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

Experiences such as those of exile, immigration, and transnationality are central in the current political and cultural debate.Several filmic works and visual artistic projects focus their narratives on life stories, as shaped by distance (either geographic or memory-related) and motion (in terms of travel, border crossing and disorientation).Meanwhile, a focus on exilic and diasporic identities may lead potential audience to perceive migrant works merely on the basis of personal traumas of displacement.This special issue of Cinergie aims at scoping the plurality of cross-media productions that define nondominant forms of ethnic subjectivity, in the awareness of both the dynamic contamination of cultural models and the crisis of the ancient dichotomy between Self and Other.Challenging both the assimilationist logic and the processes of Othering, we witness now the reclaiming of identities that have already internalised their ethno-cultural roots.Despite the marginalization, repression and forgetfulness put forth by hegemonic political systems, the opportunity for minorities to freely express themselves seems finally emerging, as well as the possibility to let counter-memories arise.However, if we consider -as Tobias Döring suggests -that the post-colonial self-definition develops and articulates itself as a process symbolised against the power of a colonizing or dominant gaze, we should observe and analyse more precisely the ways through which these works shape "the trope of seeing in the passage of the Eye/I" (Döring 1998: 156).On the one hand, post-colonial self-representation can subvert inherited determinations or cultural perspectives by claiming an independent way of looking (the stance of establishing a critical difference).On the other, ethnic subjectivities can only do it by admitting as far as view devices are affected by historical perceptions and consolidated structures of power (the stance of becoming aware of a cultural contiguity).Thus, the writing and depicting of the Self proceed both counter and near to the texts focused on representing the Other.Indeed, the passage of the Eye/I is also a decisive concern in the main contributions devoted to the study of the relationship between self-representation and film.In 1980 Elisabeth W.

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