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Psyche-Analysis: The Politics of Excess and the Souls of Black Film

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Friday, October 04, 2019
9:30 am - 11:00 am
Franklin Cason
tgiFHI

Join the Franklin Humanities Institute for its Friday morning series, tgiFHI! tgiFHI gives Duke faculty in the humanities, interpretative social sciences and arts the opportunity to present on their current research to interlocutors in their fields. A light breakfast will be served at 9am.

About the presentation:

This talk argues that the concept of mis-en-scéne is too imprecise when dealing with the presence of blackness on screen. Psyche-analysis, a way of discussing soul on screen, moves beyond the ontology of blackness on screen (black is/black ain't) and towards those unforeseen, generative functions of the black face on screen, its performative, disorganizing and revelatory dimensions. Soul, in its vernacular sense, is the slippage between the absence and presence of blackness, and the politics of the excess and pleasure of black film, or what W.E.B. DuBois describes as "the strange meaning of being black." As such, it offers new terms for film analysis that may be extended to cinema studies writ large.

About the presenter: Dr. Franklin Cason Jr. is a filmmaker and film scholar, who has taught courses in film theory, history, aesthetics, criticism, and analysis. His research interests have been primarily concerned with film, modern visual culture, and media studies.

Contact: Sarah Rogers