Since the
advent of political philosophy, “the people” has been at the center of countless
models of sovereignty, state, and governance. And likewise, it has haunted cinema
since the screening of the very first motion picture, Workers Leaving the Lumière
Factory in Lyon (1895). However, the term presents itself as highly variable,
as the basis for all types of democracy, as ethnic body of nationalism, agent in class
and (anti-)colonial conflicts, or target group of populism … for “the people” is
not a fixed entity but always dependent on strategies of representation, both in
the political and aesthetic sense.
Therefore, the course explores the many meanings of
“the people” in seminal texts by, amongst others, Karl Marx, Chantal Mouffe, Peter
Kropotkin, Judith Butler, and Frantz Fanon. At the same time, we will see how proletarians,
protesters, soldiers, migrants, revolutionaries, subalterns have been imagined over
the last 130 years of fictional and documentary filmmaking: the course is an
attempt to link political philosophy to cinematic representation – and
cinematic philosophy to political representation.
- Instructor: Ulrich Meurer