Colloque international, 4 et 5 juin, Université de Lausanne Organisé sous la direction de Charles-Antoine Courcoux et de Mireille Berton
Depuis la parution, en 1975, de l'article de Laura Mulvey « Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema », le paramètre du regard en général et celui de la scopophilie en particulier n'ont eu de cesse de prendre de l'importance au sein des travaux qui se sont attachés à mettre en lumière la propension du cinéma dominant à structurer les relations de pouvoir entre les genres sur un mode androcentriste et hétéronormatif. En se donnant pour objet le rôle politique du regard et du plaisir qu'il suscite dans l'instauration des rapports de genres aujourd'hui, ce colloque ne vise ni à réhabiliter le paradigme sémio-psychanalytique émoussé qui a caractérisé l'émergence de cette question ni à rendre compte des nombreux débats productifs auxquels elle a donné lieu, mais à l'interroger à nouveaux frais via son inscription dans les contextes filmiques et théoriques contemporains. Il s'agit ainsi de proposer une réflexion axée, d'une part, sur les apports que les approches gender actuelles, mais queer également peuvent avoir pour le renouvellement de cette question et, d'autre part, sur la (re)configuration genrée des regards au sein des productions filmiques et télévisuelles contemporaines.
Scopophilia: The Gendered Politics of the Gaze
International conference, June 4th-5th 2015, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Organized by Charles-Antoine Courcoux and Mireille Berton
In 1975, with "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey placed the question of the pleasure of looking (and its articulation with the narrative process) at the heart of the first political theorization of gender relations in cinema. Mulvey showed that, far from being merely an aesthetic issue, the gaze was also inextricably political in that it served as the nodal variable in a symbolic. This symbolic was conducive to structuring power relations-between women and men of course, but also and more importantly between the masculine, the feminine and all types of gender identifications likely to deviate from this dichotomy. Since its publication, this seminal contribution has been discussed, nuanced, reformulated and expanded extensively, sometimes by the theorist herself. As parameters, the gaze (in general) and scopophilia (in particular) have gained increasing importance in works emphasizing the propensity of dominant cinema to structure gender/power relations on a heteronormative and androcentric mode. This conference thus takes as its object the political role of the cinematic gaze (and of the pleasure it evokes) in the formation of gender relations today, that is to say, in the power dynamics threading these relations. In so doing, we do not mean to reinstate the relatively outdated semio-psychoanalytic paradigm that characterized the emergence of this issue or account for the many productive discussions it gave rise to. Rather, we would like to question it anew by confronting it to contemporary cinematic and theoretical contexts.
Participants :
Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, Olivier Aïm, Janet Bergstrom, Noël Burch, Raymond Bellour, Michel Bondurand, Laurent Guido, Marion Krauthaker, Gwénaëlle Le Gras, Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Geneviève Sellier, Maria Tortajada.