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The Suspended Aesthetic: Slavoj Žižek on Eastern European Film

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Abstract

Slavoj Žižek's writings on Krzysztof Kies´lowski and Andrej Tarkovskij represent direct challenges to the Central and Eastern European tradition of spiritual art and to dominant aesthetic concepts as such. He refuses to separate the solemn films of Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij from popular culture and stresses their import as ethical statements by their directors. Despite this ethical emphasis, Žižek makes an important contribution to philosophical aesthetics. He implicitly defines art as a suspension of reality which reveals time in its fragility and potentiality. Defining Žižek's aesthetics in terms of suspension helps to explain his partiality for Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij and bears comparison to the Russian tradition of philosophical aesthetics, in particular Aleksej Losev and Alexander Bakshy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, The University of Chicago, 1130, E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Robert Bird

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  1. Robert Bird
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Bird, R. The Suspended Aesthetic: Slavoj Žižek on Eastern European Film. Studies in East European Thought 56, 357–382 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SOVI.0000043005.82740.64

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SOVI.0000043005.82740.64

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