Watkins Robert E. - Freedom and Vengeance on Film

Robert E. Watkins is Associate Professor of Politics and Cultural Studies at Columbia College, Chicago. He has published in, among others, the journals Political Theory, History of the Human Sciences and Perspectives on Politics.

Freedom and Vengeance on Film

Precarious Lives and the Politics of Subjectivity

ROBERT E. WATKINS

Published in 2016 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright 2016 Robert E. Watkins

The right of Robert E. Watkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

International Library of the Moving Image 30

ISBN: 978 1 78453 010 5
eISBN:978 0 85772 941 5
ePDF:978 0 85772 737 4

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by Newgen

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Table of Contents

For Smita

We built something

Acknowledgements

My having written this book is a very concrete illustration of the very idea at the heart of this book: that I am not autonomous but rather dependent, in this case on many colleagues, institutions, friends, and family. To my mind, one especially familiar and compelling way to capture that essential dependence is through the idea, the practice, and the language of family, because of the way it can account for the chosen and the unchosen, the made and the inherited. I am blessed to have been a part of many supportive families, both academic and personal, and I am very grateful to them all for their companionship and assistance along my journey to become the thinker and writer that I am today.

I was fortunate to have had not one but two academic families during my time in graduate school, benefitting immensely from two communities of political scientists and theorists, one at the University of Pennsylvania and the other at Johns Hopkins University. I chose to attend Penn because of Anne Nortons understanding of the way that politics and culture are mutually implicated and constituted, and her guidance to me always been true that insight. At Penn, Anne was more than understanding as an advisorshe was easygoing, yet incisive, tolerant yet critical. She allowed me the freedom to chart my own course, and then helped me reorient when necessary. I was incredibly fortunate to cross paths with Uday Mehta while at Penn. Any student would be blessed to have a professor much less a mentor like Uday, for he combines a fearless intelligence with a delicacy of spirit that continues to inspire me as a thinker, a writer, and an advisor. To this day, I cannot imagine my own thinking absent Uday having re-introduced me to Burke. While I was at Penn, many folks were very valuable to me as sharp interlocutors in the classroom and generous friends beyond it, including Bobbi Adams, Amel Ahmed, Graham Dodds, Michael Janson, Thomas Lee, Joe Mink, Mia Stillman, and Justin Wert.

At Johns Hopkins, I was welcomed and embraced by a vibrant group of theorists and friends. Though I did not take courses with these friends at Hopkins, I have nonetheless found them to be not only smart academics but welcoming and generous friends: Erin Ackerman, Libby Anker, Blake Etheridge, Simon Glezos, Matt Moore, George Oppel, Sacramento Rosello, Andrew Ross, Matt Scherer, Mina Suk, Lars Toender, and Nick Tampio. When I first ventured into political theory and film just after graduate school, I am grateful that Jane Bennett saw something in the work and encouraged me to develop it and connect with other political theorists doing work on visual culture, including Sam Chambers. Sam, who has since come to reside academically at Hopkins, has been the most generous of counsellors and colleagues. In particular with regard to this book, I am exceedingly thankful for his help in cultivating this book project at its early stages as well his comments on many chapters herein.

For the past five years while writing this book, I have frequently taught a hybrid political science/cultural studies course at Columbia College Chicago called Power and Freedom on Screen based on this book project as it evolved through many stages. I want to thank my many perceptive students for their thoughtful engagements with the course and with my ideas, however strange or muddled they may have been at the time: Mitch Arnold, Ariel Atkins, Sarah Barnett, Caroline Browne, Kayla Christofferson, Miranda Coffeldt, Megan Coronado, Nicole Erhardt, Raven Feagins, Amy Gooch, Brandon Howard, Leif Janzen, Chris Metzger, Nadezh Mulholland, Matt Ohlson, Lydia Raabe, Matt Real, Shelby Rothman, Heath Rumble, Janine Shoots, Lana Slaby, Tricia Van Gessel, and Rian Wilson. This book owes much to the many conversations and class discussions in which these and other students questioned and probed deeply as we dissected all of the films and the texts addressed here.