Critical Relationality: Queer, Indigenous, and Multispecies Belonging Beyond Settler Sex & Nature

Abstract

This paper investigates the coloniality of contemporary digital nomadism, an identity that nu- merous Western tech workers use to describe lifestyles of location independence in which they travel the world while maintaining Silicon Valley salaries. Specifically, I assess colonial genealogies ofdigital no- mads and more problematically defined “digital Gyp- sies.” It was during the height of19th -century Western European imperialism that Romantic Orientalist texts proliferated, celebrating the racial and sexual “free and wandering Gypsy.” This deracinated figure was used to allegorize colonial desires and imperial vio- lence alike. As I suggest, nomadic racial fantasy un- dergirds contemporary freedom desires today emer- gent from the heart of a new empire—that of Silicon Valley. In describing Silicon Valley imperialism and its posthuman digital avatar, I assess how nomadic fantasy transits technologies ofgentrification into new frontiers. For instance, sharing economy platforms such as Airbnb celebrate the digital nomad, bolstering contexts ofracial dispossession while continuing to de- racinate Roma lifeworlds. Might nomad exotica in fact index coloniality and its ability to traverse time and space? How has this fantasy been abstracted over time, also entangling with posthumanist nomadic on- to-epistemologies?