Politics, Theory, and Film

Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier

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Edited by Bonnie Honig and Lori J. Marso

Type

Studies

Subject

Theory

Keywords

theory, politics, Lars von Trier

Publishing date

2016

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 470 pages
7 x 10 inches (18 x 25.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-060017-4

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Book Presentation:
• Part of new interdisciplinary turn to political theory and film
• Includes essays from the fields of political theory, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, classics, literature, and film studies
• Advances von Trier as a "thinker in film" who inspires work on gender, power, and politics in democratic theory

Lars von Trier's intense, disturbing, and sometimes funny films have led many to condemn him as misogynist or misanthropic. The same films inspire this collection's reflections on how our fears and desires regarding gender, power, race, finitude, family, and fate often thwart — and sometimes feed — our best democratic aspirations. The essays in this volume attend to von Trier's role as provocateur, as well as to his films' techniques, topics, and storytelling. Where others accuse von Trier of being clichéd, the editors argue that he intensifies the "clichés of our times" in ways that direct our political energies towards apprehending and repairing a shattered world.

The book is certainly for von Trier lovers and haters but, at the same time, political, critical, and feminist theorists entirely unfamiliar with von Trier's films will find this volume's essays of interest. Most of the contributors tarry with von Trier to develop new readings of major thinkers and writers, including Agamben, Bataille, Beauvoir, Benjamin, Deleuze, Euripides, Freud, Kierkegaard, Ranciére, Nietzsche, Winnicott, and many more. Von Trier is both central and irrelevant to much of this work. Writing from the fields of classics, literature, gender studies, philosophy, film and political theory, the authors stage an interdisciplinary intervention in film studies.

About the authors:
Edited by Bonnie Honig, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science, Brown University, and Edited by Lori J. Marso, Professor of Political Science, Union College Bonnie Honig is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor in the Departments of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University. Lori J. Marso is Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Union College.

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press