First Topía International Essay Book Contest

We have unanimously decided to grant the:
First prize: “Cinema, Philosophy and psychoanalysis: towards a hermeneutics of the movement-image” by María José Rossi (Jeremias).
In Cinema, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: towards a Hermeneutics of the Image-Movement by María José Rossi, "Jeremías" constructs a rigorous text about the image, clearly, precisely and consistently articulating the languages that explain the subject and the reception. With beautiful writing, "Jeremias" travels through a universe where hermeneutics and semiotics dispute their place to account for how philosophy and psychoanalysis transform cinema, and how cinema transforms culture."

The text by María José Rossi was edited by Topía publishing house with the title
Cinema as Text. A Hermeneutics of the movement-image.
Below we transcribe a fragment.

Whether it is about finding the idea in the image or, conversely, investing ideas with images, the approach of cinema to philosophy and psychoanalysis (and vice versa) reconsiders the link between the sensible and the intelligible, the concept and the appearance. the particular and the universal. In this sense, Badiou (2004, p. 45) considers that cinema "is capable of showing metaphysics". The great task made possible by the cinema is “the synthesis of the sensible and the intelligible”. That is why, given its importance for culture, and far from considering it a mere product for mass consumption, this essay intends to integrate cinema, philosophy and psychoanalysis. The atavistic reluctance of the philosopher capitulates against the forcefulness with which the cinema imposes itself, which, despite the prevailing fragmentation, thinks and postulates, as perhaps no other artistic genre can, the totality. Thus, we stress the importance of integrating the contributions of a culture eminently focused on the visual with the exercise of reflective thinking. The success and extension achieved by audiovisual media and the concomitant difficulty in processing the potential richness of this material, demands entering into a critical and meditative relationship with the cinematographic image. That means recognizing the potential of philosophy to decipher, interpret, and examine the narrative and discursive possibilities of those particular languages. We can say the same in relation to psychoanalysis, which is presented, according to Ricoeur (2002, 2003), not only as a semantics of desire but also as an exegesis of culture. Committed to deciphering the dream as the private mythology of the sleeper and the myth as the waking dream of the people, and animated by a deep “will to listen”, his task is precisely to unmask, translate, understand, collect and restore meaning/s, whether found in the text of a dream, a symptom, a rite, a myth, or a work of art.
The starting point will then consist of presenting different ways of approaching film material for the presentation and development of philosophical ideas, for the construction of meanings or for the conscious elaboration of collective dreams (Part II). At the same time, we maintain that, regardless of their focus, these strategies suppose the implementation of a reading method, a way of approaching textuality. There is no access to meaning or meaning if it is not through an effective practice of understanding. And that understanding is mediated by interpretation, the alma mater of hermeneutics. Whether it is the text of a philosopher, a film director, a writer or an occasional interlocutor, what it is about is that the 'other' tells us something, acknowledging that in all comprehension the possibility is also at stake. to build a community, that is, to produce a dialogue with otherness. That is why the final purpose of this essay is aimed at laying the foundations for the production of a hermeneutics of the cinematographic image. It will not be an easy task because, as we will see, the image did not enjoy a specific treatment by philosophical hermeneutics, not to say that it was almost completely ignored.
At the beginning of part III we will briefly emphasize the reasons why the image was not the object of traditional hermeneutics and of a specific interpretative praxis. This implies making a review of the assumptions that led, if not to the complete exclusion, to the marginalization of the image in the hermeneutic philosophical tradition, focused exclusively on the written text. Secondly, the task will be to recognize what kind of sign the cinematographic image is and why we can consider that a film is "text" in an eminent sense, which is why we can include it in the domain of hermeneutics and overcome the limits that it itself has been imposed in relation to the image. Finally, we will have to suggest some guidelines for the elaboration of a hermeneutics of the cinema with a view to the identification