Black hair technologies at the "post-natural" turn.

Manipulation of the hair is one of the lesser theorized technologies through which Black diasporic subjects have carved space for their existence, expressed aspirations, and posed dissent against a social world reliant upon their dehumanization. In response to this forum's call to elevate mediated epistemologies about Black women, we offer focused consideration of Black hair as a technology of collective expansion that resists essentialism and begins to theorize a digital, post-natural turn. The practices tied to Black hair, from the development of styling tools and products (physical technologies) to technologies of touch via digital practices (i.e., the digits or fingers) such as greasing, braiding, washing, combing, and otherwise working hair, are central to how Black women create digital (here meaning: online) content and navigate scrutinization. We consider the complications of these technological and digital practices by considering the simultaneous neoliberal and liberatory undergirding of the Digital Natural Black Hair Movement and a very recent tech-forward turn toward what we call the "post-natural" that eschews the implicit essentialism of earlier natural hair moments. Taking the "sacred" foray into the haircare industry by megastar Beyoncé as a case study, we outline facets (and aspirations) of the post-natural digital re-branding of Black hair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]