Wow! eBook
Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema
Author(s): Seung-hoon Jeong (Author)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: June 30, 2023
- Language: English
- Print length: 344 pages
- ISBN-10: 0190093781
- ISBN-13: 9780190093785
Book Description
In this frame, the book explores a vast net of post-1990 films circulating in both the mainstream market and the festival circuit. Jeong comparatively navigates these films, highlighting less essentialist particularities than compatible localities that perform universal aspects of biopolitical ethics and its alternatives by centering the narrative of 'double death': the abject as symbolically dead struggle for lost subjectivity or new agency until physically dying. This narrative pervades global cinema from Hollywood blockbusters and European art films to Middle Eastern dramas and Asian genre films. Ultimately, the book renews critical discourses on global issues―including multiculturalism, catastrophe, sovereignty, abjection, violence, network, nihilism, and atopia―through a core cluster of political, ethical, and psychoanalytic philosophies.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is a most fascinating study of what world cinema reveals about our globalized world. This exceptionally comprehensive book provides insightful analysis of a wide variety of the most high-profile films from both Global Hollywood and Global Auteurs. From Skyfall to Jia Zhangke there is something here for anybody curious about how cinema illuminates the global nature of contemporary everyday life. Most crucially, Jeong expertly uncovers how an "abject agency" is revealed on screen which may yet gesture towards a hopeful and inclusive politics even for catastrophic times." -- David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow
"Jeong deftly interweaves an array of philosophical themes, including the postpolitical, agency, sovereignty, multiculturalism, violence, terrorism, nihilism, catastrophe, revelation, existentialism, and the gift. Moreover, as part of this conceptual heavy lifting, he impressively marshals a near-encyclopedic list of continental thinkers, from Agamben right up to Zizek." -- Martin P. Rossouw, Film Quarterly
