[ecrea] Cinema 8 CFP: Marx’s Philosophy

/Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image /invites submissions
for its 8th issue devoted to the philosophy of Karl Marx and its links
with cinematic art.

Marxism, as a tool for social analysis and transformation, has
influenced politicized and progressive filmmakers such as Sergei
Eisenstein and Sembène Ousmane, in theory and in practice, as well as
shaped theoretical discussions around film and history, aesthetics,
economics, and ideology. Key topics of this discussion have been
reproducible art and active collective experience (Walter Benjamin) and
cultural and social hegemony (Antonio Gramsci), among others.

In the 1960s, Louis Althusser reconceptualised ideology as illusion and
allusion, moving from V. I. Lenin’s and Gramsci’s articulations, and
indeed from Marx’s statements, that connect ideological forms to class
relations — and also erasing the qualitative difference between theory
and practice. This shift toward idealism has had a great impact in film
studies and critical theory. In addition, postmodern thinking has
profoundly influenced contemporary cultural critique, some strains of
which are described as Marxist and exemplified by Fredric Jameson’s or
Slavoj Žižek’s works (with or without the prefixes “post-” or “neo-”).
This influence can be seen as having a function in ideological struggle,
fulfilled through ideas such as discourse determinism and contingency
politics that forgo Marx’s philosophy and its critical focus on class.
In fact, his critical analysis of the capitalist mode of production is
inseparable from a philosophical basis that is materialist and
dialectical. The scientific quality of knowledge is founded on an
exposition that explains the internal connections of phenomena,
materialistically founded: that is to say, phenomena as a complex of
real relations, inherently dialectical. Knowledge is therefore
simultaneously a modality of being and an ingredient for its
transformation. It questions, but it is also mediated by, objective
reality. Thus it is determined and it determines. To be sure, in Marx’s
philosophy the existence of a material, plurally determined, objective
basis, does not exclude subjective configuration. Subjectivity, while
not being arbitrary, it is certainly active and, while being reflective,
it is also creative.

These aspects form the basis for a productive association and exchange
between Marx’s philosophy and cinema — one that rejects turning his
philosophy into a dogmatist system as well as avoids forgoing the
specificity of cinematic works of art. The relative autonomy of culture
from the economic basis that we find articulated in Marx and later in
Marxists like Benjamin means that culture is the result of
determinations that are not deterministic. This is quite different from
a postmodern conceptualization of culture and art as completely
independent from economic structures, social relations, and historical
situations, either vaguely free-floating or constrainedly singular. For
this reason, as Teresa L. Ebert perceptively argues, cultural critique
is more necessary than ever in a period in which the structural crisis
of capitalism has deepened. The main purpose of this issue is to
contribute to such a critique within the sphere of film studies based on
the philosophical reflections of Marx.

Proposals should directly engage with Marx’s philosophical writings and
analyze cinematic works of art in detail or specific aspects of
cinematic art. Submissions may also dialogue with the thinking of
Friedrich Engels and other thinkers (Benjamin, Gramsci, Lenin, Rosa
Luxemburg, but also Ebert, et al.) who have developed Marx’s
philosophical contribution without estranging from it, particularly in
the fields of aesthetics and the philosophy of art (e.g., Adolfo Sánchez
Vázquez). They may address the following subjects, but are not limited
to them:

• alienation;

• antagonism/contradiction;

• capital and surplus value;

• capitalism and imperialism;

• class struggle and class consciousness;

• common and singular, collective and individual;

• dialectics and totality;

• historical materialism;

• ideology;

• liberation from exploitation and freedom from necessity;

• materialism;

• the one and the multiple;

• praxis and theory;

• the proletariat and the bourgeoisie;

• ontology and humanism;

• religion and social order/change; atheism and religion;

• human beings as socially constituted;

• socialist revolution;

• the state and its abolition.

The submission deadline is 15 July 2016 (for 500-word abstracts).
Prospective authors should submit a short CV along with the abstract. A
selection of authors will be invited to submit full papers based on the
editor’s evaluation of the abstracts and according to the journal
guidelines by 31 July 2016. The deadline for this final submission is 31
October 2016. Acceptance of the abstract in July does not guarantee
publication, since all papers are subjected to double blind peer-review.
Submissions are accepted in English and Portuguese (and in French and
Spanish, but only from native speakers of these languages).

/Cinema /also invites submissions to its special sections: interviews,
conference reports, and book reviews. For further details, please
consult the journal’s website (http://cjpmi.ifilnova.pt).

Feel free to contact the editor for this issue, Sérgio Dias Branco
((sdiasbranco /at/ fl.uc.pt) <mailto:(sdiasbranco /at/ fl.uc.pt)>), with specific
queries or (cjpmi /at/ fcsh.unl.pt) <mailto:(cjpmi /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)> with general
queries.


Best regards,

SÉRGIO DIAS BRANCO

Invited Assistant Professor of Film Studies
Director of the MA in Art Studies
Coordinator of Film and Image Studies · Art Studies Course
Coordinator of the Art Studies Mobility Programs
Manager of Casa das Caldeiras Art House
Department of History, European Studies, Archeology, and Arts· Faculty
of Humanities

Researcher at CEIS20 - Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies

University of Coimbra

Office: Rua de Entre Muros, Casa das Caldeiras, 2.º B, 3000-315 Coimbra
Office hours: Friday, 11am-1pm
E-mail: (sdiasbranco /at/ fl.uc.pt) <mailto:(sdiasbranco /at/ fl.uc.pt)>
Web: www.sdiasbranco.net <http://www.sdiasbranco.net>

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