Dialogic Cinephilia - March 14, 2020

Gessen, Masha. "Judith Butler Wants Us to Reshape Our Rage." The New Yorker (February 9, 2020) ["You begin with a critique of individualism “as the basis of ethics and politics alike.” Why is that the starting point? "In my experience, the most powerful argument against violence has been grounded in the notion that, when I do violence to another human being, I also do violence to myself, because my life is bound up with this other life. Most people who are formed within the liberal individualist tradition really understand themselves as bounded creatures who are radically separate from other lives. There are relational perspectives that would challenge that point of departure, and ecological perspectives as well. ... Acknowledging dependency as a condition of who any of us happens to be is difficult enough. But the larger task is to affirm social and ecological interdependence, which is regularly misrecognized as well. If we were to rethink ourselves as social creatures who are fundamentally dependent upon one another—and there’s no shame, no humiliation, no “feminization” in that—I think that we would treat each other differently, because our very conception of self would not be defined by individual self-interest.""]

Haider, Asad. "Way more is possible: On depoliticization, resurgent radicalism and seeing the revolutionary horizon." This is Hell! #1137 (March 2, 2020) ["Writer Asad Haider examines the problems of depoliticization in modern politics - as the dominant ideological frame blinds us to the limits of our present politics and the possibilities of future alignments, the left must confront the failures of past revolutions and realize that another world is not just possible, it's necessary."]

Jerri, Alexander. "Moment of Truth: Gently, Gently Hunters." This is Hell! (February 27, 2020) [On the Amazon TV show]

Miller, Jonathan. "24 Lies Per Second: an Auteurist Analysis of the Documentary Films of Errol Morris." Digital Window @ Vasseur (2011) ["My aim in these pages is to examine the work of Errol Morris, a film, television, and commercial director best known for his feature-length documentaries. For this analysis, I will use the framework of auteur theory, which premises that a director has a personal, creative vision evident across his or her body of work. Though auteur theory often pervades popular film criticism, it has never been a unified doctrine, as it lacks a single progenitor or foundational text.1 Critics have interpreted (and misinterpreted) the theory in many distinct ways, and it has been irregularly, often only implicitly, extended to the producers and directors of documentary films. Thus, I will begin by laying out my specific approach to the auteur theory, my assumptions in applying this theory to documentary film, and the ways in which I hope this analysis can illuminate Morris’s work."]