Slavery is commonly conceptualized as a limited form of chattel slavery that existed in the pre-Emancipation antebellum South. However, the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery also includes a clause that permits enslavement as an "appropriate punishment for a crime”. It is through this lens that I examine the disproportionate rise of racialized incarceration, and the subsequent privatization and profiteering that has exploded in recent years, as a form of contemporary slavery. Using an analysis of immigrant detention on the US-Mexico border, I argue that our immigration system acts as a form of racial control and neoslavery, and that such a conclusion necessitates a radical restructuring of national dependence on criminalization and enslavement.

The aim of my presentation is to explore a unique approach to cinema called ‘a cinema of transvergence,’ as theorized by Will Higbee, as a means to glean the effectiveness of the work of three women directors from the Middle East/North Africa region, in suggesting possibilities for challenging the fixed positionings typically offered by the hegemonic structures of knowledge and power. When applied to the films of directors Raja Amari, Annemarie Jacir and Samira Makhmalbaf, a transvergent approach provides an open ended framework for understanding of interconnections which bind the filmmaker to a given film culture/national identity, the intentions, approaches and material conditions behind the production of their films, and the international reception of these films. The understanding of these factors, in turn, reveals the difference and imbalances of power exist between various film cultures and film industries.