Disrupting Enslavist Suture : Black Film as a Cinema of Displeasure.

Abstract

Drawing from Afro-pessimist and feminist film theory, the article proposes a rethinking of theories of racialization and Blackness in and through film. Through a critique of film theories related to the concept of suture and its models of pleasure, identification and subjectivation, the article shows why Blackness in film must not simply be considered through authentic representation or progressive production, but in terms of a disruption of black symbolic death. This disruption is theorized as a cinema of displeasure and irritation, aspects of which will be exemplified with a short consideration of the movie Suture.