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click to enlarge Buy online:
UK, Europe or Asia
(in pounds sterling)
USA and the Americas
(in US dollars)  Jean-Luc Nancy
(1940-)
French philosopher
 1 other title  Robert Bresson
(1901-99)
French director  Marguerite Duras
(1914-96)
French novelist
1 other title  Claire Denis
(1948-)
French director
1 other title | Moving Image 2 Legenda: Oxford, 2012
£45.00 ($89.50 US) Hardback 188pp
ISBN: 978-1-907975-03-5
Drawing on the work of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, Cinema and Contact investigates the aesthetics and politics of touch in the cinema of three of the most prominent and distinctive filmmakers to have emerged in France during the last fifty years: Robert Bresson, Marguerite Duras and Claire Denis. Countering the dominant critical account of touch elaborated by recent models of embodied spectatorship, this book argues that cinema offers a privileged space for understanding touch in terms of spacing and withdrawal rather than immediacy and continuity. Such a deconstructive configuration of touch is shown here to have far-reaching implications, inviting an innovative rethinking of politics, aesthetics and theology via the textures of cinema.
The first study to bring the thought of Nancy into sustained dialogue with a series of detailed analyses of films, Cinema and Contact also forges new interpretative perspectives on Bresson, Duras and Denis, tracing a compelling two-way exchange between cinema and philosophy. Laura McMahon is a Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. Reviews:
- ‘Makes a persuasive case for the links between these directors... Many of these readings are very sensitive, and the breadth and precision of McMahon’s knowledge of continental philosophy is certainly impressive.’ — Douglas Morrey, Modern and Contemporary France 20.4 (September 2012), 517-18
- ‘Cinema and Contact contributes productively to a growing field of film-philosophy exploring the intersections between Nancean philosophy and cinematic aesthetics. McMahon’s work should be of great interest to film scholars looking to introduce themselves to the philosophy of Nancy and the multiplicity of ways that it touches upon and diverges from the embodied and tactile aesthetics of French cinema’ — Kathleen Scott, Frames Cinema Journal Online
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