Sean Desilets - Hermeneutic Humility and the Political Theology of Cinema: Blind Paul

Edited by Robert Johnston and Jolyon Mitchell

1 World Cinema, Theology, and the Human

Humanity in Deep Focus

Antonio Sison

2 American Theology, Superhero Comics, and Cinema

The Marvel of Stan Lee and the Revolution of a Genre

Anthony R. Mills

3 Religion in Contemporary European Cinema

The Postsecular Constellation

Edited by Costica Bradatan and Camil Ungureanu

4 Transnational Cinema and Ideology

Representing Religion, Identity and Cultural Myths

Milja Radovic

5 The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (18971927)

Edited by David J. Shepherd

6 The Holy Fool in European Cinema

Alina G. Birzache

7 Hermeneutic Humility and the Political Theology of Cinema

Blind Paul

Sean Desilets

Countless colleagues have given their time and attention to this project. I cannot name them all, but I am grateful to them all. David Wagenknecht, Christopher LeCluyse, Lance Newman, Natasha Saj, Ashlie Liss, Lee Edelman, and Matt Bell went beyond the call of duty. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for Routledge, who offered invaluable feedback.

I am grateful to Westminster College for the two course releases and the merit leave during which I did much of the work on this project. Through that leave and over three summers, the Boston University Department of Philosophy and the Boston University Center for the Humanities provided me with precious office space. I particularly thank James A. Winn, director of the BUCH, for some valuable advice.

A version of the chapter Seemly Economy was published as Seemly Economy: LArgent s Aesthetic Currency in Studies in French Cinema 15, no. 2 (April 2015). It appears here by permission.

Deep love to the obliviators, who bring out the absolute worst in me and then put up with it.

I am a committed atheist, but I learned the value of religion from my parents, Kathy Desilets and Brendan Desilets. They have very different religionsmy father is Catholic, my mother a spiritually oriented agnosticbut their faiths have two convictions in common: that the divine demands justice for all living things, and that only mortals canand mustfulfill that demand.

As I write these words, Susanne Sreedhar is the only person aside from myself who has read this book in its entirety. That is fitting, as she is nearly the whole reason it exists at all. She makes me feel my own existence like no one else.

My daughter, Rubi Brandel, put up with my boring talk about this book through some of the crucial formative years of her life. What a hero! She reads, thinks, talks, and jokes with precision, compassion, and ferocity. She makes joy everywhere she goes. I cannot believe how good it feels to be more proud of another human being than I will ever be of myself.

My friend Josh Gold died before this book was conceived, but his influence runs through it. He first led me to many of the texts addressed here, and his tenacious, inventive, and rigorous intellect has been an example to me. He died at the beginning of a brilliant career. This loss was incalculable. Except for a few precious published works, we have only what his colleagues, students, and friends remember. I hopeI could almost say praythat this book preserves a few sparks of what he would have written had he been given more time.

Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia. Translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. New York: Verso, 1978.

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.

. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Translated by Lorenzo Chiesa. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011.

. The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans. Translated by Patricia Dailey. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005.

Amad, Paula. Visual Reposte: Looking Back at the Return of the Gaze as Postcolonial Theorys Gift to Film Studies. Cinema Journal 52, no. 3 (Spring 2013): 4974.

Ayfre, Amde. The Universe of Robert Bresson. In Robert Bresson: Revised . Edited by James Quandt, 3951. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Cinema-theque, 2011.

Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. New York: Continuum, 2007.

. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Translated by Ray Brassier. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.

Badt, Karin. No Slave to Realism: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas. Cineaste 31, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 2123.

Baranski, Zygmunt. The Texts of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo . In Pasolini Old and New . Edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski, 281320. Dublin: Four Court Press, 1999.

Barth, Karl. The Epistle to the Romans . Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968.

Baudry, Jean-Louis. Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus. Translated by Alan Williams. Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Winter 19741975): 3947.

Bazin, Andre. In Defense of Mixed Cinema. In What Is Cinema, Volume 1 . Edited and Translated by Hugh Gray, 5375. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2005.

. Le Journal dun cur de champagne and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson. In What Is Cinema, Volume 1 . Edited and Translated by Hugh Gray, 125143. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2005.

. The Myth of Total Cinema. In What Is Cinema, Volume 1 . Edited and Translated by Hugh Gray, 1722. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2005.

Benjamin, Walter. Critique of Violence. In Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn, 155200. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.