Synopses & Reviews
This unique volume collects a series of essays that link new developments in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and recent trends in contemporary cinema. Though Lacanian theory has long had a privileged place in the analysis of film, film theory has tended to ignore some of Lacan's most important ideas. As a result, Lacanian film theory has never properly integrated the disruptive and troubling aspects of the filmic experience that result from the encounter with the Real that this experience makes possible. Many contemporary theorists emphasize the importance of the encounter with the Real in Lacan's thought, but rarely in discussions of film. By bringing the encounter with the Real into the dialogue of film theory, the contributors to this volume present a new version of Lacan to the world of film studies.
These essays bring this rediscovered Lacan to bear on contemporary cinema through analysis of a wide variety of films, including Memento, Eyes Wide Shut, Breaking the Waves, and Fight Club. The films discussed here demand a turn to Lacanian theory because they emphasize the disruptive role of the Real and of jouissance in the experience of the human subject. There is a growing number of films in contemporary cinema that speak to film's power to challenge and disturb the complacency of spectators, and the essays in Lacan and Contemporary Film analyze some of these films and bring their power to light.
Because of its dual focus on developments in Lacanian theory and in contemporary film, this collection serves as both an accessible introduction to current Lacanian film theory and an introduction to the study of contemporary cinema. Each essay provides an accessible, jargon-free analysis of one or more important films, and at the same time, each explains and utilizes key concepts of Lacanian theory. The collection stages an encounter between Lacanian theory and contemporary cinema, and the result is the enrichment of both.
Review
andldquo;Drive in Cinema can be seen as an intellectual andlsquo;Molotov cocktail,andrsquo; bringing together diverse theoretical elements in order to ignite the cinema screen with the flames of radical theory and avant-garde practice.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In Drive in Cinema, Marc James Landeacute;ger presents and#381;iand#382;ek-influenced studies of films made by some of the most influential filmmakers of our time, including Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Harmony Korine, and more. Working with radical theory and Lacanian ethics, Landeacute;ger draws surprising connections between art, film, and politics, taking his analysis beyond the academic obsession with cultural representation and filmic technique and instead revealing filmandrsquo;s potential as an emancipatory force.
About the Author
Todd McGowanTodd McGowan teaches film and critical theory in the English Department at the University of Vermont. He is the author of The Feminine "No!" and The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. He lives in Vermont.
Sheila Kunkle
Sheila Kunkle is Professor of Social Sciences at Vermont College of the Union Institute and University. She is the author of numerous articles on Lacanian psychoanalysis and culture. She lives in Vermont.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword: Revolution at the Drive-in by Bradley Tuck
Introduction: 1 + 1 + a
Chapter 1: Sad Bunny: Vincent Gallo and the Melancholia of Gender
Chapter 2: Drive in Cinema: The Dialectic of the Subject in Daisies and Who Wants to Kill Jessie?
Chapter 3: The Ghost is a Shell
Chapter 4: Ecstatic Struggle in the World System: Werner Herzogandrsquo;s Encounters at the End of the World
Chapter 5: Alexander Klugeandrsquo;s News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx andndash; Einstein andndash; Das Capital: A Conversation with Michael Blum and Barbara Clausen
Chapter 6: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Obama (But Were Afraid to Ask Mr. Freedom)
Chapter 7: An Interview with Marc James Landeacute;ger on Radical Politics, Cinema and the Future of the Avant Garde by Bradley Tuck
Chapter 8: Pasoliniandrsquo;s Contribution to La Rabbia as an Instance of Fantasmic Realism
Chapter 9: Godardandrsquo;s Film Socialisme: The Agency of Art in the Unconscious
Chapter 10: What Is to Be Done? with Spring Breakers
Chapter 11: Analytical Realism in Activist Film
Conclusion: Only Communists Left Alive
Index