Anti-Black Violence (Marchi) Flashcards
1
Q
What is the Visual and Digital Archive of Anti-Blackness?
A
- Representation, metaphor of the archive points out how the images we are exposed to make up the collection of images of anti-blackness –> constitutes one of the key visual narratives of the US as a nation. They are meant to discipline and traumatize (e.g., with lynching photography), as well as support struggle of abolitionism, civil rights movement, police brutality.
- We are overexposed to these kinds of images; death is one click away in the browser tab
2
Q
Black Suffering as National Visual Narrative
A
- The visual culture of anti-black violence (in photographic, videotaped, or digital form) has always constituted one of the defining threads of the U.S. national narrative.
- Photographic images of violence inflicted against Black bodies began to circulate as early as the 1860s.
- From the very beginning, these images have occupied an ambiguous position. Depending on how they are read, they can serve both the iconographies of white supremacy, meant to discipline and traumatize (e.g., with lynching photography), as well as support the struggles of abolitionism, of the Civil Rights movement, and against the state-sanctioned aggression of black bodies (e.g., with the Black Lives Matter movement).
3
Q
“Death in the Browser Tab”
A
- Due to the unprecedented availability of communication devices, especially mobile phones and social media platforms, images of police brutality and black suffering have multiplied and reached every corner of the globe as instruments of denunciation and forensic testimony.
- In our hyper-mediatized times, as writer Teju Cole has claimed, death is available to us right there in the browser tab, one click away.
- The effectiveness of these images in eliciting public outrage, raising awareness, and fostering grassroots political mobilization is undeniable.
- Yet, what has determined their efficacy (i.e., their immediate global reach and incessant circulation) is also what has led scholars in recent years to question their status and uses.
4
Q
An Economy of Watching And Sharing
A
- As their unbridled dissemination risks turning these images into commodities for exchange, within an economy of watching and sharing, the line that separates denunciation from spectacularization, responsiveness from voyeurism, grows increasingly thinner.
- Should these scenes of suffering be made public? Is the political gain they might afford sufficient to make up for the psychic loss and devastation they inflict?
- Is not their compulsive reproduction ultimately going to simply normalize them in the eyes of casual and distracted viewers (as Susan Sontag would argue!), once the shock-effect begins to wear off?
5
Q
The Witness and the Voyeur
A
- In her seminal work on 19th century slavery and its aftermath, titled Scenes of Subjection, Saidiya Hartman interrogates “the consequences of this routine display of the slave’s ravaged body” in the context of abolitionist literature.
- Contesting “the spectacular character of black suffering” and highlighting the duplicity of effects these images are bound to produce, what is at issue, for Hartman, is the role of the reader/viewer and the porous boundary between “witnesses” and “voyeurs,” between terror and enjoyment.
6
Q
What is the Role of Intermedial Artistic Practices?
A
- The investment of the reader/viewer is produced in the interaction with the text/image and forged by the frames of representability and affectivity that invite and, to a certain extent, structure different forms of responsiveness.
- This is why intermedial artistic interventions, crossing borders between the literary and the visual, might play a key role in addressing and reconfiguring the growing archive of images of anti-black violence.
- As opposed, for example, to photojournalism or newspaper articles, intermedial artworks foreground the narrative strategies, representational frames, and forms of responsiveness that can be mobilized in this regard.
- They invite us to question our epistemologies and revise the ways in which look, see, and interpret.
7
Q
“Can you be black and look at this?” (1994) by Elizabeth Alexander
A
- Elizabeth Alexander reads the video of Rodney King’s beating by the LAPD as a way to meditate on the African American struggle for self-determination against the narratives mainstream society has constructed around and about black bodies.
- While, from a legal standpoint, one would think that a videotaped crime would bear at least some degree of objectivity, Alexander shows how the video has been read and interpreted differently (by the media, by the lawyers, in the courtroom, etc.) and reflects on the difficult position of Black people as necessary witnesses to such spectacles of brutality.
- –>One can interpret the video differently, manipulate the video in a way to signify different things.
8
Q
Rodney King and the LA Riots (1992)
A
- On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was arrested for DUI and savagely beaten by LAPD officers.
- George Holliday filmed the incident from his house and sent the footage to the media.
- The acquittal of all four officers involved caused racial tension and public uproar that culminated in the so-called Los Angeles Riots of 1992, six days of protesting, arson, and looting.
- The video of the beating is the first to have a major impact on a police violence case.
9
Q
The Spectacle of Black Suffering
A
- “Black bodies in pain for public consumption have been an American national spectacle for centuries.”
- “White men have been the primary stagers and consumers of the historical spectacles I have mentioned, but in one way or another, black people have also been looking, forging a traumatized collective historical memory which is reinvoked at contemporary sites of conflict.”
- Black bodies in pain have been an American spectacle for centuries (see Hartmann)
10
Q
Blackness as exposure to violence
A
- Alexander interrogates the issue of racial identity and of African American community formation.
- If race has no biological grounding, if there is no essence or specific “ingredient” to a Black identity, and if African Americans are so different from one another, what is it that ties them together and makes them “a people”?
11
Q
Bearing Witness
A
- While bearing witness to anti-black violence is inevitably a traumatic experience, for Alexander it is also what allows for survival and community.
- The many narratives (across different media) that have been produced, for example, around the figure of Emmett Till, have served – and continue to serve – the constitution of a “practical memory” of collective resistance
12
Q
“Barred Object (O)” (2021) by Calvin Warren
A
- Writing 27 years after Elizabeth Alexander’s contribution, Calvin Warren focuses on another landmark video of police brutality, that of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of officer Derek Chauvin.
- Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Warren argues that police (or vigilante) anti-black brutality is a libidinal impulse and that what we keep on witnessing are “re- enactments” and “re-stagings” of a fantasy.
13
Q
Racism is not Anti-Blackness
A
- Racism and anti-blackness are not identical, interchangeable, or analogous.
- They are irreducible as different modes of alterity:
- one as subjective position presenting anxiety and jealousy through unmerited enjoyment
- while the other is mere instrumentality, an object that facilitates jouissance, rather than possessing its own secret enjoyment to be envied.
- What police brutality invites us to consider is a different configuration of jouissance and alterity – where propinquity enables enjoyment and the black is never positioned in relation to the Other, but constitutes a mere prop, an unenviable fetish, a disposable thing without any knowledge that matters.
14
Q
O Barred Object
A
“Police brutality presents us with a repetitive structure, a particular re-staging of a relation between characters: the powerful police officer (an omnipotent sovereign); the black victim (fetish-object); witnesses and bystanders; and an Other. Extreme violence mediates the relationship and situates each character in position. The relation between the police officer and the black victim is one of complete domination. It is not a relation between two subjects, however. The black is positioned as an object – or more precisely a fetish. Extreme unilateral violence, and unrelenting cruelty, not only pulverizes but also produces.”
* What this violence produces, according to Warren, is the black body as “barred object,” whose function is to facilitate enjoyment.
15
Q
Some basic information about the Pat Ward William’s art work
A
- Mixed-media artwork, combining photography and text.
- Through the use of materials such as wood, tar paper, nails, and staples, image and text are brought into a relation that is primarily material and sensuous.
- This is an example of what Bolter and Grusin call “hypermediacy,” namely a “style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium” (272).
- The use of a collage technique that assembles different found objects (for example, pieces of painted wood and a magazine clipping) underlines the materiality of the pictures it displays, tying them directly to the world in which they were produced and in which they circulated.
- Rather than the indexicality of photography, the artwork interrogates the material, historical occurrence of the event portrayed and, specifically, the conditions of its photographic (re)production.
16
Q
Transmedial Narratology
A
- Over the last two decades, narratology has increasingly changed from a language-centered discipline to a transmedial field of inquiry. Scholars have highlighted how narrativity is not the exclusive domain of verbal fiction, but all media have narrative potential.
- What transmedial narratology is concerned with are narratological models and narrative strategies across a range of media.
- Whereas the term intermediality evokes the transgression of medial boundaries, involving at least two conventionally distinct media, according to Werner Wolf (2011): “transmediality concerns phenomena which are non-specific to individual media and/or are under scrutiny in a comparative analysis of media in which the focus is not on one particular source medium. Being non-media specific, these phenomena appear in more than one medium.”
17
Q
Werner Wolf (2017) distinguishes three kinds of pictures that are linked to three different types (or degrees) of visual storytelling. What are they?
A
- Monophase Pictures
- Polyphase Pictures
- Multiphase Pictures
18
Q
Explain Wolf’s Monophase Pictures
A
single images that capture one moment in time, a sort of “still frame” of an unfolding story
19
Q
Explain Wolf’s Polyphase Pictures
A
single images that gather different moments in the development of a story within themselves
20
Q
Explain Wolf’s Multiphase Pictures
A
multiple distinct images, showing a single event, that are narratively linked in a fixed reading order
21
Q
The Image as Narrative
A
- The creation of the image as sequence introduces a temporal progression – in other words, a narrative – into it.
- This process of temporalization and narrativization of the image questions both the primacy of language as narrative medium as well as the status of the fixed image (photographic or pictorial) as “a medium that, in its signifiers, is predominantly spatial rather than temporal” (Wolf 265).
- Breaking down the body into its parts and placing them in succession, the artist’s manipulation of the picture forces us to acknowledge that, just like words on a page, a picture requires a process of reading that implies a temporal dimension as well.
22
Q
The Text as Image
A
- The temporalization of the image also highlights the spatiality of the words and the physical space taken up by the text, whose material properties (calligraphy, typography, layout, etc.) and non-signifying imagistic aspect (the text perceived as image) trouble the idea of a smooth order of legibility.
- The piece draws attention to the temporality of the image-as-narrative and to the spatiality of the text- as-image in order to destabilize the viewer’s straightforward access to both, thus withholding the possibility of an uncritical consumption of the artwork.
23
Q
The Relation Between Text and Picture(S)
A
- The text that accompanies the pictures does not perform its familiar function as caption to the images. Most significantly, it does not offer a context for them.
- Left anonymous, faceless, and without (hi)story, the body in the picture refuses to give access to an interiority that would provide a guarantee of its humanity. At the same time, it also refuses to fulfill its usual function as a symbol of black suffering, subjection, and death.
- Visually, Williams’ piece self-consciously reproduces and exploits the image of “the lynched black man.” Yet, in its juxtaposition with the image, the text begins exactly by disputing the idea that, after all, when “you see one lynched man you’ve seen them all.”
24
Q
The Complicity of the Photographer
A
- The artwork interrogates the material conditions of production of the picture itself or, as the text explicitly asks: “How can this photograph exist?”
- How can the photographic camera – the quintessential tool of scientific, objective, and technological modernity – coexist with barbarous practices of extrajudicial executions and mob killings?
- How could the operator be physically present at the scene, as attested by the existence of the photograph itself, and yet not intervene into what is happening?
- How could this picture immediately circulate in the press – without credits and thus without any attribution of responsibility – and where to draw the line between information and evidence and terrorism?
25
The Importance of the Frame(S)
* Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock emphasizes the importance of frames (with the wood around the images, with the text surrounding the images).
* Frames are “transmedial phenomena, phenomena that exist in more than one medium (actually in all media)” (Wolf 2006, 10).
* As transmedial phenomena, frames enable and structure our affective reactions to, and interpretations of, both the verbal and the visual. Becoming aware of the frames that guide our understanding, also means becoming aware (and self-critical) of our own processes of meaning-making.
26
Intermediality and Contemporary Black Fiction — Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah “Zimmer Land” (2018)
* Adjei-Brenyah’s story uses “Zimmer Land” as a satirical representation of a technologically advanced society that superficially appears progressive but harbors deep-seated racism and violence. This is emphasized by the park’s contradictory setting, where futuristic technology coexists with antiquated symbols of justice and outdated military equipment.
27
What does the story “Zimmer Land” criticize?
* The story criticizes the idea that technological and economic progress will inherently lead to positive social and political change. It suggests that technological advancement can be used to create more sophisticated forms of racial domination and exploitation.
* The story criticizes the commodification and fetishization of Black bodies, particularly through Isaiah’s experience with the “mecha-suit”. The suit reinforces harmful stereotypes and caters to white fantasies of Black hyper-virility and bestiality, reducing Isaiah to a “disposable thing” for the fulfillment of white desires.
* The story grapples with the ethical implications of portraying Black suffering. While highlighting the need to expose the pervasiveness of anti-Black violence, it also acknowledges the danger of further commodifying and exploiting Black trauma.
28
What is the narrative structure of “Zimmer Land”?
* The narrative structure of “Zimmer Land” is cyclical, mirroring the repetitive nature of anti-Black violence and highlighting the limited agency afforded to Black individuals within these systems.
* The ending of “Zimmer Land” offers a glimmer of hope when Isaiah breaks free from the pre-determined script by refusing to activate the mecha-suit, challenging the patrons’ expectations and potentially disrupting their ingrained narratives of Blackness. This act of defiance rewrites the narrative and offers a potential for change, emphasizing the importance of resisting predetermined roles and challenging systemic violence.
29
What is the purpose of “Zimmer Land”?
* “Zimmer Land” draws parallels to real-world events, such as the death of Trayvon Martin, by incorporating elements like the suburban setting, neighborhood watch, and the availability of guns. These references blur the lines between fiction and reality, demonstrating how media and cultural narratives shape our understanding of and responses to anti-Black violence.
* “Zimmer Land” ultimately uses humor as a strategy to subvert the tragic passivity often associated with portrayals of Black suffering. This approach allows for a nuanced exploration of the complex realities of racism and violence while maintaining a sense of hope and resistance.
30
Background of “The Trees”?
* Set during the years of the first Trump administration, The Trees combines satire and a revenge fantasy, together with the atmospheres of a Southern Noir, a ghost story, and a detective novel.
* The Trees, in fact, lets the reader imagine the return of the ghost of Emmett Till (but is it really a ghost?), after almost 65 years, to the scene of the crime of which he himself was a victim (Money, Mississippi) and on an actual crime scene in which the body of a man – son of J. W. Milan, one the man that lynched Emmett – lays tortured and mutilated.
* Then the dead Black body, mysteriously and inexplicably, disappears from the morgue overnight, reappearing at the site of another murder, this time of the son of Roy Bryant (another of Emmett’s killers).
* As the series of killings continue, more ghosts (Black, Chinese, Native American, etc.) seem to rise back to enact their revenge, until they reach the White House...
31
The Functions of Ekphrasis in “The Trees”
* What the novel is referencing, therefore, is not the actual body of Emmett Till, but the photographic image of Emmett’s open casket that is so engrained in the U.S. national cultural and visual imaginary.
* In The Trees, ekphrasis’ power of evocation (of another medium) becomes a power of conjuring up the ghost as image (phantasma).
* This function is also guaranteed by the fact that “ekphrasis halts time and creates presence” (Behluli and Rippl 2024, 61). Interrupting the advancement of the plot (and disrupting linear temporality), ekphrasis allows Emmett’s image to return to the present and gives it material presence.
* Ekphrasis also performs here a type of memory work that is not locked into the past, but has the performative power to act in the present and for the sake of the future to come. As Neumann and Rippl argue about the commemorative function of ekphrasis: “References to (actual) images in the novel always entail processes of remembering, a kind of remembering that is inevitably creative and transformative, geared towards the changed needs of the present and thus thriving on complex temporal interrelations.” (Neumann & Rippl, 2024).
