The ethical turn and cinema : politics and aesthetics of Jacques Rancière

Abstract

French philosopher Jacques Rancière has worked on wide range of topics including democracy, literature, the visual arts, particularly film. After translation of his works to English, he found a wide audience and academic interest. His works are based on mostly a new understanding of equality, which gives him chance to approach both politics and aesthetics from similar point of views. This thesis aims at gaining an insight the relation between political and aesthetic theory of Rancière and to understand reflections of his notion of the ethical turn, on cinema. The ethical turn points a certain aspect of the changes in politics and aesthetics after the fall of the Soviets. This thesis aims to investigate this new ethics in cinema that emerged after the ethical turn. With this aim, the thesis scans the theories of politics and aesthetics and their relation with the ethical turn in different works of Rancière and searches for the interdependent changes in politics and aesthetics after the ethical turn. This analysis permits a new reading of Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006).The reading of Children of Men alongside of an analysis of reflections of the ethical turn in cinema, opens a room for catching the motives of the ethical turn in the world order after the ethical turn