Film Political Theory

Political theorists are increasingly turning to film as a repository of political insight that reflects fundamental facts about society and culture. This course will focus, however, less on the explicit political representations presented within specific films (for example, as in the narrative communication of already formed ideological visions of the world), in order to investigate the capacity of film to itself generate unique philosophical and political orientations via its singular form. Through reading the contributions of contemporary theorists such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, William Connolly, Davide Panagia, Joshua Foa Dienstag, Michael Shapiro, and others, we will investigate such diverse topics as film's relation to democratic thinking, the connection between cinematic and political representation, the political economy of film production, and film's embodiment of thinking the event. In addition, we will also examine a select group of particular film genres - specifically the Western, the horror, and the film noir - in order to understand what particular insights they communicate about contemporary political life.