
Elisha Lim, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, has been named a guest co-editor of a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Social Text that will look at how modern digital platforms, like Amazon or Google, are reproductions of colonial capitalist enterprises from the past.
Lim’s selection as guest editor of Social Text builds on their research into social media platforms, critical race theory and more.
Social Text is a peer-reviewed journal that looks to be at the forefront of cultural theory by considering social and cultural phenomena. “It’s an incredible honour to guest edit,” says Lim.
The opportunity arose not just because of Lim’s research expertise at the intersection of social media, theology and critical race theory, but from enthusiasm around a recent submission of their own to the journal. “This project stems from my Social Text article ‘Anticolonial Platform Studies’ (forthcoming February 2025), which inspired excitement amongst reviewers, editorial boards and conferences, because I name critical theorists as digital experts,” says Lim.
Digital theorists are those who study the theoretical concepts around digital technologies how they impact society and culture. Because critical theorists analyze and critique social structures and power dynamics within society, there is opportunity to explore the overlap. Lim’s special issue will consider that interdisciplinary overlap further, in particular by pursuing the journal’s mandate to advance colonial theory – the study of the systems, impacts and ideologies of colonialism – and how it can be applied to modern digital platforms like Meta, Amazon, Uber, Apple and others.
“So far, solutions to platform problems don’t seem to work. Worsening polarization, misinformation and labour exploitation galvanize political and social crises worldwide,” says Lim. “This special issue argues that current solutions are inadequate because they over-rely on business, computer science, social science and other empirical positivist fields. By tracing platforms back to colonial corporations like The British East India Company, this special issue offers abundant interdisciplinary strategies around decolonial critique and resistance.”
Lim has issued an invitation to York University colleagues to contribute papers that will build critical and cultural insight into how colonial theorists are digital theorist, and how the colonial past informs the technological present.
Those interested in working with Lim and submitting papers are asked to send 800- to 1000-word abstracts and a brief bio to eclim@yorku.ca with the subject line “Social Text Colonial Studies of the Platform Special Issue.”
The deadline is March 1.
For further information, visit the extended call for papers.
With files by Elisha Lim