Cinema Against Doublethink

David Martin-Jones is Professor of Film Studies, University of Glasgow, UK. His research uses philosophy to explore world cinemas. He is the author/editor of eight books, has published in numerous international journals (e.g. Cinema Journal, Screen, Third Text), and edits the Bloomsbury series Thinking Cinema.

'A major contribution to the "unthinking" of the axioms of westocentric globalization. In an approach at once worldly, transnational, global, and even planetary, the book offers a remarkable synthesis of political philosophy/theory and film exegesis. Invoking a remarkably wide range of filmic and theoretical references, the book catalyzes a conversation between disciplines, regions, and media. The book offers a welcome tonic in a dystopian age of "post-truth".'Robert Stam, New York University, USA'It is most refreshing and encouraging reading a book that starts from some place else (in this case Enrique Dussel and Latin America) and give its due recognition to Western Europe (in this case Gilles Deleuze). David Martin-Jones has made a signal contribution to the current processes radically shifting from Western universal to pluriversal world histories, celebrating the splendors of global memories and triumphantly denying the Western colonial denial of contemporaneity.' Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University, USA'The wonderfully ambitious and beautifully crafted Cinema Against Doublethink brings us a view from the global south and world memory through the prism of cinema. The notion of worlds of cinema takes us not to the rewriting of history but to a retrieval of lost transnational histories that resist inequality in colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial contexts. It proposes an encounter with lost pasts that sets in motion a new awareness of the world we live in.'Sandra Ponzanesi, Utrecht University, The Netherlands'Colonial modernity has sought to erase alternative mappings of past and present. In a dazzling synthesis of film and critical theory, David Martin-Jones uses Deleuze’s time-image in inspired conjunction with Latin American decolonial thought and social contract theory to demonstrate how global cinema challenges this oppressive chronopolitics, revealing, against a seemingly ineluctable and all-devouring Orwellian now, different emancipatory times and possibilities.' Charles W. Mills, CUNY, USA

• List of figuresAcknowledgements Preface Introduction: One or many pasts? Celine and Julie go Boating; Embrace of the SerpentPART I Decolonising entrances to the past 1 History/Ethics: Interpreting stories from world history (Enrique Dussel) 2 Ethics/History: Hesitating in encountering lost pasts (Gilles Deleuze) PART II Encounters with the past that is/is not preserved 3 4.54 (to 13.7) billion years: Planetary history, the natural contract, encountering earthly pasts Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives; Nostalgia for the Light4 500 years: The North Atlantic trade circuit, the racial contract, encountering others’ pasts How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman; Even the RainPART III Encounters with the present that passes 5 70 years: The Cold War, the social contract, encountering political pasts The Act of Killing; At the Foot of the White Tree6 45 years: Neoliberal globalisation, the personal contract, encountering bodily pasts Carancho; Lady VengeanceConclusion: One or many faces of the (lost) past? Alone in Berlin; Another Story of the WorldSelect bibliography Index