This document discusses ratchetry as a form of libidinal digital practice among African Americans online. It defines ratchetry as a performance of agentive deviance from social norms that is unapologetic and hyperpersonal. Ratchetry exists as a libidinal economy rather than a political one. The document examines how cultural phenomena like the song "Trap Queen" and the social media platform Black Twitter represent forms of ratchet digital practice and signifyin' discourse that construct Black online interiority and technoculture. It argues that ratchetry serves as a praxis of politics through the expression of Black deviance online.

1. Libidinal Digital Practice
Ratchetry as African American Online Interiority
André Brock
Communication Studies
University of Michigan
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2. “Trap Queen”
#2 on Billboard Hot 100
10 weeks in Billboard Hot 100 top
ten
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3. When
Ratchet
Met Nancy
Fetty Wap – one eyed
rapper
Trap Queen – a respectful
ode to Black women
supporting their partners
engaged in criminal
enterprises; #2 on Billboard
Hot 100 (25 weeks in top 10)
The Trap – typically a
location where drugs are sold
Nancy Reagan –wife of
Ronald Reagan, whose anti-
drug incarceration laws she
complemented with an
ineffectual anti-drug
promotional campaign
targeting children
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4. ‘Appropriate’ Digital Practice
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5. Technoculture
Dinerstein
Marcuse
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6. Digital Respectability
‘Appropriate’ digital practice involves information use
and interface design which must be efficient and
productive; the information transmitted should be
devoid of – or rather in alignment with - a political
economic opinion, as well as being easily digestible to
audiences and users of a particular culture.
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7. Mobile ain’t appropriate
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8. Digital Libidinal Economy
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9. Libidinal Economy
Leotard
Saxton
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10. Respectability and Ratchetry
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11. Ratchetry as Libidinal
Economy
• Libidinal, rather than political economy (Lyotard 1969;
Wilderson 2010)
• “where sections of the psychic and social apparatus
which must only be affirmed separately or
successively, are affirmed at the same time”
• Ratchetry as pathos
• the broad range of feelings, yearning (erotic and
otherwise) once deemed necessarily private (Morgan
2015)
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12. “Respectable anger calls lawyers; ratchet anger calls
goons. Respectable anger throws barbs; ratchet
anger throws bottles.
S.G. Benjamin, 2014
If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for
translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro
workers. The white world has its gibes and cruel
caricatures; it has its loud guffaws; but to the black
world alone belongs the delicious chuckle
W.E.B. DuBois, 1940
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13. Ratchet
Term linking Black bodies - often female and/or queer -
with “hood” or deviant behavior (Warner 2015; Bradley
2013a and 2013b)
Performance of agentive deviance from external and
internal social order
Ratchetry is unapologetic and hyperpersonal
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14. Deviance as (online) Praxis
Politics of (Black) deviance
Deviance: “breaking the assumed agreed upon norms
of socially acceptable behavior”
“the groups [black youth] who are believed to be lacking
moral judgment, as measured by adherence to dominant
norms and values, are often construed as deficient
citizens whose deviant behaviors threaten not only their
own progress but that of the nation” - Cohen (2010)
Democracy Remixed
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15. 15

16. Ratchet Digital Practice
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17. Black Twitter
The interpellation of Twitter by Black discursive practice
Discursive ritualistic format/content of drama and
catharsis map closely to the Black cultural practice of
signifyin'
Hashtags and trending topics made visible a ‘public’
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18. C. Fowlkes, 2015
Our society has taught us, unfortunately, that
loudness equals ratchet behavior instead of joy
(black girls laughing in the hallways) or anger (blacks
fighting each other in videos)
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19. BlackPlanet.com
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20. 20
NOT Ratchet.

21. Digital
Cultural
Practice
Digital Social Media – one
eyed rapper
Cultural Commonplace – a
respectful ode to Black
women supporting their
partners engaged in criminal
enterprises; #2 on Billboard
Hot 100 (25 weeks in top 10)
Signifyin’ Discourse –
typically a location where
drugs are sold
Political and Libidinal
Content – wife of Ronald
Reagan, whose anti-drug
incarceration laws she
complemented with an
ineffectual anti-drug
promotional campaign
targeting children
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22. Black Online Interiority
=
Ratchet Digital Practice
=
Black Technoculture
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23. Thank you!!
André Brock
E: brocka@umich.edu
Web: distributedblackness.net
The Twitters: @docdre
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