Rhetoric Society Quarterly May 2023

“I Wish I Could Give You This Feeling”: Black Digital Commons and the Rhetoric of “The Corner”

Catherine Knight Steele ; Alisa Hardy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe unique experience of Black Americans in the United States produces a physical and cultural space with a long history of misuse, commodification, and theft of the Black imagination and Black culture. These spaces, which also historically complicate notions of privatization and ownership, are replicated online today. In this essay, we propose the corner as a lens through which to interrogate whether Black networks online potentially produce a rhetorical digital commons and, further, whether the theory and practice of “the commons” adequately make space for the particular historical reality of Black America. To do so, we focus on three social media platforms wherein Black digital praxis meets the possibility of the corner: TikTok, Twitter, and Black Planet. These digital corners provide lessons that center the Black experience on- and offline, and point toward possibilities and limitations in our digital future. Ultimately we argue that the corner contradicts hegemonic modes of white supremacy in public spaces while also spotlighting the brutal realities of gentrification, commodification, and theft that fortify the exploitation of Black communities.KEYWORDS: Black/African American rhetoricdigital commonsdigital rhetoricsocial media Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We use Black liberation here to reference freeing Black persons from multiple forms of political, social, and economic subjugation. Black liberation movements, theories, and theologies have been espoused by numerous organizations. Here. though, we reference any orientation toward this perspective whether explicitly named by individuals or simply inferred through their online activities. See Stokley Carmicheal’s “Toward Black Liberation” and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From# BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.2 See André Brock, Jr.’s Distributed Blackness, especially chapter four, for an insightful analysis on breaking the dichotomy of ratchetry and antiracism.3 See Nakamura 181–93.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2023-05-27
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2023.2200704
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism african american rhetorics digital rhetoric social media race and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Alford (2026)
    The Paradigmatic Aftermath of Digital Rhetoric
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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