本次工作坊將分三週，每週一天在台北針對台灣當代電影中豐富的​宗教儀式、神像、廟宇、鬼魂等呈現進行討論。在黃明川的《破輪胎​》、萬仁的《超級公民》、陳芯宜的《流浪神狗人》以及其他為數不​少的當代台灣電影中，我們看到電影作者對這個深入台灣文化的面向​有多種角度的探討以及充滿寓意的呈現。三次的閱讀討論將由中央大​學視覺文化研究中心訪問學者泊硯（Erik BORDELEAU）助理教授主持，與學員一起閱讀與汎靈論（A​nimism）相關的文章。下午則將放映三部甚具代表性的影片，​由中大視覺文化研究中心主任林文淇教授主持，並邀請萬仁、黃明川​與陳芯宜導演座談。本次工作坊在台北李國鼎故居與國家電影資料館​舉行，預計錄取相關科系碩博士生、教師15-20名全程免費，歡​迎大家報名參加。

(Dis)enchanted Taiwanese Cinema:

A Workshop on the Actuality of Animism

The Enlightenment’s program was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow phantasy with knowledge. The disenchantment of the world means the extirpation of animism.

Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectics of Enlightenment

1. General Overview

Taiwan contemporary cinema is abounding with religious rites, spirits, specters, ghosts, gods and other supernatural forces. To take only the most recent examples, at random, one can think of No puedo vivir sin ti (不能没有你, 2009) and its opening possession ritual; Monga (艋舺, 2010) and its relation to local temples, God Man Dog (流浪狗神人, 2007) and its multiconfessional plot; Zero Chou’s Splendid Float (艶光四射歌舞團, 2004) with its Taoist priest /queer performer; Orz Boyz (囧男孩, 2008) and its magical surrealism; the acclaimed The Fourth Portrait (第四張畫, 2010) and the haunting of a dead brother; the work of mourning and the lengthy coexistence with Lu Yi-Ching’s spirit in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Face (脸, 2009); etc.

For Chris Berry, the pervasiveness of these visible religious practices and references to the supernatural suggests a peculiar and distinctive Taiwanese modernity, characterized by an “extended and reconfigured spectral time [that] can be called haunted realism.” [1] This temporal heterogeneity that characterizes Taiwan contemporary cinema corresponds to what Bliss Cua Lim, in her work on the fantastic and temporal critique in cinema, has called “immiscible times”, that is, an “untranslatable temporal otherness” that challenges the uniform chronological epic of disenchanted secular modernity.[2] She draws on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s critique of European conception of progress, who sustains that “the moment we think of the world as disenchanted, we set limits to the way the past can be narrated.” [3]

This workshop will be an occasion to further explore the dialectic of disenchantment and (re)enchantment at work in Taiwanese contemporary cinema through the work of different thinkers who all share, in different manners, a common concern for the actuality of animism. Coined in the field of anthropology, the term was originally related to a modernist theory of the origins of religion championed by Edward Tylor in his foundational Primitive Culture (1872), and which basically assumes that primitive people are wrong in attributing life and person-like qualities to objects in their environment. In the context of this workshop, the concept of animism will be understood in a radically contrasting way, denoting a positive way of decentering the subjectivity and escaping the ontological dualisms of modern thought, in order to plunge beneath the subject/object division and to reload the real with possibles.

2. Encounters

The workshop will unfold over 3 day-encounters: August 14^th, 21^st and 28^th. It will take the form of a graduate seminar, with a guided discussion of the texts in the morning and the projection of a film followed by an open discussion with invited scholars and filmmakers in the afternoon. Participants are expected to have read the texts and to participate actively to the discussion. You are more than welcome to bring in other readings that you find relevant, film clips that could be interesting to watch together, etc.