Theorie Des Fantomes: Pour Une Archeologie Des Images

Ghosts are everywhere: in literature, the cinema, photography, painting, philosophy, science, technology, and even in our psychic lives. But what, exactly, is a ghost?The essay Théorie des fantômes attempts to answer this question. Ghosts are certainly figures that arouse fear, but exploring the back-from-the-grave forms leads us to think about their imagery and artistic forms. Viewing ghosts as a mode of defining image requires returning to the imagery’s cultural sources (etymologies, artistic forms, aesthetic and philosophical questions).What is a ghost? The answer, from Pliny to Derrida, Plato to Spinoza, Poussin to Hippolyte Bayard, Homer to Shakespeare, Hitchcock to M. Night Shyamalan, Botticelli to Mankiewicz, Kubrick to Benjamin, Aristotle to Boccaccio, Dante to Oliveira, Barthes to Alain Cavalier, Mesmer to Billy Wilder, and from Proust to Général Instin, provides an aesthetic outline of the ghostly and their imagery by drawing from numerous studies of literary, artistic and cinematographic works.This obsession with death which permeates countless works and thoughts gives readers an opportunity to envisage the fundamental aesthetic act embodies by ghosts.