Bond, Race and Coloniality No Time to Die (versify)…

Keval, Harshad

Abstract

This chapter speaks to the many ways in which the idea and practice of ‘race’, race-thinking and historiographies of race constitute colonial and imperial pasts and presents. Firstly, I provide a socio-structural, historical and political context to the imperial, colonial race-making circuitry of representations, followed by some specific, selective issues that can help us to identify examples of how racial thinking is made and unmade as the Daniel Craig Reboot (DCR) negotiates this arena. Who actually portrays Bond is situated as an existential, commodified racial system and perpetuates powerful myths around black and people of colour in film and TV. In unravelling these issues, I discuss specific characters, such as Felix Leiter, as well as the symbolic representations of Englishness, and racial purity. The five films that make up the DCR to varying extents represent this ambivalent un-racing and re-racing. Since, as Pitcher notes,‘race is produced and reproduced in spaces and places that are sometimes dismissed as trivial, insignificant’(Pitcher 2014: 29),‘race-ing’Bond emerges important at this time.

Citation

Keval, H. (2023). Bond, Race and Coloniality No Time to Die (versify)…. In C. Lindner, & L. Funnell (Eds.), Resisting James Bond: Power and Privilege in the Daniel Craig Era. Bloomsbury Publishing

• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 24, 2024
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Book Title: Resisting James Bond: Power and Privilege in the Daniel Craig Era
• Chapter Number: 8
• ISBN: 9781501388279
• Publisher URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/resisting-james-bond-9781501388279/