Opacity can refer to both the physical, optical quality of being impenetrable by light (see Emmelhainz in SDUK09 on the opaque screens of media technologies), and the state of impenetrability, unknowability, or untranslatability of an idea. As put forward by the Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, opacity describes how some knowledges, stories, experiences, and modes of communication must not be made comprehensible to all, as a way of resisting colonial knowledge systems that seek to measure and delineate in order to enable domination. Opacity can include “speaking in code,” or refusal to make aspects of one’s experience available to those seeking to instrumentalize it (see El-Hadi et al. in SDUK09). A major strategy in contemporary Black thought and cultural production, opacity has been taken up by numerous writers, thinkers, and artists (see MICE Magazine Issue 04: Opacities for further detail).