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Bad Habits, or, Can Reflexivity Be Good Again?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Pooja Rangan Open the ORCID record for Pooja Rangan [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

In her response to the forum on Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke University Press, 2017), author Pooja Rangan takes up a range of issues that emerge in responses to her book by Rey Chow, Lucas Hilderbrand, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, and Naomi Waltham-Smith. Rangan’s response revolves around the question: Has reflexivity become untimely? What is the role of reflexive critique in a time of existential crisis? In answering this question, Rangan argues that alongside a “non-naive commitment to a notion of the truth” (a topic that emerges in several of the responses as well as in recent literature on documentary), documentary scholars must pursue a radically uncynical commitment to reflexivity. Redefining reflexivity as a form of “restoration work” (Eli Clare) or “wake work” (Christina Sharpe), Rangan traces the shared investments of documentary critique and contemporary analyses of disability and Black existence.

Keywords

documentaryreflexivityclimate changerealitycritique
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Black Panther Special Issue , April 2020 , pp. 225 - 229
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2020

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