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Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou
A Critical Reader
Edited by Christopher Kul-Want
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Book Presentation:
Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou is an anthology of writings on cinema and film by many of the major thinkers in continental philosophy. The book presents a selection of fundamental texts, each accompanied by an introduction and exposition by the editor, Christopher Kul-Want, that places the philosophers within a historical and intellectual framework of aesthetic and social thought.
Encompassing a range of intellectual traditions—Marxism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, gender and affect theories—this critical reader features writings by Bergson, Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, Merleau-Ponty, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Lyotard, Deleuze, Kristeva, Agamben, Žižek, Nancy, Cavell, Rancière, Badiou, Stiegler, and Silverman. Many of the texts discuss cinema as a mass medium; others develop phenomenological analyses of particular films. Reflecting upon the potential of films to challenge dominant forms of ideology, the anthology considers the ways in which they can disrupt the clichés of capitalist images and offer radical possibilities for creating new worlds of visceral experience outside the grasp of habitual forms of knowledge and subjectivity. Ranging from the early silent period of cinema through the classics of European and Hollywood cinema to the early twenty-first century, the films discussed offer a vivid sense of these philosophers’ concepts and ideas, casting new light on the history of cinema. This reader is an essential and valuable resource for a wide range of courses in film and philosophy.
About the Author:
Christopher Kul-Want is course leader of the MRes Art course and leader of the MRes Art: Theory and Philosophy pathway at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. He is the editor of Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader (Columbia, 2010), to which this volume is a companion.
Press Reviews:
Any film lover in or freshly out of school may just have their life changed with this little diddy. CriterionCast
Philosophers on Film is an important collection, especially for students first breaking into film studies or scholars who desire quick reference to diverse groundbreaking texts. ANDREW KETTLER, University of South Carolina, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
The contemporary philosophers included in this anthology have been prominent in Anglophone discourse in the humanities over the last twenty years, yet their contributions to film theory have not been addressed in a systematic fashion. Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou offers a coherent framework for approaching this diverse group of philosophers, and the summaries of the arguments of the individual selections are informed, accurate, and accessible. This anthology promises to serve an important function in cinema studies. Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia
An essential collection that gathers the most important works, both classical and contemporary, on film and philosophy. It covers all of the field’s complex configurations from the continental tradition: philosophy of film, philosophy in film, as well as film as philosophy. No serious film philosopher will be able to leave home without it. John Ó Maoilearca, Kingston University, London
This important and comprehensive collection offers a complex and carefully chosen series of texts that set out the difficult and urgent relations between film and philosophy, as well as between popular cultures and critical thinking over the last century. Christopher Kul-Want's introduction is a subtle and definitive guide through these crucial issues of modern culture that will enable the reader to find their own place among them. Adrian Rifkin, Goldsmiths College, University of London
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
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