Left to Their Own Devices

Abstract

I n her work, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, literary scholar, Christina Sharpe, describes disturbing scenes of anti-Black violence and death and poses questions of how we live in a world that demands our death. These questions take on additional urgency as Sharpe considers their significance for Black “urban youth,” who have been condemned, abandoned, and “left to their own devices.” Thinking with Sharpe, a central question of this article is: how do Black youth, who have often been abandoned, or “left to their own devices” (both metaphorically and quite literally), deploy various technological, digital, or virtual devices in order to not only “live in a world that demands their death,” but also to foster greater freedom, meaning, and cultural fulfillment in life? A second question also animates the article: how might the interplay between Black religions and/as technologies open greater possibilities for intervention in the anti-Black violence and death that often characterizes the lives of Black youth? Thus, this article focuses on the religio-cultural and socio-political uses of technolog(ies), in response to experiences of vulnerability to anti-Black violence and death, among Black youth coming of age in the hyper-mediated new millennium. The article is also concerned with how Black cultural production, emerging social media, and other new technologies, facilitate the cultivation of reimagined Black identities, communities, and spiritual practices that re-present Black youth to themselves and the broader publics in which they live.