The Sensitive Aesthetics of Jean-Luc Nancy and the Moving Image

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Published 31 January 2027

About this book

Offers a wide cross-section and use of Jean-Luc Nancy's writings that can enrich research on cinema and the visual arts

  • Deconstruction and phenomenology as a methodological perspective inscribed in the critical analysis of media works and films to broaden and stimulate the debate about the meaning of visuality in the twenty-first century
  • Dialogue between the classical cinema and contemporary visual landscape of moving images in artistic spaces and new media arrangments
  • Sensually rich, corporally thought- provoking descriptions of particular works
  • Innovative studies to reveal new, growing potential of visual culture

This book explores a wide array of approaches to sensual aesthetics by examining moving images as a broad category encompassing both cinema and new media art in their dynamic and emerging forms.

The Sensitive Aesthetics of Jean-Luc Nancy and the Moving Image investigates various ways of applying deconstructivist tools and phenomenological perspectives to reinterpret and enrich selected films and artworks, thereby enhancing their depth and expanding their aesthetic significance.

The volume brings together both theoretical essays—offering insightful reflections on Jean-Luc Nancy’s contributions to the philosophy of cinema and new media—and analytical studies of specific cinematic installations and VR works.

These essays employ Nancy’s thought as a methodological framework that infuses the interpretation of individual works with philosophical resonance. By adopting a contextual perspective, the book aims to situate Nancy’s writings within a multiplicity of visual forms—ranging from classical narrative cinema to experimental works—thus fostering a dialogue between media, aesthetics, and modes of expression.

Table of contents

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors
Introduction or (post) deconstructive reading (Kamil Lipiński, Zsolt Gyenge)
Part I. Deconstructing the Sensual Body

1. Listening like dancing: Jean-Luc Nancy and the proper of cinema?
Marie Martin
2. Noli Me Tangere, Nancy’s Biopolitical Principle. The Visual Challenges of the Raise of the Body As A Deconstruction of Christianity
Oana Șerban
3. The Finite Praxis of Sense
Max Schaefer
4. The time of the ‘coappearance’: the ‘in-common’ in Bela Tarr’s work
Sylvie Rollet
5. Subjectivity on screen - or when film portraits the becoming an-other
Julia Machado
Part II. Technology and Senses
6. On the Futurity of Touch: Nancy, Varda and Marker in Virtual Reality
Jaka Lombar
7. The Montage of Immemory
Nikolaus Schneider
8. Sondra Perry. Immersed in the Digital Atlantic
Geiste Marija Kincinaityte
9. The Theory of Theory: Jean-Luc Nancy and Live Streaming on Webcams
Janusz Bohdziewicz
Part III. Gaze and Intermediality
10. Illuminating Nancy’s ‘Blind Spot’: Nancy on Evidence, Death, the Ethics of the Regard
Corey P. Cribb
11. Jean-Luc Nancy and The Fecundity of Cinema’s Caress: A Reading of Aftersun
Giulia Rainoldi
12. Ambiguous stranger in the dreamlike town. The study of intrusive co-presence
Kamil Lipiński
13. Autonomous University of Madrid: The Extension of Tension: The Draughtsman Contract through the lens of The Pleasure in Drawing by Jean-Luc Nancy
Alexandra Semenova
14. Film and senses... The case of Peter Greenaway's work.
Iwona Grodź
15. Allegorical plural singular coexistence in Pilatus und Andere
Kamil Lipiński
Section IV: Nancy by Nancy
16. The rule of the game in The rule of the game
Jean-Luc Nancy
17. Nothing about the Cinema
Jean-Luc Nancy

About the contributors

Kamil Lipinski

Kamil Lipinski is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Lodz

Zsolt Gyenge

Zsolt Gyenge is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design.