Afrofuturism is a multifaceted performance

Introduction: “The data thief travels light. A small multi-functional flat black box, the size of a CD, is all s/he needs.” (Akomfrah & George, 2013) Central to the Black Audio Film Collective’s documentary ‘Last Angel of History’ is a time- traveling protagonist named the ‘data thief’ (Akomfrah, 1996). The movie is part of a phenomenon that has been called Afrofuturism, which is, broadly speaking, an aesthetic and philosophy that centres around themes of technology, diaspora, Blackness, and speculative temporalities. What is interesting about the figure is the positive connotation of the term ‘data thief’ and the accompanying emancipatory, that is, self-determined, approach to data. S/he travels through time to excavate fossils, collecting pieces and knowledge—data—of a past that has been lost to assemble a future which will be gained. Afrofuturism has its roots in response and resistance to persistent structural racism and the grim future that results from it. An, at first sight, unlikely match to that is the so-called ‘Afro-census’ (Aikins et al., 2021), a first nationwide survey of Black people in Germany published in November 2021, that aims “to obtain as comprehensive a picture as possible of the experiences of people of African descent in Germany” (Afrozensus, n.d.). I will later explore the connections between Afrofuturism and the Afro-census, by illustrating how an Afrofuturist data subject can guide a critical approach to data protection. Both Afrofuturism and the Afro-census find very distinct ways to oppose and question the status quo. Furthermore, what unites both is the re-imagination of the relationship to data in a positive manner in order to assemble a better future. In contrast to the liberated ‘data thief’ above, today’s digital reality is much bleaker. We are increasingly becoming aware of our data-saturated world’s dark underbelly, where, as for instance seen in the case of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, data traded as a commodity can be transformed into a political weapon (Confessore, 2018). By the same token, it becomes more and more apparent that many injustices in the digital sphere share a very distinct common characteristic: racial discrimination. Algorithms and data are neither neutral nor objective. In fact, they are fed by and feed back into structural racism1 and are linked to forms of knowledge production, which are deeply situated in oppressive structures. Browne (2015) for instance delineates a genealogy of surveillance and data collection that builds firmly on race and Blackness. Equally important, Raval (2019) highlighted the colonial context of knowledge and data production in which “both colonial and postcolonial bodies are inseparable from the past and contemporary technoscientific innovation and production.” (p. 5) With this in mind, my aim is to call into question a crucial concept within data protection, that is, the data subject. The “subject[] of the right to personal data protection” (González Fuster & Gutwirth, 2017, p. 184) is defined by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as “a[] […] natural person […]; who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier” (Regulation 2016/6) and forms the starting point from where to search for an emancipatory engagement with data. Specifically, how can we rethink the data subject in light of current digital discrimination and racism? Examining the data subject makes it necessary to recognise long-standing notions of who counts as human and therefore enjoys protection within that category. In concurrence with Benjamin’s (2019a) call for rethinking the role of technoscience, Afrofuturism will aid to re-imagine data protection and form new narratives while building on the specific nature of the injustices. I argue that looking at Afrofuturism can help us move toward an emancipatory approach to the data subject in our digital age. In the following, I will, first, explore why our current digital working models are inadequate to address digital racism and injustices and how Afrofuturism may fill a conceptual gap. Second, I will sketch out an Afrofuturist data subject, guided by the main themes of collectivity, contextuality, and subjectivity, illustrated by the Afro-census, before, third, delineating how the Afrofuturist data subject emancipates through subjectification.