I know I made it seem like I would write up some thoughts on this in the thread, but they are so diffuse… I broadly really enjoyed this piece and I think there is a way to tie this into what I do (media archaeology?), which has a dismal record of sustained engagement with race.

It is quite powerful and, sometimes, distressing: this feature is amplified by the occasional detours into the authors’ life stories.

I have to confess that I was initially shocked by the turn towards the litany of sexual and physical abuses that McKittrick and Weheliye tie to the TR-808—it seems implicated with improbable frequency in violence that is either explicitly or systematically anti-Black—with the result that whatever I thought I knew about this device has been “hijacked” and resituated in its plantocratic context.

The explicit challenge of “808s & Heartbreak” is to move beyond such reactions of shock, outrage, or opprobrium (coded as they are with a white-righteousness that is insupportable given the interminable history of racist violence) to the more polyvalent notion of heartbreak. My notes on the reading are here.