[csaa-forum] UNSW Seminar: Weds 13 April: Rolf G. Renner (University of Freiburg)

[Christopher Danta]

School of English, Media and Performing Arts and
School of Languages and Linguistics, UNSW present

Prof Rolf G. Renner (University of Freiburg, Germany)

Film as Media of Postmodernism

Weds 13 April 
Robert Webster Building 327 from 4.00pm to 5.30pm

The criticism of irrationalism against the discourse of postmodernism does
not take into consideration that the subversive rejection of tradition,
which made the experience of ³desire² a ³leitmotif² of an aesthetic
discourse, also focusses on political phantasies reflecting changes in the
economic situation. The ³cultural logic of late capitalism² following
monopolistic capitalism corresponds to the transition from modernism to
postmodernism. In this situation social reality is experienced as a
construction. This experience becomes the subject of an increasing
self-reflection of the media visualized by means of images. Thus the
difference between criticism and media, which was essential for the
modernist approach to reality, is fundamentally extinguished. Above all
films show that reality as we perceive it is a construction, their
techniques of simulation demonstrate the imaginary character of experience.
As examples for my theses, I will look at films such as Fight Club, Lost in
Translation, Matrix and Kill Bill.

Rolf G. Renner is Professor for Modern German Literature and Director of the
Frankreich-Zentrum at the University of Freiburg/Germany. He is also
professeur invité at the IHEE Strasbourg/France and an Officier de l¹Ordre
des Palmes Académiques. He is the author of books on Georg Lukács (1976),
Thomas Mann (1985, 1987), Peter Handke (1985), Postmodernism (1988), Edward
Hopper (1990, translated into 15 languages), Proust (1992), and has
published about 80 articles in academic books and journals.


ALL WELCOME!!