The Lag Manifesto

In this article, we deploy media studies, digital studies, and critical theories of race, gender, and sexuality to analyze twinned phenomena: the overlapping pandemics of SARS-CoV-2 and of anti-Black racism in the summer of 2020. We analyze how a creative orientation to lag can contest how digital infrastructures’ economies, narratives, and underlying forms of labor have harmed the most vulnerable segments of society in the United States. Analyzing discourses of heroism and viral Instagram trends during the revolutionary summer of 2020, we historicize the twinned pandemics of 2020 and value lag as a praxis of self care and community care.