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, Zizek, 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.
