Cinema Education as an Exercise in ‘Thinking Through Not-Thinking’

Educational Philosophy and Theory 46 (7):792-804 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this article we explore the educational potential of cinema. To do this we first analyse how the American critical thinker Henry Giroux tries to give body to an educational theory in relation to cinema. His ‘film pedagogy’ is described as developing a critical response of the learner in relation to the public sphere of film. Giroux’s approach, however, seems to forget rather than explore the potential that is specific to the medium. Secondly, the article analyses Walter Benjamin’s (1936, Illuminations, London, Pimlico) essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, because here we find not a different educational response to cinema, but one of the first studies on cinema that describes its ontological nature and the potential of moving images for thought. Finally, the article discusses the cinema philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, who, in contrast to Giroux, does not construct a Cartesian framework around cinema. Rather, he recognizes and explores cinema’s potential for thoughts like Benjamin did. In this way, Deleuze reverses Giroux’s question of how education should respond to cinema. A pedagogical discussion hereby comes to the fore that does not ask the question of what methodology should be used in education to think critically about cinema, but what the implications are of the nature of cinema for thought and for education.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,449

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-12-17

Downloads
46 (#504,117)

6 months
11 (#246,005)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

On the prospects of Virilio’s pedagogy of the image.Joff P. N. Bradley - 2021 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 53 (7):706-718.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia.Gilles Deleuze - 1987 - London: Athlone Press. Edited by Félix Guattari.
Cinema 1: The Movement Image.Gilles Deleuze, Hugh Tomlinson & Barbara Habberjam - 1988 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (3):436-437.
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.Richard Shusterman - 1992 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50 (3):254-257.

View all 13 references / Add more references