Politics, Theory, and Film

Critical Encounters with Lars Von Trier
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-060017-4
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 470 Seiten, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 877 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Honig, Bonnie

Marso, Lori J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface by Davide Panagia

- Acknowledgments

- About the Contributors

- INTRODUCTION

- Lars von Trier and the 'Clichés of Our Times'

- Bonnie Honig and Lori J. Marso

- I. ANTI-SEMITE/JEW

- VON TRIER

- Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

- 1. An Invitation from Lars von Trier - Transcript of the First TV interview since the Cannes Press Conference, with Martin Krasnik, Danish journalist.

- Translated by Troels Skadhauge and Lars Tønder

- II. WOMAN/NYMPH

- 2. Must We Burn Lars von Trier? Simone de Beauvoir's Body Politics in Antichrist

- Lori J. Marso

- 3. The Suffering Spectator? Perversion and Complicity in Antichrist and Nymphomaniac

- Rosalind Galt

- 4. The Nymph Shoots Back: Agamben and the Feel of the Agon

- Lynne Huffer

- III. FATE/MARTYR

- 5. Sharing in What Death Reveals: Breaking the Waves with Bataille

- Stephen S. Bush

- 6. Broken by God: Fate and Divine Intervention in Breaking the Waves

- James Martel

- IV. YOUNG AMERICANS

- 7. Blind Spots and Double Vision: National and Individual Fantasy in Dancer in the Dark

- Victoria Wohl

-

- 8. "Young Americans": Ranciére and Bowie in Dogville

- Paul Apostilidis

- 9. Three Emancipations: Manderlay and Racialized Freedom

- Elisabeth R. Anker

- 10. Face Value: von Trier, Bowie, Kanye (Notes on a review and three rants)

- Tony Cokes

- KANYE

- Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

- V. EUROPE/EVIL

- BOWIE

- Tony Cokes (Designer: Jessica Fleischmann / still room)

- 11. "At the Fringes of One's Consciousness": Kierkegaard, The Idiots, and the Politics of Comic Rule Following

- Lars Tønder

- 12. A Philopoetic Engagement: Deleuze and The Element of Crime

- Michael J. Shapiro

- 13. Evils of Representation in Europa and Melancholia

- Joshua Foa Dienstag

- VI. THINKING/MELANCHOLIA

- 14. Black Suns and a Bright Planet: Melancholia as Thought Experiment

- Thomas Elsaesser

- 15. "I know what has to happen": Tragedy, Mourning, and Melancholia in Lars von Trier's Medea

- Miriam Leonard

- 16. Out Like a Lion: Melancholia with Euripides and Winnicott

- Bonnie Honig

- 17. The Gravity of Melancholia: A Critique of Speculative Realism

- Christopher Peterson

- 18. Melancholia and Us

- William E. Connolly

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

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.