The uncanny at the site of displacement: a study of post-migratory photography and film artworks

Zhou, W. (2025) The uncanny at the site of displacement: a study of post-migratory photography and film artworks. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00124438

Abstract/Summary

This thesis examines the post-migratory conditions and representation of migrant identity in photography and film. Focusing on the uncanny as both a conceptual and aesthetic strategy, it integrates film theory, psychoanalysis, and post-migratory studies to interrogate the aesthetic and political stakes of migratory experience and representation. It critically examines documentary mediation, the tensions between visibility and secrecy, and the affective registers of displaced memory. Drawing on Freud’s aesthetic of the uncanny, Derrida’s hauntological reading of cinema, and Kracauer’s cinema realism, the study explores how artists use narrative disruption, spectrality, and ambiguity to challenge dominant representational paradigms. The film artwork, Baiji, serves as both a case study from the maker’s perspective and an artistic intervention, employing a fragmented narrative to explore the temporally disjointed lives of a father and daughter abroad. Through poetic soliloquies and disjointed daydreams, Baiji examines displacement, memory, and longing. This inquiry extends to case studies of Lynne Sachs’ Your Day Is My Night and Which Way Is East, as well as Bo Wang’s An Asian Ghost Story and China Concerto, some of which use hybrid documentary strategies that exposed the problematic epistemic and ethical tensions of migrant representation. More importantly, certain parts of these works incorporate uncanny estrangement, spectrality, and narrative disjunction, resonant with Baiji’s destabilization of conventional migration portrayals. By highlighting the aesthetic and political potential of the uncanny in post-migratory film, this research contributes to contemporary migration and art discourses. It argues that ambiguity, fragmentation, and spectrality—hallmarks of migratory experience—unsettle fixed narratives of belonging. Rather than merely depicting displacement, these works actively perform and mediate migrant subjectivity. Through critical and practice-based inquiry, this study demonstrates how experimental film techniques—such as nonlinear temporality, fragmented storytelling, and poetic soliloquy—expand the articulation of migratory experience beyond conventional documentary realism.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/124438
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00124438
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Art
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