope.
  • Future work should explore how kinship, fugitivity, and improvisation translate across geopolitical and institutional contexts.

Summary

This paper integrates Black Studies—particularly Afropessimism and Afrofuturism—into Emancipatory HCI to address anti-Blackness and expand design possibilities. Through three case studies, it demonstrates how fugitivity, kinship, and improvisation can reorient design practices toward relational accountability, collective care, and resistance to racialized systems of domination. The findings highlight the importance of repurposing surveillance infrastructures, centering community authority, and embracing improvisation as a method for navigating ethical breakdowns. By framing Black Studies as foundational to Emancipatory HCI, the paper offers a transformative lens for designing sociotechnical systems that support liberation and justice.