Books by James Harvey
BFI Publishing/Bloomsbury, 2023
Edinburgh University Press, 2018
In Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Art Cinema, James Harvey contends that Rancière’s writing... more In Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Art Cinema, James Harvey contends that Rancière’s writing allows us to broach art and politics on the very same terms: each involves the visible and the invisible, the heard and unheard, and the distribution of bodies in a perceivable social order. Between making, performing, viewing and sharing films, a space is constructed for tracing and realigning the margins of society, allowing us to consider the potential of cinema to create new political subjects. Drawing on case studies of films including Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates and John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, this books asks to what extent is politics shaping art cinema? And, in turn, could art cinema possibly affect the political structure of the world as we know it?
Articles by James Harvey
Studies in Documentary Film, 2024
This article is an attempt to invigorate decolonisation discourse in Film and Media Studies, part... more This article is an attempt to invigorate decolonisation discourse in Film and Media Studies, particularly with regard to Documentary Studies. It does so by centring a screen installation work, by a filmmaker whose formal preoccupations have returned repeatedly to the fictions and limitations of archival documents. Peripeteia (John Akomfrah, dir. 2012. Peripeteia. UK: Smoking Dogs Films.) imagines an encounter between two people, 'lost to the winds of history'. In its use of objects including sketches, photographs and written quotations, the film constructs an elliptical narrative with archival fragments. Locating its actors in a placeless landscape, wrenched from their point of origin and dependent solely on superficial images for context, Peripeteia reanimates its barely known subjects to perform a critique of the coloniality of the reenactment form, which has been used deceptively throughout the history of films defined as 'non-fiction'. Coining archival reenactment as a mode which (1) utilises a self-critical rehearsal of historical gestures to interrogate documentary film's archival function, and (2) employs archival fragments to both build and trouble the depth of its own representation, this article centres Peripeteia as a template for the decolonial critique of an over-familiar convention in the documentary mode.
Transnational Screens, 2022
The Unfinished Conversation – and the extended cinema release, The Stuart Hall Project – is, on t... more The Unfinished Conversation – and the extended cinema release, The Stuart Hall Project – is, on the one hand, a continuation of Akomfrah’s engagement with iconic black public figures (Days of Hope and The March on Martin Luther King; The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong; Mariah Carey: The Billion Dollar Babe; Urban Soul: The Making of Modern R&B). Unlike Akomfrah’s conceptual approach in those films though, the Stuart Hall films are the dialectical sum of two major thinkers’ ideas. Focusing on Hall’s life and work, the films incorporate what Hall termed ‘the kaleidoscopic conditions of blackness’ into their aesthetic design. This article engages closely with the extended cinema release to explore Akomfrah’s approach to Hall’s mode of analysis, analysing the films’ decentring of wider social narratives, which, I argue, are seamlessly interwoven into both the design of Akomfrah’s montage and the analytic methods of Hall’s work in the field of Cultural Studies. Through close analysis of sequences in The Stuart Hall Project, I demonstrate how Akomfrah’s refined approach to archival montage hails Hall’s writings on identity, realising new analytic possibilities in the coming together of two major postcolonial intellectuals.
Black Film British Cinema II, 2021
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/black-film-british-cinema-ii
The Films of Pablo Larraín, 2020
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-refocus-the-films-of-pablo-larrain.html
Studies in European Cinema, 2019
Artur Zmijewski’s Democracies (2009) is a video installation
(screened as a 20-channel piece at g... more Artur Zmijewski’s Democracies (2009) is a video installation
(screened as a 20-channel piece at galleries across Europe and as
a single-screen film at London’s Tate Modern) that brings together
20 different public assemblies – ranging from funerals to marches,
protests and celebrations. The film provides a microcosm of contemporary European nationalism, exemplified in the convening of
citizens in public spaces. This article analyses Democracies in order
to unpack its technical approach to the bodies and spaces it
documents. This involves two key points of departure. First,
a phenomenological reconsideration of the observational documentary
mode, which simultaneously critiques one of the foremost
forms of representing reality and reignites its potential.
Zmijewski’s observationalism is freshly engaged through the use
of counter-intuitive framing devices and highly evocative proximity
to the body throughout, encouraging the consideration of
the aesthetics of assembly in contemporary Europe. Second, I turn
to the site of exhibition, questioning the historical tendency to
locate radical art in the museum. I situate Democracies in debates
around ‘socially engaged art’, arguing that its form of engagement
is one not of healing the ‘social bond’, but of immanent critique,
holding to account institutional complicity as much as the producers
and spectators that partake in textual meaning.
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2017
Pablo Larraın’s trilogy of films has broken new ground in Chilean cinema by offering a new perspe... more Pablo Larraın’s trilogy of films has broken new ground in Chilean cinema by offering a new perspective on realities of the Pinochet dictatorship, the outbreak of the coup, and the dissolution of Pinochet’s power. This article explores Larraın’s use of banality, which, I claim, realizes a democratic ambivalence that is latent in historical representation
and History proper. Rather than accusing Larraı´n’s films of conservatism or apathy, I argue that these films seek to destabilize the known categories of identification: a radical gesture against any form of establishment. Paying particular attention to Larraın’s aesthetics, I claim that the radical gesture of Post mortem (2010) lies in its innovations at the level of mise-en-sce`ne and editing. Drawing on philosophical
insights in Jacques Ranciere’s and Gilles Deleuze’s writings on historical representation and ambivalent representations, I argue that Larraın avoids conventional forms of historical fiction and Latin American political cinema.
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Cinema, 2016
Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012) was met with widespread critical appreciation upon release, with much ... more Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012) was met with widespread critical appreciation upon release, with much attention lavished upon its rich, romantic imagery, texture and tone. The film divides itself historically (split between contemporary Lisbon and colonial Mozambique) and stylistically (between 35mm and 16mm film), which brought further acclaim for its nuanced take on history and form. However, this historical context provides the backdrop for a love story, leaving Portugal’s colonial legacy as a haunting subtext for the romance that unfolds. Tabu is notable for its stylistic flair, aesthetic beauty and evocation of sensation, over and above its arguable moral duty to engage with the past. As such, the film’s treatment of colonialism has been viewed as aesthetic opportunism. In response, this article explores Tabu’s treatment of film history as a form of critical nostalgia, showing how it harnesses what Robert Stam and Ella Shohat described as the ‘undeniable pleasures’ of Eurocentric media.
Disappearing War: Cinema and the Politics of Erasure in the War on Terrror, 2016
Should we choose to link the thematic and stylistic tendencies of post-9/11 North American cinema... more Should we choose to link the thematic and stylistic tendencies of post-9/11 North American cinema to the contemporary moment, ambiguous representation embodies the current difficulty of making sense of things in the face of a war that is at once perpetual and ‘disappearing’ (Mueller, 2004: 1). In other words, the convoluted motivations, methods and outcomes of “the war on terror” have produced a culture of uncertainty and dread, culminating in images without easily discernible meaning. Where traces of conflict are depicted, our ability to judge things clearly is significantly clouded. This chapter shall consider one particular technique used for this clouding of judgement: the erasure of discernible meaning in images of the human face. Approaching the face of Joaquin Phoenix’s “Freddie Quell” in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012), I wish to consider the film’s affectivity and expressivity of postwar trauma as an ethical challenge to the spectator.
New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2016
The films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan are always groping for the general condition of ‘humanity’ – that ... more The films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan are always groping for the general condition of ‘humanity’ – that vague anachronism, ever the object of contempt for contemporary philosophers. It is now commonplace to hear that authorship, modernity, subjectivity, history and humanity are outmoded concepts of a bygone era. Yet, in countless art films of recent years, we continue to note a dominant thematic preoccupation with recognition, anxiety and subjectivity, begging the question: If we have departed from the humanist regime of art and philosophy, why do its primary concerns continue to dominate? In this article, I wish to analyse Ceylan’s oeuvre as a continuation of the themes and aesthetics of humanist film-makers and philosophers. With in-depth discussion of the themes and aesthetics of the breadth of his oeuvre, I argue that Ceylan’s films are humanist because they focus on human subjectivity as a matter of conflict: between our notion of selfhood and the world around us. In opposition to claims of some flaccid ‘liberal humanism’ derided by posthumanists like Hayles (1999), I wish to argue that Ceylan’s humanism persists with a critical condition intrinsic to the human, denying an escape into a historically rupturing, post-ist logic.
From the breakneck exposition of Synecdoche, New York, to its narrative plotting and the dialogue... more From the breakneck exposition of Synecdoche, New York, to its narrative plotting and the dialogues between characters, everything happens absurdly quickly. This is evident from the outset: the confusion and intensity of Caden’s breakfast table is expressed through a heightening of speed in visual and sonic montage. The intensity of Synecdoche’s speed presents a well-trodden cultural critique from a perspective as peculiar formally as it is narratively.
When we gain such intimate proximity to a face, it alters our relationship with the on-screen fig... more When we gain such intimate proximity to a face, it alters our relationship with the on-screen figure. In D. A. Pennebaker's 'Monterey Pop' (1968), when Otis Redding’s face is enshrined in the dark space of the stage – his facial features adapting to the vocal action, with flashes of stage and camera light intruding intermittently – we become immersed. The close-up offers more than the romantic situation Redding’s song invites; it is a moment of human identification. But what is lost in this approach? What is missing in this equation of Redding’s face with something either godly or essentially human? Pennebaker’s objectivism produces a relativistic aesthetic approach; his camera is always responsive to the situation in which it finds itself, the style is always being shaped by each particular performance. How do we negotiate the indisputably raced element of these images? Pennebaker’s visual responsiveness produces something very different in the night-set images of Redding (indeed, Hendrix too) than in the daytime performances of Simon and Garfunkel. A combination of his black skin, the night shoot, the disparately located and differently coloured artificial light sources, one key reason this performance is so visually tantalising is the relationship between the film technology and the black body it comes to reproduce. From the aesthetics of Bela Balázs to the writings of RIchard Dyer, it is clear that what Frantz Fanon called the ‘crushing objecthood’ of black skin determines a line of inquiry when approaching close-ups in the ‘physiognomic expressive approach’. In trying to articulate an encounter with a facial close-up, broaching a discourse of physiognomy in order to analyse its appearance in the cinematic image, one must confront what one sees on the surface, irrespective of – or perhaps rather, especially in the case of – whatever sensitive histories it unsettles.
In Media Res, Apr 21, 2015
A tendency has appeared across several recent films whereby we see stars playing actors who – dur... more A tendency has appeared across several recent films whereby we see stars playing actors who – during overtly performative moments – allude to elements of their star persona. I wish simply to raise a few thoughts on three varying forms of this tendency, suggesting its reliance on both modernist and postmodernist ideas on the interchangeability of the actor/spectator positions.
In his burgeoning body of film theoretical work, French philosopher Jacques Rancière repeatedly t... more In his burgeoning body of film theoretical work, French philosopher Jacques Rancière repeatedly turns to some canonical films by neorealist pioneer, Roberto Rossellini. Not simply retreading tired motifs of neorealism, Rancière’s comments offer some profound new insights, revolutionising prior perspectives on Rossellini. In this article, I shall put Rancière’s perspective into dialogue with two of the most significant of these perspectives: André Bazin and Gilles Deleuze. In doing so, I shall claim that Rancière’s approach departs radically from the canonised, standardised neorealist conception of Rossellini. Instead, I wish to claim that he describes a modernist artist primarily concerned with aesthetic clashes. In doing so, I shall contemplate how the meaning of these films has evolved since the era of their contemporary reception, demonstrating the congruences and disparities between these three disparate approaches.
The Flâneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives, Aug 1, 2014
Despite the multitude of filmmakers and characters that wander these urban environments, locating... more Despite the multitude of filmmakers and characters that wander these urban environments, locating revelatory findings in its spatial-imaginary as they do, the flâneur remains a surprisingly underdeveloped concept in film theory. A uniquely cinematic version of flânerie may at once work to innovate upon Benjamin’s figure of the flâneur, perceptions of the cityscape, and the capabilities of cinema in general. It is with these several reconstitutive possibilities in mind that this essay questions whether the flâneur might be a concept that intervenes into conventional representations (of cities; of the wandering spectator) to political effect. Certain aesthetic qualities (through which the cinematic flâneur is produced) might themselves be indispensible to the production of politics. In order to contemplate the idea, I consider the relationship between aesthetics and politics in light of the writing of Jacques Rancière, in order to reiterate how it is that I see the flâneur as a concept with a political potential. Using Rancière’s ideas, I argue that the activity of the flâneur is absolutely political, on the proviso that the politics of works of art is understood as playing itself out "in the reconfiguration of worlds of experience...in the way in which modes of narration and new forms of visibility established by artistic practices enter into politics’ own field of aesthetic possibilities."
In order to elaborate upon how a cinematic flâneur performs this “reconfiguration of worlds of experience”, I will consider some moments in 'News from Home' in order to elaborate on how a flâneur is capable of reconfiguring existing environments – both through Akerman’s use of her own everyday, and the everyday activity of the urban population and landscape. In so doing, I wish to promote the possibility of the flâneur as – rather than Walter Benjamin's bygone figure, or contemporary panoptical readings – something more akin to what Rancière calls “missionaries of utopia”. This is the term he uses to refer to certain artists, whose aim is to focus on unaccounted-for populations. Their work is political because it casts light on an anonymous element, thus furthering the scope of those who warrant a voice: what Rancière terms a recasting of the 'distribution of the sensible'.
Evental Aesthetics, Feb 17, 2014
Iranian national cinema is showing the scars of artistic persecution. The aesthetic landscape of ... more Iranian national cinema is showing the scars of artistic persecution. The aesthetic landscape of this national cinema has become one of stark confines – both in its thematic allowances and its aesthetic possibilities. However, these confinements, both physical and technological, have not merely been passively affected by ideological constraints but have also been active in affecting ideological discourse, answering back as it does within imposed limitations. What we are seeing in contemporary Iranian cinema, I believe, is a complex movement of aesthetic novelty, provoking some important questions regarding the relationship between politics and aesthetics. The relatively high-profile instance of which I am concerned here is Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film (2011): a work that denies its ontological category and, in turn, furthers its medial possibilities. Panahi’s confinement is an
example of enforced asceticism: an asceticism of necessity, groundbreaking in its approach. So much potential arises from this “non-film” – too much to find any answers here. However, this Collision presents the perfect space for briefly outlining some of the questions emanating from a film that is “not a film”. I raise some striking similarities between what occurs with Panahi and the politico-aesthetic ideas of Jacques Rancière in order to
contemplate Panahi's use of asceticism to political effect.
Book Reviews by James Harvey
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Books by James Harvey
Articles by James Harvey
(screened as a 20-channel piece at galleries across Europe and as
a single-screen film at London’s Tate Modern) that brings together
20 different public assemblies – ranging from funerals to marches,
protests and celebrations. The film provides a microcosm of contemporary European nationalism, exemplified in the convening of
citizens in public spaces. This article analyses Democracies in order
to unpack its technical approach to the bodies and spaces it
documents. This involves two key points of departure. First,
a phenomenological reconsideration of the observational documentary
mode, which simultaneously critiques one of the foremost
forms of representing reality and reignites its potential.
Zmijewski’s observationalism is freshly engaged through the use
of counter-intuitive framing devices and highly evocative proximity
to the body throughout, encouraging the consideration of
the aesthetics of assembly in contemporary Europe. Second, I turn
to the site of exhibition, questioning the historical tendency to
locate radical art in the museum. I situate Democracies in debates
around ‘socially engaged art’, arguing that its form of engagement
is one not of healing the ‘social bond’, but of immanent critique,
holding to account institutional complicity as much as the producers
and spectators that partake in textual meaning.
and History proper. Rather than accusing Larraı´n’s films of conservatism or apathy, I argue that these films seek to destabilize the known categories of identification: a radical gesture against any form of establishment. Paying particular attention to Larraın’s aesthetics, I claim that the radical gesture of Post mortem (2010) lies in its innovations at the level of mise-en-sce`ne and editing. Drawing on philosophical
insights in Jacques Ranciere’s and Gilles Deleuze’s writings on historical representation and ambivalent representations, I argue that Larraın avoids conventional forms of historical fiction and Latin American political cinema.
In order to elaborate upon how a cinematic flâneur performs this “reconfiguration of worlds of experience”, I will consider some moments in 'News from Home' in order to elaborate on how a flâneur is capable of reconfiguring existing environments – both through Akerman’s use of her own everyday, and the everyday activity of the urban population and landscape. In so doing, I wish to promote the possibility of the flâneur as – rather than Walter Benjamin's bygone figure, or contemporary panoptical readings – something more akin to what Rancière calls “missionaries of utopia”. This is the term he uses to refer to certain artists, whose aim is to focus on unaccounted-for populations. Their work is political because it casts light on an anonymous element, thus furthering the scope of those who warrant a voice: what Rancière terms a recasting of the 'distribution of the sensible'.
example of enforced asceticism: an asceticism of necessity, groundbreaking in its approach. So much potential arises from this “non-film” – too much to find any answers here. However, this Collision presents the perfect space for briefly outlining some of the questions emanating from a film that is “not a film”. I raise some striking similarities between what occurs with Panahi and the politico-aesthetic ideas of Jacques Rancière in order to
contemplate Panahi's use of asceticism to political effect.
Book Reviews by James Harvey
(screened as a 20-channel piece at galleries across Europe and as
a single-screen film at London’s Tate Modern) that brings together
20 different public assemblies – ranging from funerals to marches,
protests and celebrations. The film provides a microcosm of contemporary European nationalism, exemplified in the convening of
citizens in public spaces. This article analyses Democracies in order
to unpack its technical approach to the bodies and spaces it
documents. This involves two key points of departure. First,
a phenomenological reconsideration of the observational documentary
mode, which simultaneously critiques one of the foremost
forms of representing reality and reignites its potential.
Zmijewski’s observationalism is freshly engaged through the use
of counter-intuitive framing devices and highly evocative proximity
to the body throughout, encouraging the consideration of
the aesthetics of assembly in contemporary Europe. Second, I turn
to the site of exhibition, questioning the historical tendency to
locate radical art in the museum. I situate Democracies in debates
around ‘socially engaged art’, arguing that its form of engagement
is one not of healing the ‘social bond’, but of immanent critique,
holding to account institutional complicity as much as the producers
and spectators that partake in textual meaning.
and History proper. Rather than accusing Larraı´n’s films of conservatism or apathy, I argue that these films seek to destabilize the known categories of identification: a radical gesture against any form of establishment. Paying particular attention to Larraın’s aesthetics, I claim that the radical gesture of Post mortem (2010) lies in its innovations at the level of mise-en-sce`ne and editing. Drawing on philosophical
insights in Jacques Ranciere’s and Gilles Deleuze’s writings on historical representation and ambivalent representations, I argue that Larraın avoids conventional forms of historical fiction and Latin American political cinema.
In order to elaborate upon how a cinematic flâneur performs this “reconfiguration of worlds of experience”, I will consider some moments in 'News from Home' in order to elaborate on how a flâneur is capable of reconfiguring existing environments – both through Akerman’s use of her own everyday, and the everyday activity of the urban population and landscape. In so doing, I wish to promote the possibility of the flâneur as – rather than Walter Benjamin's bygone figure, or contemporary panoptical readings – something more akin to what Rancière calls “missionaries of utopia”. This is the term he uses to refer to certain artists, whose aim is to focus on unaccounted-for populations. Their work is political because it casts light on an anonymous element, thus furthering the scope of those who warrant a voice: what Rancière terms a recasting of the 'distribution of the sensible'.
example of enforced asceticism: an asceticism of necessity, groundbreaking in its approach. So much potential arises from this “non-film” – too much to find any answers here. However, this Collision presents the perfect space for briefly outlining some of the questions emanating from a film that is “not a film”. I raise some striking similarities between what occurs with Panahi and the politico-aesthetic ideas of Jacques Rancière in order to
contemplate Panahi's use of asceticism to political effect.
Filmmakers that set their sights on a humanist conception of subjectivity (over and above the foregrounding of the ideological mechanisms that construct it) are thereby seen to fall prey to a staid, conservative paradigm of liberal humanism: an ultimately exclusive practice that dutifully segregates civility, quality and morality from stupidity and anarchy. A viewing of any of Ceylan’s films immediately discredits the binding of this apparent conservativism to humanism. Rather than seeking to assert a preferred human subject or unimpeachable individual agency, the common thread through all his films seems to be the very deconstruction of this myth.
I wish to use Ceylan’s films to contest what I see as a reductive tendency in some posthuman philosophy, which associates humanism with liberalism. Following the late writings of Edward Said, to engage with ‘the human’ in the way Ceylan does is symptomatic of humanism’s democratic legacy: ‘a process of unending disclosure, discovery, self-criticism, and liberation’. My thoughts on Ceylan’s films focus primarily on the way the 'other will' of the posthuman is reconfigured as an essentially 'conflicted will' of the human.
Jacques Rancière spoke about ‘the foreigner as a subject who ‘persists in the curiosity of his gaze, displaces his angle of vision, reworks the first way of putting together words and images, undoes the certainties of place, and thereby reawakens the power present in each of us to become a foreigner on the map of places and paths generally known as reality’. This is a useful way to approach Akomfrah’s films. When we take into account Akomfrah’s rejection of medium specificity, we can begin to trace the way working between different forms and technologies develops a peculiar aesthetic devoted to the construction of a migrant people.
We can begin to think about this medium unspecificity from the angle of exhibition. The Nine Muses started out as a gallery film called Mnemosyne: a single screen work that played in the West Midlands and BFI Southbank 2010. Like The Unfinished Conversation – the installation that preceded The Stuart Hall Project – Akomfrah exhibits micro versions of the longer, more widely distributed works that reach the cinema. It seems therefore that Mnemosyne begins a dialectical process, offering up ideas that will be furthered in The Nine Muses. Yet, by altering the gallery’s relationship of openness and interactivity, The Nine Muses positioning of its spectator introduces an alternative form of reception, situating the spectator in a more conventional relationship to the screen in the cinema space. Working between the gallery and the cinema is one way to understand Akomfrah’s aesthetics of the migrant subject: undoing the certainties of place and potentialising a novel form of perception. Beyond the site of exhibition however, I believe Akomfrah’s view of the relationship between art and subjectivity filters into the text itself. In what follows, I shall therefore ask how does The Nine Muses utilise Akomfrah’s rejection of medium specificity to construct a space for migrant subjectivities? In order to answer this question, I shall focus on the film’s anachronistic use of tableaux vivants. Colliding contemporary technologies with archaic styles produces a formal response to the challenge of reconstructing migrant histories. In order to give a sense of what I mean, here is a clip from the film. In the bricolage of images we see here, consider how the film use of digital technologies contrasts with the archival images.
Drawing on the work of Rancière, we can consider the ‘aesthetics’ at the core of politics that has nothing to do with Benjamin’s discussion of the ‘aestheticization of politics’ specific to the age of the masses’ - and specific to key contributions to debates on 'gallery film'. By turning instead to Rancière’s comments on the distribution of the sensible, we are able to articulate the sophistication of Akomfrah’s coupling of politics and art. Rancière’s political aesthetics enable us to understand the way political activity operates via the same sensory paradigms as aesthetic experience of art.
Theodor Adorno’s comments on the impossibility of poetic art after Auschwitz are vital in this regard. Images that seem at once to show and hide traumatic affects are, I wish to claim, a response to Adorno’s resistance to ‘self-satisfied contemplation’ (Adorno, 1983: 34). Echoed by Jean-Luc Godard in his monumental Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989-98), atrocities have apparently been, and continue to be, impossible to represent on film; indirect allusions instead appear in the strangeness of an image. I wish to consider a particular contemporary version of this tendency. The instance I refer to in this case is the face of Freddie Quell (played by Joaquin Phoenix) in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012). The story of an anarchic soul floating through postwar America, this film uses an elliptical narrative and a number of formal peculiarities to confound the spectator. Framing the film both in its post-WWII setting and post-9/11 production, I shall focus on one stylistic element key to its strangeness: the use of indiscernible facial close-up to portray the unportrayable scars of war.
In other words, in these modernist works of art, we see a positive contradiction: between a discernible message and an indiscernible rupture brought about by a peculiarity in the form of the work, which ultimately threatens the discernibility of that message. This contradiction enlivens what Rancière comes to call ‘the dream of a suitable political art’
Between the archival footage and the digital landscapes, Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses follows Handsworth Songs as an exemplary version of the politics of positive contradiction. It’s clash between the social antagonisms and formal innovation potentialises a space of politics through the novelty of its aesthetic experience.
Drawing upon examples from contemporary cinema, this paper will consider two conceits: the possibility of cinema altering the politics of states and state-governed societies; and the possibility of a politics reliant solely on the cinema itself (the “politics of aesthetics” that defines and reconfigures a social distribution of the sensible, as it appears in the space of, and experience of, a film).
besides Pablo Larrain have shirked the subject. With Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), and NO
(2012), Larrain has produced the first fictional, cinematic intervention into this provocative, apparently
taboo topic. Through his aesthetic, narrative, and technological innovations, he has developed a
significant body of work on the matter – as vital to the representation of historical narratives in general, as
it is to the reconciliation of Chilean identity.
In this presentation, I consider some of these innovations, in relation to what Jacques Rancière has
referred to as “the poetics of knowledge” (Rancière, 1994). For Rancière – after French Romantic
historian, Jules Michelet – there is a politically emancipatory potential inherent in historical narratives
that afford a voice to “those who would speak...and not the one who spoke”. This is what I claim is
happening in Larrain’s films. Through his focus on the anonymous individuals in these times of turmoil;
through his unwinding of the characters’ psyche in the midst of a turmoil they are oblivious to; I argue
that Larrain has developed a way of politicizing history – of breathing life into its disappeared, its
unshown, and its unshowable.
explores the way in which cinema itself has a political function.
Some filmmakers, who have lived through the transition from one politics to another (such as from Communism to neoliberalism, or some such other compromised form) have developed innovative
approaches to confronting the daunting, taboo subject matter, of the events which instigate or summarise ideological change. With reference to Jacques Rancière’s reworking of the relationship
between politics and aesthetics, I focus particularly on films by Pablo Larrain, Jia Zhang Ke, and Cristian Mungiu, in order to explore the political potential attached to their aesthetic approach: the stakes of affording a voice to those who should have spoken, but were incapacitated.