The Essay in Times of Crisis
Keywords:
essay, essay film, essay theatre, documentary theatreAbstract
This contribution to Performance Philosophy 4.1 ‘Crisis/Krisis’ explores the breeding ground of the genre of the essay: a state of crisis and transition. This text was conceived and written in line with the editors’ open call for this thematic issue and its search to reassess and revaluate the notion of krisis. In the contribution, I will foreground the essay’s qualities and critical potential—which also can be detected in contemporary performing arts—to revaluate the notion of krisis. By exploring Montaigne, Adorno, and Lukács, I will try to claim that the nature and purpose of the essay offers a welcome counterweight to our swift and superficial way of judging dictated by mainstream media.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. (1958) 1984. “The Essay as Form.” New German Critique 32: 151–171. https://doi.org/10.2307/488160
Alter, Nora M. 1996. “The Political Im/perceptible in the Essay Film: Farocki's Images of the World and the Inscription of War.” New German Critique 68: 165–192. https://doi.org/10.2307/3108669
Alter, Nora M. 2007. “Translating the Essay into Film and Installation.” Journal of Visual Culture 6 (1): 44–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412907075068
Alter, Nora M. 2018. The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press.
Arthur, Paul. 2003. “Essay Questions: From Alain Renais to Michael Moore.” Film Comment 39 (1): 58–63.
Bense, Max. (1947) 2017. “On the Essay and its Prose.” In Essays on the Essay Film. Edited by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, 49–59. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/alte17266-004
Bruzzi, Stella. 2000. New Documentary: A critical introduction. New York: Routledge.
Corrigan, Timothy. 2010. “The Essay Film as a Cinema of Ideas.” In Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. Edited by Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, 218–237. New York: Oxford University Press.
Corrigan, Timothy. 2011. The Essay Film: From Montaigne, after Marker. New York: Oxford University Press.
De Certeau, Michel. (1986) 2000. “Montaigne’s ‘Of Cannibals’: The Savage ‘I.’” In Heterologies. Discourse on the Other, 67–79. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
De Obaldia, Claire. 1995. The Essayistic Spirit: Literature, Modern Criticism, and the Essay. Oxford: Clarendon.
Delbecke, Jasper. 2018. “Tracing the Essay in Contemporary Performing Arts.” Performance Research 23 (2): 5–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1464720
Good, Graham. 1988. The Observing Self: Rediscovering the essay. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hall, Michael L. 1989. “The Emergence of the Essay and the Idea of Discovery.” In Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre. Edited by Alexander J. Butrym, 73–91. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Kauffmann, R. Lane. 1988. “The Skewed Path: Essaying as Un-methodical Method.” Diogenes 36 (143): 66–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219218803614304
Kritzman, D. Lawrence. 2009. The Fabulous Imagination. On Montaigne’s Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/krit11992
Lopate, Philip. 1996. “In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film.” In Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film. Edited by Charles Warren, 243–270. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Lukács, György. (1910) 2010. “On the Nature and Form of the Essay. A Letter to Leo Popper.” In Soul & Form. Edited by György Lukács, John T. Sanders, and Katie Terezakis, 16–34. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report in Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Montaigne, Michel de, and M. A Screech. 1993. The Complete Essays. London: Penguin.
Nichols, Bill. 2010. Introduction to Documentary. Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rascaroli, Laura. 2009. The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film. London: Wallflower.
Rascaroli, Laura. 2017. How The Essay Film Thinks. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190238247.001.0001
Performance Philosophy. 2017. ‘Call for proposals: Performance Philosophy 4.1 “Crisis/Krisis”’. http://www.performancephilosophy.org/journal/announcement/view/3
Richter, Hans. (1940) 2017. “The Film Essay. A New Type of Documentary Film.” In Essays on the Essay Film. Edited by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, 89–92. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/alte17266-007
Renov, Michael. (1995) 2017. “The Electronic Essay.” In Essays on the Essay Film. Edited by Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan, 172–182. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/alte17266-013
Roose, Alexander. 2016. De vrolijke wijsheid : zoeken, denken en leven met Michel de Montaigne. Second Edition. Antwerpen: Polis.
Verschaffel, Bart. 1995. Figuren. Leuven: Van Halewyck.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal, provided it is for non-commercial uses; and that lets others excerpt, translate, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
