Twenty nine year-old Astra Taylor has an amazing new documentary film out called Examined Life, in which she interviews eight philosophers about ethics while they are "in motion"--strolling through a park, navigating the streets of San Francisco, riding escalators in airports, rowing boats, and picking around garbage dumps, among other modes and settings. The concept might sound gimmicky, but it actually builds on a long, beautiful history of folks doing their best thinking while ambling. Who hasn't had the experience of a stagnant brain that is suddenly awakened and let loose by a simple walk in the park?
In any case, the most amazing thing about this film (and trust me, there are many) is the way in which Taylor has successfully taken philosophy out of the Ivory tower and put it in the streets. It's not that the philosophers--K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Michael Hardt, Martha Nussbaum, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek--don't make sophisticated arguments or go off on the occasional tangent that I had no way in hell of understanding. But the act of putting them in motion, removing them from their offices full of papers and the safety of their heavy, bound book, managed to de-stabilize them enough that they really managed to speak more plainly than they might have otherwise. Or as Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "By conducting her conversations in public spaces, and removing her interlocutors from desks and offices and book-lined studies and other appurtenances of intellectual authority, Taylor introduces a degree of playfulness and unpredictability that becomes the movie's M.O."
My favorite ten minutes (each philosopher was limited to just that much) was actually an exchange between Judith Butler and Taylor's own sister, Sunaura. As they strolled around San Francisco, they had a fascinating exchange about the body, the definition of walking, and our ideas about dependence. Sunaura is in a wheelchair, so her insights about these topics were drawn from lived experience, although she's linked them seamlessly to the larger field of disability rights and theory. Taylor actually made the film, in part, because she watched what a huge impact discovering a philosophy of disability had on her sister and she wanted to provide that experience for other "ordinary" people.
I got all sorts of useful nuggets out of the hour and half that have continued to linger in my non-philosophically trained brain. I've read many of these thinkers' work previously, and often struggled to sink my teeth in. Through Taylor's film, I was finally able to take away something that might just affect my behavior, my own personal ethics, and my life.
Check out this Q&A with the filmmaker for more.
*Um, and can we talk about how awesome it is that there a young woman filmmaker doing such amazing work marrying cinema and philosophy--two male-dominated fields? Huzzah!
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Philosophy is indeed a male-dominated field...and only three out of the eight interviewees are philosophers (Appiah, Nussbaum, Singer). And Singer has an intelligent and admirable stance on animal rights...but some (related) perhaps not-so-tasteful ideas about infanticide. Zizek...don't even get me started.
Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. These are mainly literary theorists, not philosophers. Also, Zizek is not "out of his Ivory tower", he drags it around with him to stash his crazy.
I wish she'd interviewed Judith Jarvis Thomson; that might have been another step up for women in serious ethical debate, although Nussbaum is equally a frighteningly intelligent person.
Yes this! exactly! Although, I saw this film in the final stages of production (my ex-advisor consulted on it) and its the first time I've ever heard Zizek say anything remotely philosophical, let alone intelligent.
Singer's argumentation for animal rights is a little loosey goosey for my tastes, but he does bring up some valid points about morality. But any film that combines (or, at least, has both) Singer with Cornel West (!) is alright with me. I'd consider him a philosopher, maybe a cultural philosopher (to be specific)?
I'll admit, I haven't heard a lot from West, but he's an amazing orator.
You are joking, right?
Zizek is one of the most important marxist philosophers today, I'd say.
OK, the way he writes is terrible (no structure)..
I think a cursory sweep of YouTube is enough to confirm my hypothesis.
If you'd like something a little more credible, see The New Republic though:
http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=097a31f3-c440-4b10-8894-14197d7a6eef
I've read half of the article. And: Well, so what?
It is said in the article: "Whether or not it would be always a mistake to take Slavoj Zizek seriously". Precisely. And: Zizek is a Lacanian, by stating provocative (even inhuman) things, he wants the reader to reflect about today's society (through the text).
"Zizek is a believer in the Revolution at a time when almost nobody, not even on the left, thinks that such a cataclysm is any longer possible or even desirable."
The author does not seem to have that much knowledge of marxist academic writings.
The thing I really hate about Zizek is that he is unable to deal with criticism. As O'Neill says:"a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance."
"only three out of the eight interviewees are philosophers"
I think this depends on your definition of what it is to be a philosopher. Of course, philosophy is really an integral part of so many fields (and well, life) that I understand the need to reserve the title for those whose work is more strictly philosophical. However, to say that people like Judith Butler and Zizek aren't philosophers seems completely wrong to me.
Well, I understand how other works can be "philosophical" in nature or tone, but philosophy is a discipline and only those three could produce something like an article of peer-review standard for the Journal of Philosophy, for example.
Perhaps not so important a distinction as regards an outlook on life, if you term it such, but when it comes to ethics - call an Analytic philosopher...not Zizek, for the love of...
The definition of WALKING!? Seriously, is this going to be a piece of mindless Heideggerian existentialist jargon?
Where is this playing? I went on moviefone and its doesnt say anything
List of locations and dates to watch this film
Cinema Village in New York. I don't think it's gotten wide distribution elsewhere. It will definitely be on Canadian television and I think you can buy DVDs.
OMG. i am geeking out at how awesome this movie is going to be.
If anyone is interested in this theme, BFP and Jess have been doing a really interesting (and, I think, unusual) project called "(Re)Thinking Walking" in which they use the "walking medium" to get into all kinds of ideas. The results are being continually posted as a series at Flip Flopping Joy.
Link is here, or if that doesn't work, here:
http://flipfloppingjoy.com/category/rethinking-walking/
This just reminded me of it. I feel like there's slowly increasing interest in mixing physicality and our spatial world with stuff that at first glance seems like it's all in our minds...