Assayas and Political Seriousness

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by Brian Price

Type

Essays

Subject

Director > Olivier Assayas

Keywords

Olivier Assayas, politics, sociology

Publishing date

2026 (July 15, 2026) (Upcoming)

Publisher

Northwestern University Press

Collection

Superimpositions

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 280 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

979-8-89948-048-5

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Book Presentation:
A cogent reconsideration of Assayas’s cinematic oeuvre and what it teaches us about the political today

The films of Olivier Assayas are widely celebrated for their complex responses to the many shifts that globalization has introduced in our time. Brian Price contends that they offer a different way of regarding the so-called problem of cultural and political enmeshment that Carl Schmitt and other conservative thinkers fear, including a contention that enmeshment is not a problem at all, in fact, but rather a different mode of social and political organization. Price puts Assayas’s films in dialogue not only with Schmitt’s theory of the political but also with the history of political philosophy after Schmitt, especially in the work of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Chantal Mouffe, all of whom have attempted to reckon with the friend/enemy dynamic at the core of the political.

At the heart of Assayas’s cinematic oeuvre, and of this book, is a reflection on what it means to be politically serious, which, Price shows, cannot be reduced to criteria that can simply be applied or repeated. The boundaries between the political and the varied forms of the social demand a sensitivity to change and the unknown, none of which can be accessed in the states of absolute certainty that are derived from crises that do not repeat in the same ways. The messiness and nuances of modern life are held together by moving images, which insist that we know why we value what we demand and seek to protect.

About the Author:
BRIAN PRICE is a professor in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.

Press Reviews:
"There are very few film theorists writing today who can claim to have mastered both political theory and film as Price has. Careful, perceptive, detailed, and often quite beautiful, Price has written a wonderful book." ―Joshua Foa Dienstag, University of Wisconsin

"Brian Price has written a philosophically sophisticated, insightful and very important book about Olivier Assayas. The theme itself of ‘political seriousness’ is an original focus that illuminates Assayas’s films like no other commentary known to me. The results are impressive and one of the finest examples of the new field of ‘film philosophy’ that we have." ―Robert Pippin, University of Chicago

See the publisher website: Northwestern University Press

See the complete filmography of Olivier Assayas on the website: IMDB ...