S. Petty
For digital artists of the black diaspora, “blackness in particular, is the anti-avatar of digital life,” and simply being accounted for in the histories arising from new media is an extension of other, earlier struggles to establish the legitimacy of their own historical experiences (Nelson 1). As a result of this “constant battle to exist,” these artists forge new ways of conceiving and recouping histories obscured and, indeed lost, in the continued struggle for identity in postcolonial contexts (Oguibe 35).
In this paper, I intend to explore how Roshini Kempadoo’s black diasporic new media artwork Ghosting meets this challenge by dismantling western linear constructs of history to reconstitute it as a transnational flow of impulses contributing to complex contemporary Caribbean identities. In particular, I will consider how the recombinant narrative structure exploits digital compositing, archival materials and narration to challenge fixed notions of race and globalization. I will thus demonstrate that Kempadoo offers a compelling example of how personal and global histories collide, fragment and transcend western imperatives to provide an engagement with digital aesthetics that is specific to black diasporic digital imaginings.
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