Clôtural sacrifice: Liminal representation of race in film

Angelaki 19 (4):37-50 (2014)
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Abstract

:In this essay, I argue that what I consider a generally valid critique of the traditional model of representation remains too closely focused on its limitations and not its liminality. To make this distinction, I couch my analysis in terms of sacrifice. The canonical model of mimesis was concerned by the sacrificed thickness of “presence” in the thin re-presentation; today's anti-essentialist model is instead concerned that presence or sameness comes at the sacrificial cost of the other. Although the latter is accordingly more sensitive to racial representation, it still fails to come to terms with liminality, which is the structural inability to represent the margins. The Lacanian analysis of an Iranian film that cannot rely on traditional visual cues opens the door to appreciating liminality. But unless a “narcissistic” tendency of the Lacanian scholarship is addressed, liminality becomes a fetish for the other as a “stain.”

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Farhang Erfani
American University

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References found in this work

Writing and Difference.Jacques Derrida - 1978 - Chicago: Routledge.
Poetry, Language, Thought.Martin Heidegger - 1971 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31 (1):117-123.
Being and Time: A Translation of Sein Und Zeit.Martin Heidegger - 1996 - State University of New York Press.
Écrits.Jacques Lacan - 1967 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 22 (1):96-97.

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