A Bestiary of the Anthropocene: Hybrid Plants, Animals, Minerals, Fungi, and Other Specimens ed. by Nicolas Nova (review)

Abstract

ing of concepts like intelligence. In his study of computer game play, for instance, D. Fox Harrell found that choosing an “African-inspired” identity “automatically” generated a “less intelligent” avatar (p. 111). Hence, those who, in Benjamin’s words, “insist on digging deeper into the genome” for scientific solutions to individual difference or to social problems simply cannot avoid wading into a kind of techno-racialized eugenics (p. 117). The problem with the New Jim Code, as Benjamin observes, is that its many innovations fail to provide any alternatives to existing social pathologies. Instead, technofixes of all varieties turn out to be rooted in centuries-old racist and misogynistic patterns and norms. And yet, Benjamin’s book is not pessimistic. Rather, in her final chapters (4 and 5), the author turns to digital retooling efforts that are in fact abolitionist in orientation and that can help us reimagine justice. In so doing, she differentiates between the “technological benevolence” that reifies race and class divisions (the kind that absorbs most of her book) and pioneering applications such as Appolition. Founded by the Black trans tech developer Kortney Ziegler, Appolition allows users to contribute small amounts of change toward sizeable donations for bail relief. The crowdfunded venture has been so successful that Appolition was included in Fast Company’s list of the 10 most innovative companies in 2018. Benjamin contrasts Appolition, “a technology with an emancipatory ethos, a tool of solidarity that directs resources into getting people literally free,” with the growing, nefarious field of “techno-corrections,” with its apps like Promise that track individuals using GPS and that expand the scope and reach of carceral practice (p. 163). In the last pages of the book, Benjamin describes a host of largely grassroots applications, what she calls “abolitionist toolmaking,” that empower marginalized and vulnerable people by demystifying technology and mobilizing collective action and reforms. In Race After Technology, Benjamin warns readers of the totalizing influence of big tech: “We are talking about a redefinition of human identity, autonomy, core constitutional rights, and democratic principles more broadly” (p. 31). To the extent that this sweeping statement may be true, the book would, to my mind, have benefitted from a more sustained critique of the avowedly humanitarian goals driving technological design, as well as a more robust analysis of the ways recent innovations complicate (as opposed to simply reproduce) human categories that have never fully been agreed upon. Nonetheless, Race After Technology is a thoughtful, engaging examination of the digital landscape, useful to scholars and accessible to a general audience.