Blanchot and the Moving Image: Fascination and Spectatorship, Watt Calum

The French writer and philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was a notoriously reclusive figure who wrote that his life was entirely devoted to literature. Why then have filmmakers and writers on film found so much inspiration in Blanchots work? Blanchot and the Moving Image explores a constellation of connections between Blanchot, film and film theory and draws lines of intellectual influence to show how Blanchots thinking of literature find its way by a kind of displacement into contemporary philosophical approaches to cinema. Three case studies examining individual films - by Jean-Luc Godard, B la Tarr and Gaspar No - draw out how Blanchots complex notions of fascination and image can contribute to theories of spectatorship. The first book-length treatment of this theme, Blanchot and the Moving Image thus demonstrates the overlooked importance of Blanchots work for understanding contemporary film and film theory.

Calum Watt gained his PhD at Kings College London and is a Marie Curie Fellow at Universit Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3.