Directions and Diversions
in Visual Anthropology            
  1. Introduction
  2. Objects of Affect
  3. The Burden of Representation
  4. Uncertain Evidence
  5. Digital Media Infrastructure

  6. Collaboration
  7. Sovereign Vision(s)
  8. Opacity and Refusal
  9. Alter-Futurisms
  10. Visual Anthropology beyond the Visual

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CC BY-NC-SA 2024 Isaac Marrero Guillamón

8. Opacity and Refusal


This session discusses recent art and documentary works that challenge the desire to and expectation of transparent access. These works make visible the limits of vision (and of seeing as power) and mobilise a range of aesthetic and political strategies of obstruction and interruption. The relevance of these approaches will be discussed with a focus on Black Radical Aesthetics.

  • Required reading:
  • Aranke, Sampada. 2017. “Material Matters: Black Radical Aesthetics and the Limits of Visibility.” E- Flux Journal, no. 79 (February). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/79/94433/material-matters- black-radical-aesthetics-and-the-limits-of-visibility/.
  • Campt, Tina M. 2019. “Black Visuality and the Practice of Refusal.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 29 (1): 79–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2019.1573625.
  • Glissant, Édouard. 1997. “For Opacity.” In Poetics of Relation, 189–94. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Part 1/2 (16’): transparency, surveillance and control; the right to opacity.



Activity: watch Facial Weaponization by Zack Blas (8 min): https://zachblas.info/works/facial-weaponization-suite/ 

Part 2/2 (18’): refusal and negation in black theory and visual arts; ethnographic film and in/visibility.




  • Further reading:
  • Abu Hatoum, Nayrouz. 2017. “Framing Visual Politics: Photography of the Wall in Palestine.” Visual Anthropology Review 33 (1): 18–27. doi:10.1111/var.12118.
  • Blas, Zach. 2016. “Opacities: An Introduction.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 31 (2 (92)): 149–53. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3592499.
  • Demos, T. J. 2009. “The Right to Opacity: On the Otolith Group’s Nervus Rerum.” October 129: 113–28.
  • Demos, T. J. 2005. “The Art of Darkness: On Steve McQueen.” October 114 (October): 61–89. https://doi.org/10.1162/016228705774889583.
  • Minh-ha, Trinh T. 2016. “The Image and the Void.” Journal of Visual Culture 15 (1): 131–40. doi:10.1177/1470412915619458.
  • Rancière, Jacques. 2009. “The Intolerable Image.” In The Emancipated Spectator, 83–105. London: Verso.
  • Rhee, Jennifer. 2016. “Adam Harvey’s ‘Anti-Drone’ Wear in Three Sites of Opacity.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 31 (2 (92)): 175–85. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3592532.
  • Schmid, Marion. 2014. “The Cinema Films Back: Colonialism, Alterity and Resistance in Chantal Akerman’s La Folie Almayer”. Australian Journal of French Studies 51 (1): 22-34. https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2014.3. 
  • Simpson, Audra. 2007. “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship.” Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, no. 9: 67–80.
  • Wilkinson, Jayne. 2015. “Art Documents: The Politics of Visibility in Contemporary Photography.” InVisible Culture, no. 22. http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/art- documents-the-politics-of-visibility-in-contemporary-photography/

  • Suggested Films:
  • Bonnetta, Joshua and J.P. Sniadecki. 2018. El Mar La Mar. US, 94 min. Jarman, Derek. 1993. Blue. UK, 79 min.
  • Otolith Group, The. 2010. Hydra Decapita. UK, 32 min. 
  • Living and Dead Ensemble, The. 2020. Ouvertures. France, 132 min.
  • McQueen, Steve. 2002. Caribs Leap/Western Deep. UK, 64 min.
  • Scheffner, Philip. 2016. Havarie. Germany, 93 min.