The Moving Image of Racial Capitalism: On Cedric Robinson’s Film Writings

This article undertakes a critical survey of Cedric Robinson's writings on film. It foregrounds the methodological and political insights generated by his understanding of “racial regimes” as pertains to the study of films and genres that consolidate racial orders, while also underscoring how it enhances our appreciation of oppositional cinematic practices. Though critics have taken the idea of racial capitalism to task as idealist, the article emphasizes the attention in Robinson's writings on film — and especially his final book, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning — to the histories and materialities of both political economy (the composition of film capital) and libidinal economy (the role of gender).