Braided Archives: Black hair as a site of diasporic transindividuation

This thesis investigates how hair braiding is used by continental African women to negotiate belonging in the diaspora and Canadian society. Scholarship on the cultural significance of Black hair is usually focused on the cultural significance of "Black hairstyles" rather than the practice of hair braiding itself. Therefore, this thesis is guided by three research questions: 1) how is it that hair braiding, cornrows specifically, emerged as a cultural practice throughout the African diaspora when colonization was predicated on the complete erasure and devaluation of the African identities and their cultural/spiritual practices, 2) how can we understand hair braiding as an instance of Black technological innovation and 3) how does thinking about hair braiding as a form of transindividuation redefine what is considered technological? This thesis uses autoethnography and sensory ethnography as methodological frameworks to underline the role that sensory practices play in identity formation.