CFP: SCMS Atlanta 2016

Jacques Rancière and Film Theory

This panel invites papers that consider Jacques Rancière’s political and aesthetic philosophy in the context of film theory. As part of his broader philosophical project to re-conceptualize the link between art and politics, Rancière has written extensively on visual media and culture, with cinema accorded a decisive status in his overall thought. In relation to film theory, his work is at odds with the two apolitical (or anti-political) trends that currently dominate the field: the phenomenological school and its Deleuze-inspired emphasis on affect; the various “post-theory” movements (analytical philosophy, cognitivism etc.) conceived in opposition to “political modernism” and which stake their legitimacy on the presumptive objectivity of scientific procedures.

Rancière’s philosophy stands in contrast to these two schools in his insistence that the question of politics, abandoned in film theory since the decline of political modernism, is ineluctably tied to the question of art. For Rancière, what at stake in art is the political question of equality. He argues that art has the capacity to realize equality via the staging of “dissensual” events which challenge the given “distribution of the sensible,” entrenched regimes of aesthetically configured “common sense” that determine the horizon of what is sayable, doable, and thinkable.

Given its emphasis on the political character of art and aesthetics (cinema in particular), Rancière’s philosophy has the potential to radically reshape current debates in film theory. Yet despite this potential, critical evaluations of Rancière’s work in the context of film theory are few and scattered. Only recently has a more concerted effort to assesses his substantial contributions to the field asserted itself, as evidenced by the publication in 2013 of the anthology “Rancière and Film.” This panel is being organized in support of this effort.

Some suggested questions and topics:

• Following Rancière, how might we conceive of the politics of “film as film”?
• A consideration of Rancière’s philosophy in relation to film theory’s “modernity thesis.”
• Affinities, connections, or disputes between Rancière and various factions within film theory: analytic philosophy, filmosophy, cognitive film theory, cinephilia, Bordwell’s poetics etc.
• Rancière’s break with political modernism (via his critique of Althusser) and the implications for current film theory (and so-called “post-theory”).
• Rancière’s commentaries on individual film theorists (Epstein, Godard, Deleuze etc.) and specific films or groups of films (the cinema of Anthony Mann, Godard, Chris Marker etc.)
• How might documentary theory and practice be re-conceptualized under Rancière’s philosophy?

Please send abstract (ca. 300 words), bibliography (3–5 entries) and author bio (50–100 words) to Konstantinos Koutras at dino.koutras@carleton.ca by Aug 1. Successful submissions will be notified by Aug. 10. Please include “SCMS” in your subject-line.