The Witch′s Flight

“The Witch’s Flight gives interesting insight to how images of Black women have affected racism, homophobia, and misogyny in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. . . . While a picture is worth a thousand words, Keeling’s descriptions and explanations clearly depict the connection between the images we see every day and their influences on Black Nationalism and what we except as truth. Even when describing films that I have never seen, the writing in The Witch’s Flight brought the pictures to life and allowed me to grasp the visual impact of each example.” - Arielle Altman, Feminist Review Blog

“For anyone interested in cultural analysis, Keeling’s approach is ultimately satisfying. Ironically, she digs below visual “reality” in a way which is scrupulous, logical and far from glib.” - Jean Roberta, TCM Reviews

“Keeling’s argument is sweeping but persuasive: that the politics and culture of African-Americans since the beginning of the 20th century are inseparable from the development of the movie industry and then television.” - Lizardlez, Rainbow Reviews

“Methodologically, The Witch’s Flight fits squarely on the shelf with other film, visual, and media studies scholarship while also straddling critical U.S. historiography, queer theory, women’s studies, and critical race studies. And yet, its methodology represents more than an example of interdisciplinarity precisely because it uniquely embodies a field of thought working to understand its own implication in reproducing global capitalism, neoliberalism, and the ruse of representation.” - Stacy I. Macías, GLQ

"[A] rich, provocative, deeply personal book. . . . Keeling's work is revelatory and refreshing; this is a book that continually engages the reader. Highly recommended.” - G. A. Foster, Choice

"Keeling successfully digs below surface realities in a way that is scrupulous and methodical." - Jean Roberta, Gay & Lesbian Review

“Kara Keeling offers a tour de force extension of Deleuze’s writings: she understands cinema as a form of thought, as well as a motor of a shared sensorium, capable of numbing repetition as well as provocative alternative visions. No ‘Deleuzeobabble’ here, though, just sweet grooves and careful readings. With lucid and piercing argument, Keeling is a serious critic of black visual culture, following a line of powerful litanies for survival from Frantz Fanon to Angela Davis to Fred Moten.” - Amy Villarejo, author of Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire

“There is a special alchemy at work in this wonderful project that transforms painstaking research and original theoretical insight into a superb understanding of the cinematic’s deeply cathected relation to blackness, gender, and sexuality. Kara Keeling watches, reads, and stitches together a tapestry that teaches us how to re-read and re-think what we thought we knew already of visual culture, of the peculiarities of our social order’s self-imagination, and of the survival of black femme desire.” - Wahneema Lubiano, editor of The House that Race Built

"Keeling’s book is an astonishing example of how to do things with film and feminism.... Evidence that feminist film theory not only changes how you see the world, but changes the world itself." - Sophie Mayer, British Film Institute