Goin' Viral

Black virality refers to the spread of Black performance that becomes uncontrollable because of its rapid and ubiquitous circulation through popular media. Gabriel A. Peoples examines Black people and representations of Black people that have gone viral from the eighteenth century to today. Peopless analysis ranges from abolitionist and proslavery visual culture to Do the Right Thing to Bed Intruder Song and the cellphone video of Derrion Alberts murder. After identifying these moments, he considers how performances go viral in Black ways. He also thinks through the ways Black virality circulates ideas that materially affect Black life. As he shows, an interacting persons vulnerability to racialized gender and racialized sexuality knowledge inspires how they spread a performance. Non-iconic elements of viral moments reveal hard-to-find nuances of Black life while the artists and others represented in viral moments promote both collective and individual liberation by harnessing their visibility and audibility. Rigorous and expansive, Goin Viral uses Black virality as a new way to understand and frame Black performances.