“Images of Black Identity: Spaces In-Between”

Abstract

This chapter develops an analysis of the ways in which space, place and time have been theorised to explore the construction of cultural identity in visual culture. The construction of identity in visual culture constitutes ‘race surveillance’ and this chapter seeks to understand the ways in which the surveillance of ‘race’ problematizes the scopic regimes which define racial categorisation. By examining the construction of representational spaces it explores the construction of racialized identities in a specific example of contemporary British film and photography—Looking For Langston (Julien 1989). The chapter utilizes theories of subjectivity through a postcolonial theoretical lens to analyse the ways in which ‘race’, gender and sexuality are performed in different digetic (textual) locations.