ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION What I’m interested in drawing out and discussing in this chapter are new forms of pleasure that black lesbian spectators write for themselves against the grain of popular cinema, which I take to include Hollywood films as well as so-called cult and subcultural alternatives on mainstream release. I want to start by raising the possibility of pleasure as political and fantasy as progressive, even transgressive, in its potential to subvert the status quo and to propose other ways of being that fall outside or exceed the boundaries of naturalised ideological positions.
