ABSTRACT
This essay reviews the conceptual tensions between black cultural and political identity in order to discern new conjunctural ‘practices of identity’ occurring, specifically, in some black films. It suggests that a specific paradigm of communication, such as ‘historical affective re-enactment’, can illustrate the ways in which blacks articulate their identity through the medium of cinema. Examination of this paradigm as a discursive practice of ‘détournement’ or ‘marronage’ allows us to understand the more complex effects of Africanicity as a necessary re-enactment of social and historical commentary, which ‘labyrinthic’ horizon transcends any decoding structure of political and cultural identity. This essay concludes that rather than being a decoding structure of identity, the notion of Africanicity is a conjunctural ground of investigation through which trans-geographical practices of identity emerge.
