Imaging religion in film

the long version

Imaging Religion in Film offers a new methodology for examining the ethico-political dimensions of religion and film, one that foregrounds film's social power both to shape subjectivity and to image contemporary social contradictions. Specifically, the text develops a Foucauldian ethics of the subject, or 'pedagogy of self,' a Deleuzian-Peircean semiotic for discussing religion in film, and a theory of religion within postmodernity that rethinks transcendence alongside a politically galvanizing nostalgia. This theoretical work prefaces analyses of three specific films: Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala (1972); Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997); and the Coens' The Man Who Wasn't There (2001).