Theorizing Subjectivity and Community Through Film

• Main Author: Jakub Morawski
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: The International Academic Forum 2016-06-01
• Series: IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film
• Subjects: film theory; art theory; history of art; subject and community; postmodernism; Jacques Rancière; political aesthetics
• Online Access: https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-media-communication-and-film/volume-3-issue-1/article-2/
• ISSN: 2187-0667; 2187-0667

This paper discusses the relation between film theory, subject and the idea of community building. I will give a detailed understanding of how both theoretical perspectives in film studies as well as the artistic practice of film making try to rethink new ways of possibility of being together. I will argue that the current approach of contemporary political film studies is to reconstruct/redefine the concept of subject and community building that was either deconstructed, mistakenly or wrongly rejected, by the modern and postmodern theorists. In my studies I will not only rethink the possible political and philosophical approach to new theoretical studies of film from the perspective of subject and forms of community, but also show how the history of film theory (or art theory in general) should be rewritten in such a manner. For my methodology I will be using a combination of concepts coined by contemporary philosophers that question historical divisions of Modern/Postmodern, High Art/Popular Art, Reality/Fiction, etc. This paper is primarily concerned with the theories of Jacques Rancière but is also inspired by Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou. All of these theorists have offered new approaches to understanding how art expresses political concerns about the notion of subject and community, and while not all of them focused on art, film or aesthetics, their ideas can be easily applied to this domain.