2025/01/01 by S. Nisa Asgarali-Hoffman · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #Cuban History and Society #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1177/20563051251319576
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article presents an analysis of YouTube videos wherein creators reveal the results of their direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry tests. I analyze these reveal videos, their comment threads, and the role of YouTube in hosting these videos, to capture the popular discourse around the relationship between DNA and racial identity. By employing critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), I explore how Caribbean content creators discuss racial identity, and how online discourses negotiate, codify, or disrupt neoliberal notions of racial authenticity. I focus on videos made by creators who self-identify as being from the Caribbean or of the Caribbean diaspora. By bringing the Caribbean existentialist thought of Stuart Hall and Édouard Glissant into my analysis, I explore how Caribbean creators employ what C. Rhonda Cobham-Sander deems “the Creole imagination” to interrogate notions of racial authenticity while de-/re-constructing racial identity in digital spaces.