Disidentification, Intimacy and the Cinematic Figuration of the Postcolonial in Europe

Discourses of European identity remain structured according to assumptions of those who belong and those who do not. My Son the Fanatic (Stephen Frears, 1997) will be analyzed to argue that the film transforms postcoloniality from a static identity into a dynamic form of relational subjectivity crucial for rethinking the meaning of Europe. Rather than reconfirming a hybrid form of postcolonial subject marked by migration, the film produces a cinematic construction of European identity as a network of transforming relations between postcolonial subjects. The constitution of Europe through this cinematic construction takes the postcolonial history of immigrants in Europe as a resource for two things: refusing ossified and stereotypical understanding of the immigrant; and demonstrating the capacity for counter-intuitive relationalities as the basis for a transformed understanding of European identity.