Frank's Abstract Accepted for Publication in African Studies Review by Cambridge University Press

We’re thrilled to share some exciting news—Frank’s latest abstract has been accepted for publication in the next edition of African Studies Review published by the Cambridge University Press! We can’t wait to see his research make waves in the scholarly community. Stay tuned for publication details!

Abstract: "Decolonial Prompting: A Method of ‘Rewriting AI’ Toward Black Futures"

If language is the primary site where power is exercised and contested, then artificial intelligence (AI), as a language-generating system, is a battleground where historical struggles over race, knowledge, and humanity are re-enacted. This article argues that prompting which is generally viewed as a sociotechnical mechanism for interacting with AI is a political act of resistance against the racial, colonial, and capitalist logics embedded in AI systems. While AI ethics literature has shown that large language models (LLMs) reproduce anti-Blackness, erasure, and epistemic violence, little attention has been paid to how users, especially Black scholars and communities, can engage AI through prompting to contest and rewrite these biases. The article develops the first systematic theory of decolonial prompting, positioning it as a method for challenging AI’s default outputs and generating counter-narratives that center Black life and futurity. Drawing on Black radical thought, decolonial theory, and critical algorithm studies, I argue that prompting is both a sociotechnical input and a form of discursive resistance that can force AI to reckon with marginalized epistemologies. While acknowledging the structural limits of prompting under AI’s corporate and capitalist infrastructures, I also argue that prompting remains a necessary intervention to resist AI’s harms in the present. I will also position prompting as an act of Black radical imagination and a strategy to reclaim AI for Black futures thereby calling for a rethinking of AI ethics to include user-based resistance strategies that situate the practice as a critical tool in the broader struggle for technological justice.