The Politics of Aesthetics against Aesthetic Theology. About Jacques Rancière and cinema

Abstract

The thought of Jacques Rancière on cinema is the subject of this paper. His thoughts must be included within the aesthetic regime of art, which is common to different aesthetic disciplines. Rancière claims there is no essence of film art in its material and technical condition. In the second part of the paper we show the critics made by Rancière about the ethical turn (tournant) -although it seems a theological turn instead- of politics, and specially aesthetics. In this context we distinguish between two aesthetic theologies: First, that one wich, in analogy with Jewish theology, focuses on the problem of the unrepresentable, and second, in analogy with Christianity, the one that speaks of redemption –if we focus on films– of images. The works of Lyotard or Lanzmann’s –in first theology of aesthetics–, and the ones of Bazin, Deleuze and Godard –in the second one– allow us to verify the thesis of Rancière.