Overview

In Visitation, Jennifer DeClue shows how Black feminist avant-garde filmmakers draw from historical archives in order to visualize and reckon with violence suffered by Black women in the United States. DeClue argues that these filmmakers-including Kara Walker, Kara Lynch, Tourmaline, and Ja'Tovia Gary-create spaces of mourning and reckoning rather than voyeurism and pornotropy. Through their use of editing, performance, and cinematic experimentation, these filmmakers intervene in the production of Blackness and activate new ways of seeing Black women and telling their stories. Theorizing these films as a form of conjure work, DeClue shows how these filmmakers raise the specters of Black women from the past and invite them to reveal history from their point of view. In so doing, Black feminist avant-garde filmmakers channel spirits that haunt archives and create cinematic arenas for witnessing Black women battling for survival during pivotal and exceedingly violent moments in US history. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Full Product Details

9781478019169

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Anyone who aligns themselves with Black feminist theory will find this book useful in enacting that theory and exploring how it interacts with avantgarde film. DeClue's holistic approach to cinematic analysis suggests new opportunities of study within film and media studies that expand their object of analysis. . . . [G]raduate students and others with a vested interest in avantgarde art, film, Black feminism, and archives of resistance will find this book a worthwhile read that contributes to their understanding of their field.""--Marley Duncan ""Women's Studies"" (5/6/2024 12:00:00 AM) ""The book foregrounds important scholarly contributions to the vanguard studies of cinema and experimental media installations. . . . DeClue's Black feminist critical perspective--rendering occluded Queer and feminine archival voices through an avant-garde mode--situates a critical charge to continue in this vanguard scholarship through a methodology of tenderness that bespeaks the closing pages of her book. Her work imparts that there is often more to be reckoned with in revisiting archives and revealing singular testimonies, cultural ethics, and marginal voices that continue to resound despite attempts of historical exclusion.""--M. Sellers Johnson ""International Journal of Communication"" (7/28/2023 12:00:00 AM)

Author Information

Jennifer DeClue is Associate Professor of the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College.

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