Pensiero debole: Weak national cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the relevance of Gianni Vattimo's concept of pensiero debole (weak or post-foundationalist thought) to the debate around national and post-national European cinema. In her book European Cinema after 1989, Luisa Rivi relies on Vattimo's idea of ‘weak thought’ to refer to the exhaustion—but not the vanishing—of national cinema. Rivi argues that rather than discarding the concept of ‘national cinema’ in favour of ‘post-national cinema’ we should approach post-1989 European cinema as ‘weak’ or ‘declined’ national cinema, which acknowledges the different ways in which transnational forces and supranational bodies are altering the notion of national identity and national cinema. In my examination of recent European films in light of Rivi's concept of ‘weak national cinema’ I distinguish between ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ engagements with the idea of ‘national’ and ‘European’ identity. The films I consider ‘progressive’ (1) foreground the ways in which personal and transnational conflicts and allegiances disrupt national ones; (2) present conflicts within the nation and conflicts between the national and the global capitalist order as mutually imbricated; (3) conceive European identity in terms of what Elsaesser calls ‘double occupancy’ or an ‘”always-already” state of (semantic) occupation.’