Cinema Pessimism

A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity

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by Joshua Foa Dienstag

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: sociology, cinema influence, theory
Publishing date: 2019
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 192 pages
5 ¼ x 8 inches (13.5 x 20.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-006772-4

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Book Presentation:
Aesthetic and political representation are often treated separately, but this book argues that film offers a unique perspective through which to understand the dangers to equality and freedom that lurk in representative politics. The potential problems of representative democracy have long been debated: does it cultivate apathy and discourage citizen participation? What does it mean to be faithfully or well represented in a democracy? And how can appropriate, meaningful representation be achieved? Here, these questions are addressed from a new perspective.

Representation, Joshua Foa Dienstag argues, can create the illusion of freedom and reciprocity in place of the real thing, and in both cinema and politics, what gives us pleasure is not the same as what secures or supports our existence as free and equal citizens. As this book shows, there are political dangers not visible within the current debates around democratic representation, dangers we can better understand and help to minimize by considering the way that human beings interact, emotionally, with their filmic representations.

Dienstag looks at a series of films that directly confront issues of representation (Her, Blade Runner, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Melancholia, and the Up documentary series) to diagnose these hazards and consider how best to respond to them. Each chapter looks at a specific film as emblematic of a different conception or problem of representation often ignored by mainstream political debates (such as reciprocity, happiness, boundaries, evil) to show that the relationship between representation and freedom is fraught with tension. This book continues Dienstag's earlier groundbreaking work on philosophical pessimism, understood not as something despairing, but as a rejection of the idea that these necessary tensions can be cured. Ultimately, Dienstag seeks to defend a kind of pessimistic politics that might produce a better sort of democratic representation than what we have today.

About the Author:
Joshua Foa Dienstag is Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of three previous books including, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit, which won the Book Award for Excellence in Philosophy from the American Association of Publishers, and most recently, Cinema, Democracy, Perfectionism.

Press Reviews:
"In Cinema Pessimism, Dienstag challenges what he sees as the tendency of contemporary political and film theory to equate representation and freedom. He holds that while visual culture and contemporary politics have stretched the limits of visibility, representation does not automatically enhance human autonomy." -- Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal

"Dienstag's book, by focusing on film, offers an intriguing approach to this problem ... there is enough heft to each individual part of the book to justify its inclusion in the ranks of valuable studies of the challenges and dangers of political representation." -- Kimberly Hurd Hale, Review of Politics

"How can the movies instruct us in the forms and feelings of democratic representation? How does political theory explain our attachments to cinematic realism and our investments in characters that resemble us? Exploring these questions, Cinematic Pessimism mounts a critique of our 'representative condition,' namely the collective desire that the movies and our elected leaders reflect us in near every detail. From his inventive reading of such films as Blade Runner, Her, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Up we learn that perfect representation may inhibit our freedom, happiness, and capacity for mutual regard. Cinema dramatizes this dilemma and, in Dienstag's reading, helps us to think beyond it. Anyone wanting to understand the aesthetic allure of democratic representation needs to read this compelling book." -- Jennifer Fay, author of Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene

"Cinema Pessimism vividly demonstrates the importance of film to democratic theory's ongoing reassessment of political representation. Through brilliant engagements with such films as Blade Runner, Her, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Dienstag reveals the limitations of prevailing theoretical models and develops his own distinctively "pessimist" argument about political representation's fraught role as both an enabler and an obstacle to democratic freedom. This book makes a decisive contribution to the political theory of film." -- Jason Frank, Robert J. Katz Chair of Government, Cornell University

"Studies of the political significance of film often worry that political life is threatened by the widespread passion for movies, in much the way that it is supposedly threatened by comics, rock'n'roll, rap, or the 'boob tube.' Dienstag's worry is deeper. In five lucid and provocative readings of films such as Her and Europa, he explores the prospect that filmic representation of the world itself reveals the possibilities and especially the dangers of the seemingly quite different representation of people and interests in contemporary politics. The result might be described as an updating of Rousseau's critique of the theater for our time." -- Andrew Norris, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy in the Work of Stanley Cavell

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

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