Stray Visuality in Andrea Arnold’s <i>American Honey</i>

In dialogue with Julia Kristeva and Barbara Creed’s work on the concept of ‘stray’, this video essay explores ‘stray visuality’: visuality that exceeds the anthropocentric and ocularcentric frames of reference. Focusing on Andrea Arnold’s <i>American Honey</i>, this essay argues that her cinema is profoundly stray, not only because it makes room for a variety of human and non-human strays, but also because of its formal engagement with strayness. Even though at first glance <i>American Honey</i> is concerned with the phenomenological rhythms of its human protagonist, the camera often strays away from her to look at other things, while redrawing the anthropocentric hierarchies often in unsettling, uncanny ways. This video essay shows that (eco‑)videographic criticism itself can be thought of as a vehicle for retraining our perception.