Acinemas Lyotard's Philosophy of Film

by Jones, Graham; Woodward, Ashley

• ISBN13: 9781474418942
• ISBN10: 1474418945
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-10-01
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

This collection presents, for the first time in English, Jean-François Lyotard's major essays on film: 'Acinema', 'The Unconscious as Mise-en-scène', 'Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema' and 'The Idea of a Sovereign Film'.

Then, eight critical essays by philosophers and film theorists examine Lyotard's film work and influence across two sections: 'Approaches and Interpretations' and 'Applications and Extensions'. These works are complemented by an introductory essay by leading French scholar Jean-Michel Durafour on Lyotard's film-philosophy, an overview of Lyotard's practical film projects written by his collaborators Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman, and the synopsis for a later film project Memorial Immemorial, which Lyotard proposed but was not produced.

Jean-François Lyotard was the most significant aesthetician of the poststructuralist generation, but this dimension of his thought is only recently beginning to receive the attention it deserves in the English-speaking world. He devoted a number of essays to film, and was involved in making several experimental short films. Lyotard's reflections on film offer a perspective which seeks to do justice to it as an art by focusing on its aesthetic, material qualities. His work in this area remains a largely untapped resource, with the potential for inaugurating exciting new directions in film-philosophy.

Author Biography

Graham Jones is Lecturer in Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Media and Communications at Monash University, Australia.

Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee and is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo (The Davies Group, 2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors

Foreword
Susana Viegas and James Williams

Editor's Introduction
Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward

Cinema Lyotard: An Introduction
Jean-Michel Durafour

Lyotard's Essays on Film
Acinema
The Unconscious as Mise-en-scène
Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema
The Idea of a Sovereign Film

Approaches and Interpretations
Imaginary Constructs? A Libidinal Economy of the Cinematographic Medium
Julie Gaillard

Lyotard, Gorgias and the Art of Seduction
Keith Crome

Authorisation: Lyotard's Sovereign Image
Peter W. Milne

Applications And Extentions
Discourse, Figure, Suture: Lyotard and Cinematic Space
Jon Hackett

On Dialogue as Performative Art Criticism
Vlad Ionescu

Give Me a Sign: An Anxious Exploration of Performance on Film, Under Lyotard's Shadow
Kiff Bamford

How Desire Works: A Lyotardian Lynch
Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward

Aberrant Movement and Somatography in the Hysterical Films of Roméo Bosetti
Lisa Trahair

Appendices
1. Lyotard's Film Work
Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman

2. Memorial Immemorial
Jean-François Lyotard

3. Lyotard Filmography

Bibliography
Index