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Acinemas
Lyotard's Philosophy of Film
Edited by Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward
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Book Presentation:
The first major survey of Lyotard’s contribution to film theory, combining his original essays with new critical works by leading scholars
This collection presents, for the first time in English, Jean-François Lyotard’s major essays on film: 'Acinema', 'The Unconscious as Mise-en-scène', 'Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema' and 'The Idea of a Sovereign Film'. Then, eight critical essays by philosophers and film theorists examine Lyotard's film work and influence across two sections: 'Approaches and Interpretations' and 'Applications and Extensions'. These works are complemented by an introductory essay by leading French scholar Jean-Michel Durafour on Lyotard’s film-philosophy, an overview of Lyotard’s practical film projects written by his collaborators Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman, and the synopsis for a later film project Memorial Immemorial, which Lyotard proposed but was not produced.
Jean-François Lyotard was the most significant aesthetician of the poststructuralist generation, but this dimension of his thought is only recently beginning to receive the attention it deserves in the English-speaking world. He devoted a number of essays to film, and was involved in making several experimental short films. Lyotard’s reflections on film offer a perspective which seeks to do justice to it as an art by focusing on its aesthetic, material qualities. His work in this area remains a largely untapped resource, with the potential for inaugurating exciting new directions in film-philosophy.
Contributors
Kiff Bamford, Leeds Beckett University, UK
Keith Crome, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Jean-Michel Durafour, University Paris-Est, France
Claudine Eizykman, University of Paris 8, France
Guy Fihman, University of Paris 8, France
Julie Gaillard, Emory University, USA
Jon Hackett, St Mary’s University, UK
Vlad Ionescu, Hasselt University, Belgium
Graham Jones, Federation University, Australia
Peter W. Milne, Seoul National University, South Korea
Lisa Trahair, New South Wales, Australia
Susana Viegas, Nova University of Lisbon (NOVA), Portugal and Deakin University, Australia
James Williams, Deakin University, Australia
About the authors:
Graham Jones is Lecturer in Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Media and Communications at Federation University, Australia. He is the author of Lyotard Reframed (I.
B.Tauris, 2013), co-author of Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) and Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage II (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), and co-editor of Acinemas: Lyotard’s Philosophy of Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). His research interests include French poststructuralist philosophy, phenomenology and cybernetics.
Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee and is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo (The Davies Group, 2009).
Press Reviews:
Acinemas serves its purpose admirably: to prompt further thinking about Lyotard and film, and to offer some stimulating resources for so doing.– Dominic Lash, Film-Philosophy
The authors in this collection identify the paradox that the other visual arts were a more pervasive reference for Lyotard himself than was film in developing his theories. Yet it was acinema, the most experimental uses of cinema that provided additional challenges for his unique theories of the figural. The contention of this book is one that I applaud - that Lyotard, a philosopher of drift and transformations of all forms, should be given more attention in any philosophy of film.– Maureen Cheryn Turim, University of Florida
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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