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Nov 23, 2024
Negative Life
The Cinema of Extinction
Summary
In Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern UP, 2024), Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay enact a dialogue between cinema, philosophy, and ecocriticism to tarry with the question of ecological catastrophe. Taking as one of their conceptual points of departure Freud’s writing on negation, the authors elaborate a concept of ‘negative life’ to contest current approaches to ecocriticism predicated upon ideas of entanglement, presence, and connection. In their book, Swarbrick and Tremblay engage critically with a broad body of films—including Kelly Reichardt, Julian Pölsler, Mahesh Mathai, and Paul Schrader—and a range of conceptual paradigms (from antisocial queer theory and psychoanalytic thought to object-oriented ontology and theories of melodrama) to unsettle many of ecocriticism’s foundational assumptions. In this interview, we unpack some of the core themes and organising principles of the book and discuss the nature of collaborative writing.
Jules O’Dwyer is Teaching Associate in Film Studies and French at the University of Cambridge.
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Jules O'Dwyer
Jules O'Dwyer is a Research Fellow in Film Studies and French at St John’s College, Cambridge. His previous research has looked at a range of theoretical paradigms—including object-oriented thought, apparatus theory, and questions of intertextuality and stardom—through the lens of French film, ranging from 1950s ethnographic film to recent queer cinema. He is also a co-editor at the journal World Picture and he co-convenes a Research Seminar in Film and Screen Studies in Cambridge, UK.
