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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Mirror communities and straw individualisms: essentialism, cinema and semiotic analysis |
Authors: | Tomaselli, Keyan G. Shepperson, Arnold |
Year: | 2011 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Cinemas (ISSN 1754-923X) |
Volume: | 3 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 3-24 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | cinema identity |
Abstract: | Using debates on African cinema, this article criticizes essentialism and develops a pragmaticist alternative to the radical basis of identity. Analysis is discarded by essentialists for identity politics and cultural propaganda is privileged above debate. The authors debate post-Freudian psychoanalytical film theory from the perspective of a Peircean pragmatism. Instead of elaborating 'another psychology' through which to analyse African films, narratives and aesthetics, the authors discuss ways of considering identity so that film theory can deal with subjectivities that are not predefined in anti-democratic terms. The problem of identity is analysed by suggesting that a cultural study incorporates the analysis of cultural facts. The position of the scholar is examined in terms of cultural proscriptions. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |