Cinema/Politics/Philosophy

Nico Baumbach

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

Cinema/Politics/Philosophy

Nico Baumbach

In the series Film and Culture Series

https://doi.org/10.7312/baum18422

Overview
Contents

About this book

Nico Baumbach revisits the much-maligned tradition of seventies film theory to reconsider: What does it mean to call cinema political? He explores how cinema can condition philosophy through its own means, challenging received ideas about what is seeable, sayable, and doable.

Author / Editor information

Nico Baumbach is associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University.

Reviews

Francesco Casetti, Yale University:
Once again, philosophy knocks at cinema’s door and raises unsettling questions. Through an ideal conversation with Badiou, Rancière, and Agamben, Nico Baumbach retraces and relaunches a crucial debate.

Homay King, Professor and Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College:
Film theory of the 1970s is not dead. True, we understand now that ideology critique and détournement are not the sole tools available to the political theorist or maker. In Cinema/Politics/Philosophy, Nico Baumbach shows that Rancière, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben—frequently set in opposition to their predecessors—in fact continue their work, while also illuminating exit signs from its various culs-de-sac. More urgently, Baumbach reveals the massive consequences when cinema is reduced to data, whether by celebrants of so-called “grand theory” or by its detractors. Cinema is not simply political or apolitical, a set of good or bad objects; it is itself a form of politics and a mode of thought. Provocative and timely, Cinema/Politics/Philosophy suggests that film’s political capacities are not opposed to, but rather inextricable from its capacity for thought and art.

Alexander R. Galloway, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University:
In this nuanced book, Nico Baumbach digs into contemporary European philosophy and its intersection with cinema, art, and aesthetics. Focusing on the trio of Rancière, Badiou, and Agamben, Baumbach makes a compelling case that such theorists, having already influenced discussions in literature and philosophy, also offer a new path for the future of cinema and media studies. Ultimately the question is not so much how film represents the world, or the material reality of affect or sensation, but how cinema itself is directly philosophical and political.

D. N. Rodowick, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago:
In this lucid and insightful book, Nico Baumbach offers a much-needed critical account of new European philosophies of the image. Pairing Rancière with Althusser, Badiou with Deleuze, and Agamben with Benjamin, Baumbach demonstrates convincingly how these influential philosophers remap the relation of philosophy to film in ways continuous with the recent history of film theory, while in turn offering his own powerful perspective on the relation between aesthetics and politics.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF FILM THEORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. CINEMATIC EQUALITY: RANCIÈRE AND FILM THEORY AFTER ALTHUSSER Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2. CINEMA’S THOUGHT: BADIOU AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF CINEMA AFTER DELEUZE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
3. CINEMA AS EMERGENCY BRAKE: AGAMBEN AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MEDIA AFTER BENJAMIN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
4. RETHINKING THE POLITICS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF CINEMA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: October 30, 2018
ISBN: 9780231545372