'Traumatic Encounters' addresses the question of the relationship
between psychoanalysis and film in a thoroughly original way,
bringing together Lacanian theory and Italian cinema as a means to
unravel the deepest kernel of repressed knowledge around which film
narratives are constructed. The primary theoretical reference of
the book is the Real, the most under-represented of the three
Lacanian categories (Symbolic, Imaginary and Real), which
designates the traumatic dimension of reality that cannot be
integrated in the order of language and communication. Exploring
the relationship between film and its unconscious underside, the
author argues that only by locating the elusive "traces of the
cinematic Real" can a given film narrative be reconstructed in its
entirety. Like the Lacanian subject, film here appears as
fundamentally split between a traumatic dimension beyond
signification (the Real), and awareness of its fragile symbolic
status.
Always stylistically innovative, thematically defiant and driven by
a strong political agenda, Italian cinema lends itself particularly
well to a critical investigation aimed at radicalising the impact
of psychoanalysis on film. In doing exactly that, the book
deliberately avoids the standard cultural and historical approaches
to film. Instead, it moves freely amongst some of the most widely
celebrated - as well as lesser-known - Italian films of the
post-war period, discussing the ways in which they tackle such
themes as desire, fantasy, sexuality, violence and the law, to
mention but a few. The main focus is on the work of those directors
who most effectively engage with the divisive nature of the moving
image: Antonioni, Pasolini and Rossellini. In addition, the book
provides ample and insightful references to films by Visconti,
Bertolucci, Bellocchio, Moretti, Petri, Fellini, Ferreri, and many
more.
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