Queer

This collection of new essays investigates the contemporary relevance of Serge Daney’s work with a particular interest in questions of feminist, queer, and digital cinephilia.

Serge Daney and Queer Cinephilia

French critic Serge Daney was a central figure in film, television and media criticism of the second half of the twentieth century. He died of AIDS in 1992, just as the concept of queer cinema entered international film studies and just before the start of the digital era that has transformed film culture. This collection of new essays investigates the legacy of Daney’s work alongside considerations of feminist, queer and digital cinephilia and contemporary practices of film curation.

Don’t miss the and in the title, for this valuable book has two objectives. On the one hand, it proposes a vital, much-needed analysis of Serge Daney’s thought, of his work as a critic, media theorist, and founder of the essential film journal Trafic, topics which all remain woefully under-discussed in English. On the other, it considers the implications of this work for queer studies, initiating a productive, cross-disciplinary dialogue around topics like aesthetics and queer biography, film history and feminism, media archeology and festival programming. The broader frame moves past Daney in order to remain close to him: by abandoning the self-sufficiency of a single approach for the vulnerability of the encounter, the editors maintain the commitments to alterity, mediation, and impurity at the heart of his understanding of cinema.

—Sam Di Iorio, Hunter College, City University of New York

This international anthology helps to construct a renewal of transatlantic discourses on cinema. The contributions not only attempt to read Serge Daney from a queer perspective today, but also to understand queer theory anew, stemming from the cinephilic image theory of one of the most influential French film critics, who saw the era of post-cinema dawning as early as the 1980s.

—Christa Blümlinger, Université Paris-8

This invaluable book steps in to help fill a glaring void: the lack of English-language scholarship on the most respected French film and TV critic of the post-WWII era, Serge Daney. It trains a queer and feminist lens on Daney’s writings, a task both fruitful and fugitive, Daney being a gay man who rarely wrote about homosexuality–either his own or in cinema. Given that he spent the majority of his career steeped in the masculinist-heterosexual culture of Cahiers du Cinéma, this book, by imaginatively unearthing the “queer potential” of his vast oeuvre, has produced an exciting contribution to the study of film criticism that pulses with contemporary resonance.

—Girish Shambu, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York

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Publishing Year
2024
Language
English
Pages
310
Series
Print Edition Price
€ 24.90 RRP
Downloads
Cover
License
CC BY-SA 4.0
ISBNs
978-3-95796-018-4 (Print)
978-3-95796-019-1 (PDF)
DOI
10.14619/0184
Available as
Print, PDF

The Editors

Pierre Eugène is Lecturer in Film Studies at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens, France) and a member of the Cahiers du cinéma editorial board since 2020. His research focuses on Serge Daney, cinema writers and film aesthetics. He has published articles on many European and American filmmakers, and co-edited Jean-Claude Biette, appunti et contrappunti (De l’Incidence, 2018) with Hervé-Joubert-Laurencin and Philippe Fauvel. His book Serge Daney, Exercices de relecture 1962-1982 (Éditions du Linteau, 2023) has just appeared, and he is currently working on a book devoted to Paul Vecchiali’s film Femmes femmes (1974) (Yellow Now Editions).
Pierre Eugène's Author Profile

Kate Ince is a Professor of French and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on French cinema, women’s cinema and film philosophy. She is the author of The Body and the Screen: female subjectivities in contemporary women’s cinema (2017) and Georges Franju (2005), as well as numerous journal articles and co-edited publications in the areas of film studies and French literature and visual art.

Kate Ince's Author Profile

Marc Siegel is a Professor of Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. His research focuses on issues in queer studies and experimental film. His book A Gossip of Images is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Publications include the co-edited volumes, Film Culture 80: The Legend of Barbara Rubin (2018), Synchronisierung der Künste (2013), Outside. Die Politik queerer Räume (2005) and a 2014 special issue of Criticism on underground artist Jack Smith.

Marc Siegel's Author Profile

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