The Iconographies of Death in Cinema: Personae, Representations, and Imaginaries

Cinema has developed an extensive repertoire of visual forms and aesthetic strategies whereby the inevitable, the invisible, and the unrepresentable acquire shape and visibility. Death has assumed an extraordinary variety of forms and representations : skeleton, Grim Reaper, psychopomp, ghost, invisible presence, and cosmic force. At times, it appears as a fully embodied character endowed with agency, speech, and intention ; at others, it remains an abstract principle, perceptible only through its effects, rendering visible that which, by definition, escapes representation. Appel à contribution. Subjects: Philosophie, Ethnologie, anthropologie, Histoire intellectuelle, Histoire de l'art.