Jean Louis Schefer’s Ordinary Man of Cinema

The Ordinary Man of Cinema, by Jean Louis Schefer, translated by Max Cavitch, Paul Grant, and Noura Wedell. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2016. 224 pages.

“CINEMA IS THE SOLE EXPERIENCE where time is given to me as a perception.” This statement, cited by Gilles Deleuze in the second chapter of Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), seems to clarify and crystallize the thesis of his book: Cinema does not just represent time but can allow us to perceive a direct presentation of time—in Proust’s words, “a little bit of time in a pure state.”

“The films that have watched our childhood.” In an essay written

books February 2014

Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière

ALAIN BADIOU has likened the relation between philosophy and art to that between master and hysteric in Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic terms. The hysteric seeks a master to explain to her who she is and to convert her unprocessed truth into a form of transmissible knowledge. But the hysteric—or art—is never satisfied with what she is told. Philosophy’s answers always fall short or miss the mark, and his own status as master is ultimately called into question.

To preserve his authority, philosophy has three choices. He can, taking decisive measures, as Plato proposed should be done with