Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran - Kiarostami/Corbin/Lacan

A theoretical examination of veiling, shame, and modesty in the films of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami through the lenses of Islamic philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In The concept of the Cloud plays a significant role in defining: 1) the unique nature of the Islamic God, who is not a creator or father; 2) the nature of the image, which assumes a priority and a greater power than it is elsewhere accorded; and 3) the nature of modesty, shame, and sexuality. Copjec walks her readers through the thicket of Islamic philosophy while demonstrating how its abstract concepts produce what audiences see on screen. The most ambitious aspect of the book lies in its attempt to demonstrate the inheritance by psychoanalysis of a new notion of knowledge, or gnosis, formulated by Muslim thinkers, who radically redefined the relation between body and thought.

List of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Cinema of Subtraction

Part 1: Straight Shots
Chapter 1: The Imaginal World and Modern Oblivion: Kiarostami’s Zig-Zag
Chapter 2: The Vertigo of Origins
Chapter 3: From the Cloud to the Resistance
Chapter 4: Battle Fatigue: Bodies and Resurrection

Part 2: Pillow Shots
Chapter 5: May ’68. The Emotional Month
Chapter 6: The Censorship of Interiority
Chapter 7: The Sexual Compact

Notes
Index

About the author

Joan Copjec

Product details

• Authors: Joan Copjec, Copjec Joan
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 06.05.2025
• EAN: 9780262552394
• ISBN: 978-0-262-55239-4
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 229 mm x 14 mm
• Series: Short Circuits
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Islamic Studies, Films, cinema, Islamic Studies, Philosophy: aesthetics, Relating to Islamic / Muslim people and groups, Social groups: religious groups and communities, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Regional & National