THE RELATIONSHIP OF CINEMA TO PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT: BADIOU AND DELEUZE

OpenAlex · İngilizce

Today we live in a cinematic society governed by images and by media culture. Governmentality depends on the staging of social reality through visual dispositifs. Cinema is a significant dispositif in this context. This article first explores the relationship of cinema to modernity and spectacle and to the foundations of modern power. Besides being a governmental dispositif, cinema is also a social phenomenon. Turning social life into representation, cinema not only depicts, but also constructs social reality and shapes the social unconscious. As Bazin (2011) has argued, cinema provides its audience with tools with which to philosophize. The article compares Badiou’s and Deleuze’s approaches to cinema, which suggest that, although the cinematic thought is not reducible to the philosophical, cinema always stages a philosophical encounter, affecting new ways of thinking and being.