Žižek’s Dialectics, Critique of Ideology and Emancipatory Politics in Michael Haneke’s film Caché (2005)

Murdoch A Jennings

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Žižek’s Dialectics, Critique of Ideology and Emancipatory Politics in Michael Haneke’s film Caché (2005)

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Žižek’s Dialectics, Critique of Ideology and Emancipatory Politics in Michael Haneke’s film Caché (2005)

Murdoch A Jennings

International Journal of Zizek Studies, Vol.8(2), pp.1-30

2014

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Abstract

Sociology

Literary Studies

film

philosophy

psychoanalysis

critical theory

cultural theory

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke's film Caché (Hidden) (2005) explores the psychological and social effects of the intrusion of the immigrant Other into privileged Western capitalist society. Caché allegorises the intrusion of the immigrant Other through a series of intrusive and threatening non-diegetic surveillance tapes delivered to a wealthy Parisian family's home, the subject of the surveillance. Haneke's film undertakes a significant critique of the increasing right-wing anti-immigrant sentiment driving neo-liberal politics and ideology in the capitalist West. Here, Caché confronts the viewer with their complicity in the disavowal and subjugation of the immigrant Other within their own social edifice. The significance of Caché is the film's potential to facilitate the viewers' confrontation with the disavowed and repressed truth of the social edifice. This confrontation enables the viewer to assume an emancipatory subjectivity which extends beyond Caché's cinematic frame into the viewers' own social edifice. I argue that Haneke's film has the potential to radically alter the way viewers relate to the diegetic reality and, through the figuration of cinema, to their own social edifice. Ultimately, Caché brings to the fore the disavowed truth of both capitalist society and of privileged subjectivities, demanding a new politics based on the excluded immigrant Other.

Details

Title: Žižek’s Dialectics, Critique of Ideology and Emancipatory Politics in Michael Haneke’s film Caché (2005)
Authors: Murdoch A Jennings (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Publication details: International Journal of Zizek Studies, Vol.8(2), pp.1-30
Publisher: University of Leeds, Institute of Communications Studies
Date published: 2014
ISSN: 1751-8229
Copyright note: Copyright © 2014 Murdoch Jennings. This material is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. This article is free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. Use of IJZS content for commercial purposes is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of the editor.
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99448835002621
Output Type: Journal article

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