Abstract
In The Future of the Image, Jacques Rancière introduced ‘the image’ in contradistinction to major theorists who defined it by what the image must absolutely exclude, be it substance or materiality, the real, the origin or Other, other forms of art or representation, etc. Derrida, for example, focused solely on what is outside ‘the frame’ or rather the frame itself. But Rancière’s image is an unfolding experience that perceptually intertwines such outside or substratal material bodies with different forms of representation or art. That image is now produced by capturing both what is outside and inside systems of thought or ‘the work’. This contrast is epitomized, however, not only by the difference between Rancière’s image, with its internally divided alterity, and Derrida’s image on the edge of absolute alterity, but by the difference between black poet Claudia Rankine’s visual and racial images of outer ‘whiteness’ and Fred Moten’s Derridian imaging of borderline ‘blackness.’ Whiteness, for Rankine, may be both the outside substance and Other in her artwork, but it can also enter the work in producing the so-called ‘image,’ where black and white appear other than they seem. Moten, on the other hand, clings to the Derridean program when an outer whiteness threatens to appear. By first comparing the image in Rancière and Derrida, this paper therefore better frames the larger debates within contemporary black aesthetics.
Presenters
Joseph ShaferLecturer, English and American Studies, University of Marburg, Hessen, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Aesthetics, Alterity, Derrida, Ranciere, Moten, Rankine, Blackness
