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A Deleuzian Imaginary: the films of Jean Renoir

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>07/2011
<mark>Journal</mark>Deleuze Studies
Issue number2
Volume5
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)241-260
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article contrasts the notion of a Deleuzian imaginary with that articulated by various film theorists during the 1970s and 1980s. Deleuze offers us, I argue, a way to conceive of the imaginary in the cinema in a positive way; that is, as something which opens up new expressions of the real. By contrast, for film theorists of the 1970s and 1980s, the imaginary was primarily conceived as a negative concept, as something which offered merely escapes or fraudulent distortions of the real. A Deleuzian imaginary for the cinema can be articulated, I argue, by way of the films of Jean Renoir.