The Migrant as an Eye/I. Transculturality, Self-Representation, Audiovisual Practices (Introduction)

The article introduces the Cinergie special issue no. 16 devoted to experiences of exile, immigration, and transnationality in the current audiovisual production. This introduction aims to frame the theoretical debate concerning the forms of self-representation from the side of the Other. In this age of highest expansion of new autobiographical forms thanks to audiovisual and digital practices (autobiographical fiction and documentary films and videos, digital storytelling, self-portraits and selfies, Vlog, Facebook and Instagram accounts, etc.), not only is possible for anyone to produce and circulate self-representations as a banal and everyday practice, but it also viable for current self-representations to join established discourses that reflect power relations at both social and geopolitical level. How could then ex-/post-colonial subjects and their antecedents/descendants subverting the stereotypes of Western culture through their own direct stories? How can hierarchies be reinscribed when the Other’s self-image is remediated in the Western media system? When and how does the Other actually have the possibility to represent her/himself?