Cinematic peripheries in South Africa: Small cinema economies and sexual citizenship in local Black porn

Scholarship on the history of cinematic forms has tended to overlook pornography as a subsector and a cinematic discourse. Iterating Haseenah Ebrahim’s concept of ‘small cinema’, this article argues that South Africa’s local Black porn exemplifies the scholarly, industrial and legal marginalization of Black porn cinema and, consequently, actuates the precarious sexual citizenship of the local Black porn community. I provide a theoretical framework for discussing Black porn as a form of identity marker and its consumption as an act of self-identification which may rally porn-consuming individuals into active sexual communities. With this, a new assemblage of sexual citizenship is realized.