Serge Daney, Zapper

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Small Screen ◽  
Over Time

This chapter considers Serge Daney’s transition from a film critic schooled in New Wave cinephilia to a television critic fascinated with the possibilities of the small screen and status of cinema as an old medium. Daney challenges foundational film theory and introduces the language of belatedness, aging, and delay into his writing on the “adult art” of film. In the 1980s he chronicled the experience of watching cinema on television and engaged in a process of “archaeology” focused on absent or damaged images rather than the imaginary plenitude of the screen. Daney’s work at the threshold between media provides a key reference point for film studies in the late twentieth century because it questions both the modernist euphoria of theory produced decades before and the enthusiasm surrounding new media. Daney instead constructs a retrospective theory of film that reveals its diminution over time and the persistence of its utopian ambitions.

Serge Daney, Zapper: Cinema, Television, and the Persistence of Media

October ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 157 ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Small Screen

The essay considers Serge Daney's transition from a film critic schooled in New Wave cinephilia to a television critic fascinated by the possibilities of the small screen and the status of cinema as an old medium. Looking in the “rear-view mirror,” Daney challenges foundational film theory that situates cinema at the forefront of technological and cultural modernity, and he introduces the language of belatedness, aging, and delay into his writing on the “adult art” of film. In the 1980s, Daney began to chronicle the experience of watching cinema on television, with old and new media spiraling into each other and the critic engaged in a process of archaeology focused as much on absent or damaged images as the imaginary plenitude of the screen. Tweedie's essay frames the critic's work as a key reference point for film studies in the late twentieth century because it counters both the modernist euphoria of theory produced decades before and the enthusiasm surrounding the digital revolution in the years just after his death, with new media in the vanguard once occupied by cinema. Instead of recomposing this familiar narrative of innovation, succession, and obsolescence, Daney constructs a retrospective and intermedial theory of film, with the act of watching cinema on television revealing both the diminution and the persistence of its most utopian ambitions.

The folk’ish heritage in Nordic democracy: Examples from Denmark and Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeppe Nevers ◽  
Jesper Lundsby Skov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

The Hauntology of the Cinematic Image

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Standard Position ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Beginning with the belated rediscovery and canonization of the work of Walter Benjamin, this chapter considers the close relationship between his writing from the 1920s and 1930s, when he was most active as a critic, and the late twentieth century. It suggests that Benjamin’s standard position in film theory—as one of the most forceful advocates for a radical modernism closely allied with cinema—corresponds to just one of many positions he adopted throughout his career and contradicts the argument that the ruins of modernity remain a source of utopian potential even after their apparent obsolescence, a position advanced in his book on the Baroque mourning play, his fragmentary Arcades Project, and elsewhere. This chapter suggests that Benjamin’s work on the mourning play and allegory constitute the basis for his continued relevance to media studies in the late twentieth century, especially as a belated but prophetic contributor to debates about the end of history or cinema.

Stage visions and strategies of contemporary performing practices – a broadly conceived analysis of the phenomena at the intersection of theory and practice: Valentina Valentini, Worlds, Bodies, Matters: Theatre of the Late Twentieth Century

Maska ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (175) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Nika Arhar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Complex Field ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The first book in the new series Thinking Through Performance offers a mental feat of a concise survey of numerous performances by various artists and theatrical and philosophical concepts, which the author, Valentina Valentini, also observes within the fields of other disciplines. Three basic lines of investigation bring forth the visions of contemporary theatre worlds, their images and the strategies of their establishment, the expansion of the field while blurring the boundaries between visual art, the performative and new media, as well as the transformation of the actor into the autonomous body of the performer and the body that becomes plural, open, hybrid, space itself. With its in-depth and wide-ranging probing of the key phenomena in contemporary performing arts, its taking into account diverse perspectives, and its fragmentary approach within a complex field, the author has created a productive foundation for new starting-points and understandings in the dialogue between theory and practice.

The Changing Images of Jihad Leaders: Shamil and Abd al-Qadir in Daghestani and Algerian Historical Writing

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kemper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Over Time

This article studies the images of two famous jihad leaders of the nineteenth century, the Daghestani Shamil (d. 1871) and the Algerian Abd al-Qadir (d. 1883), in Daghestani/Russian and in Algerian historiography. A combined horizontal and vertical perspective is applied to compare the sequence of new historical interpretations in both countries over time. In particular, the article discusses (1) nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arabic biographies compiled by persons related to the two jihad leaders; (2) mid-twentieth-century Marxist and nationalist interpretations in Algeria and Daghestan; and (3) late-twentieth-century Islamist and "post-Islamist" interpretations. As is shown, the historiographical discourse went along similar paths in the two countries. At crucial points in time, certain interpretations of the jihad leaders were established and monopolized, while others were repressed (later to be revived), in order to use the historical memory for changing political agendas. The time after 1991 especially saw the publication of several new competing interpretations e.g., of regional and national Islamist and of feminist character. As a result, the term jihad can take on completely different meanings.

scholarly journals Atticus Finch – Alive or dead? A Socio-legal Question

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-46
Author(s):  
Susanne Davies
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Legal Question ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
To Kill A Mockingbird ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

In this article, the fictional lawyer Atticus Finch serves as a reference point for a broader discussion of socio-legal studies and its relevance today. Depicted in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Finch came to occupy an exalted position in the cultural, political and legal landscapes of the late twentieth century. For generations of students and citizens, Finch served as a model of what it was to be just, civil, honourable and brave. However, in the politically charged and deeply divided context of 2019, this article asks if Atticus Finch is dead. Has the ‘hero lawyer’ and all that he stood for been displaced? And if so, who killed him and what does that mean for the socio-legal quest?  

Time’s Arrow, Time’s Bow

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Film History ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Time’S Arrow ◽  
History And Theory

This chapter frames Gilles Deleuze’s cinema books as a late twentieth-century phenomenon, engaging with many of the period’s key concerns, including history, memory, and belatedness. Deleuze recognizes his status as a latecomer to philosophy and film theory and develops a theory based on the rediscovery of radical thought in the modern past, as in his study of Leibniz, the fold, and the baroque. His cinema books adopt a similar approach to film history and theory by framing the medium as an art that opens onto the totality of time. If nostalgia in the late twentieth century viewed a “golden age” as the proper destination of historical inquiry, Deleuze radicalizes the concepts of return and memory by reimagining them through the cinema’s lens. One key lesson drawn from the century of cinema is that any moment in time, including the neglected or potentially revolutionary, is accessible from any other point in history.

Moving Pictures, Still Lives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peter Greenaway ◽  
Derek Jarman ◽  
Tableaux Vivants ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Moving Pictures ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Moving Pictures, Still Lives revisits the cinematic and intellectual atmosphere of the late twentieth century, exploring the work of artists and philosophers who complicated the usual association between the past and tradition or the future and modernity. The book retraces the “archaeomodern turn” in media and theory that viewed the past as a repository of abandoned but potentially transformative modern experiments. Three theoretical chapters consider key figures—Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, and Serge Daney—who grappled with the late twentieth century’s characteristic concerns, including history, memory, and belatedness. It reframes this theoretical work on film as a mourning play for revolutions past and a means of reviving the possibilities of the modern age (and its paradigmatic medium, cinema) during periods of political and cultural retrenchment. Like Daney, the book emphasizes the value of looking at cinema and the century in the “rear—view mirror,” at the aging of a quintessentially modern art like film, and at the phantoms that remain after the passage into the era of new media. The second part of the manuscript, titled “The Cinema of Painters,” is structured around a series of interactions among media, filmmakers, and national traditions. It examines late twentieth—century filmmakers who systematically adopt strategies normally associated with other visual media or art forms, especially painting. Focusing on Alain Cavalier, Terence Davies, Jean—Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, and AgnèVarda, the book concentrates on films that fill the frame with a succession of tableaux vivants, still lifes, illuminated manuscripts, and landscapes.

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