Algorithmic Abstraction and the Racial Neoliberal Rhetorics of 23andMe

ABSTRACT

Western mathematics functions as a technology of violence when it enlists computational algorithms to underwrite racial neoliberalism. Theorizing algorithmic abstraction as a racial neoliberal technique, this article dramatizes the concept’s methodological affordances through a case study of 23andMe, which deploys algorithmic abstraction to affectively secure and sell Whiteness.

Notes

1. We thank RR reviewers Bridget Gelms and Londie Martin for their thoughtful, generous feedback on our manuscript. We also thank the editorial staff for their labor and expertise bringing this article to publication.

2. Throughout this article, we use the capital “W’ to signify Whiteness as a cultural category of race; we use lowercase “w” when “white” serves as an adjectival descriptor for bodies that benefit from the structural opportunities afforded by White supremacy.

3. There are, of course, other theories of mathematics, the rhetorical affordances of which is the subject of the authors’ current collaborative project.

4. For more on the relationship between neoliberalism and economics, see, for example, Chaput; Dingo and Scott; Greene and Kuswa.

5. Modern notions of classification are themselves colonial technologies. As Noble explains, “Classification systems … are part of the scientific approach to understanding people and societies, and they hold the power biases of those who are able to propagate such systems” (137; see also Spurr).

6. That a tight correlation between genetics and heritage is somehow self-evident is further problematized when we consider the many widely available forms of non-genetic parenthood, such as sperm and egg donation or surrogacy, which are likewise elided by the normalization of heteropatriarchal parentage.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Daly Weisse

Kathleen Daly Weisse is Director of the Writing Center and Lecturer of English at Marist College. She received her Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. Her research interests include critical data studies, anti-racist writing instruction, and writing across the curriculum.

Julie Jung is Professor of English at Illinois State University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary rhetorical theories, with an emphasis on cultural rhetorics, and composition. Long before becoming a scholar a rhetoric, she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. This article marks a return to that field of inquiry—but from a decidedly different location.

Kellie Sharp-Hoskins is Associate Professor of English at New Mexico State University, where she specializes in critical rhetorics and writing studies and directs graduate and undergraduate programs in Rhetoric and Professional Communication.