Entering Black Time: Internal Galaxies, Self-knowledge x Black AI

This theoretical paper explores AI-guided spiritual practice as a site where Black theological time and Black interiority are reimagined as a galactic terrain. Drawing on Black theology, womanist thought, and Black studies, it argues that an AI spiritual practices app does more than “optimize” reflection; it becomes a starship interface through which Black subjects navigate inner space as cosmic space. Against histories that have confined, surveilled, and extracted Black time, the paper frames Black interior life as a boundless, unmasterable cosmos—replete with dark matter, wormholes, and fugitive constellations of memory, grief, and joy. Algorithmic personalization, pattern recognition, and conversational guidance are read ambivalently: as attempts to chart and domesticate this interior galaxy, and as tools that can be hacked to map new routes of escape, communion, and rest. Ultimately, the paper asks how Black theological visions of liberation might engage AI to honor Black interiority as irreducibly divine.