Haunting the Left Bank

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(Steven Ungar, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cinematic Arts, University of Iowa)

Engaging with contemporary film-philosophical research, this book investigates the effects of a haunting presence of death in life. It considers moments in which the films of Agnes Varda, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais and theories of intersubjectivity, gender and mortality in contemporaneous works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty coalesce around this ethical epicentre, the equality enacted by death on every mortal. Challenging hierarchical divisions between subjects constructed around geo-political, gendered or spectatorial difference, it establishes a paradigm in which intersubjective interactions, especially through the gaze, are instead ethical and egalitarian. Haunting the Left Bank identifies and explores the presence of mortality in these directors' cinematic images, revealing how they indicate ways of connecting with other subjects and speaking to a recognition of equality and difference.