Glanz. Zur Diffraktion des Spiegels

Abstract

Based on close readings of the visual album Lemonade by Beyoncé and the music video Two Weeks by FKA twigs this paper examines shining, as the potential to diffract a mirror, as the medium that holds deep significance for white western subject formation. In reference to Achille Mbembe’s approach to becoming black and Fred Moten’s concept of previousness I will argue that shining plays a central role in enabling a black subjectification whose political power arises from the circumstance of not yet being a proper subject. In the previousness of black subjectivity rests the possibility to realize being engaged with world beyond white western understandings of participation. Thus, black subjectivity can be understood as diffractive subjectivity, as shiny.