A Cinematic Spinozism: Deleuze’s mutant politics of film

Tim Deane-Freeman

A Cinematic Spinozism: Deleuze’s mutant politics of film

Abstract

In this paper, I defend a conception of Deleuze’s two volumes dedicated to film -Cinema I: The Movement-Image and Cinema II: The Time-Image- as protracted expressions of his political philosophy. In so doing, I will elaborate the difficult and entwined political claims Deleuze makes on behalf of cinema: that it is capable of engendering a tentative “belief in the world,” such as is the necessary correlate of political action; that it captures the contemporary fact that “the people are missing,” as a unified or coherent political agent; and finally that it might reveal those “impossible” or “intolerable” situations which would provoke such a people into being. In advancing this conceptual triumvirate, I will argue that the claims made here on behalf of cinema overspill the artform itself, constituting a generalised political philosophy proper to so-called “late-capitalism.”

Dr. Timothy Deane-Freeman teaches philosophy at Deakin University, Australia. His work is dedicated to the intersection of politics and aesthetics.

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