Red, White & Black

Frank B. Wilderson III is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Drama at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the American Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms is a provocative and challenging book. Wilderson exposes the darker side of cinematic narrative and the unspoken messages sent through film which reinforce the identities and cultures on all three groups mentioned, despite these identities and cultures being imposed rather than inherent. . . . A truly unique analyses of cinema, race, politics, power, society and identity.” - Danielle Mulholland, M/C Reviews“[An] exceptional and provocative book. . . . [T]he volume is clearly written, persuasively argued and – reflecting a particular strength of the book – immensely detailed.” - Adam Brown, Media International Australia “Wilderson’s style of writing is persuasive while his passionate , uncompromising commitment to every word, passage, idea, in his book is undeniable.” - SÄer Maty BÂ, Cultural Studies Review “The work exceeds the typical trajectory of film writing, and Wildersonwrites with a conviction that can incite further thought, discussion, and even action. In a panel on literary activism at the National Black Writers Conference in 2010, Wilderson clarified his intentions: ‘The relationship of literature to struggle is not one of causality, but one of accompaniment.’ As such, Red, White and Black is valuable reading for any filmmaker or theoristinterested in socially engaged cinema.” - Malia Bruker, Journal of Film and Video “Red, White & Black challenges scholars of film, race, ethnicity, American studies, and cultural studies to rethink many of the assumptions that animate our work. Pairing analyses of film representations of U.S. racial antagonisms animated by images of Blacks with those that work through images of Indians provides a new and exciting critical framework. Red, White & Black provokes scholars to reckon with the political implications of Frank B. Wilderson’s call to think structures of Blackness, Whiteness, and Redness in the United States both in conjunction with and in contradistinction to each other.”-Kara Keeling, author of The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense “Red, White & Black is unique, incisive, and thought-provoking. The analytic frameworks that Frank B. Wilderson III develops surpass the conventional paradigms for exploring theory, race, power, and film in U.S. culture.”-Joy James, editor of Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy “I have not read anything as striking as Red, White & Black in some time. In this unsettling work, Frank B. Wilderson III theorizes the singularity of anti-Blackness as he refines our understanding of how political economy, popular culture, and law are shot through with identification and desire, pleasure and pain, sexuality and aggression. Anti-Blackness, which is carefully distinguished here from White supremacy, is not only an ideology and an institutional practice; it is also a structure of feeling with pervasive effects. This last, crucial point is glossed over by too many authors in their haste to provide rational analyses of and challenges to racism.”-Jared Sexton, author of Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism “Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms is a provocative and challenging book. Wilderson exposes the darker side of cinematic narrative and the unspoken messages sent through film which reinforce the identities and cultures on all three groups mentioned, despite these identities and cultures being imposed rather than inherent. . . . A truly unique analyses of cinema, race, politics, power, society and identity." - Danielle Mulholland (M/C Reviews) “[An] exceptional and provocative book. . . . [T]he volume is clearly written, persuasively argued and – reflecting a particular strength of the book – immensely detailed.” - Adam Brown (Media International Australia) “Wilderson’s style of writing is persuasive while his passionate , uncompromising commitment to every word, passage, idea, in his book is undeniable.” - Säer Maty Bâ (Cultural Studies Review)

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction: Unspeakable Ethics 1I. The Structure of Antagonisms 1. The Ruse of Analogy 352. The Narcissistic Slave 54II. Antwone Fisher and Bush Mama 3. Fishing for Antwone 954. Cinematic Unrest: Bush Mama and the Black Liberation Army 117III. Skins 5. Absurd Mobility 1496. The Ethics of Sovereignty 1627. Excess Slack 1898. The Pleasures of Parity 2009. "Savage" Negrophobia 221IV. Monster's Ball 10. A Crisis in the Commons 24711. Half-White Healing 28512. Make Me Feel Good 317Epilogue 237Notes 343References 365Index 375