Narrative Constructions of Online Imagined Afro-diasporic Communities in Spain and Portugal

Julia Borst; Danae Gallo González

doi:10.1515/culture-2019-0026

Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access May 13, 2019

Narrative Constructions of Online Imagined Afro-diasporic Communities in Spain and Portugal

Julia Borst and Danae Gallo González

From the journal Open Cultural Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0026

Abstract

This article focuses on representative digital platforms created and coordinated by African and Afro-descendant people from Spain and Portugal. It argues that, by sharing and articulating mutual narratives online, these platforms act as spaces where Afro-diasporic communities are being imagined. To that effect, this paper not only builds on theoretical reflections on how Blackness and Afrodescendance are conceptualised on the internet. Adopting a cultural studies’ approach that offers an interpretation of selected posts, it deduces the main narratives displayed and the diverse identificational spaces intertwined in those narratives. In doing so, the paper shows that these platforms challenge biased perspectives on Afro-diasporic communities and, within the digital space, conceptualise alternative, decentred—national and transnational—communities of Afro-diasporic people that are based on shared experiences of displacement, exclusion, resistance and self-empowerment.

Keywords: Afro-European studies; diaspora studies; digital media; Iberian cultural studies

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