30/09/2025

New article by Marco Grosoli on zombies, Catherine Malabou and Freud’s ‘death drive’

A new open-access article by Marco Grosoli was just published in Ocula (35), a special issue dedicated to Zombesque. Sociosemiotica di un'epidemia culturale, curated by Andrea Bernardelli, Eduardo Grillo e Federico Montanari.

This new article is titled "More Zombies than Zombies: Catherine Malabou’s 'New Wounded' and their Ethico-Political Implications, According to Victor Erice’s Cerrar los ojos".

Although it features no zombies, Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, Victor Erice, 2023) revolves around a zombie-like protagonist (not unlike the hero of another film attempting something like a European zombie film, Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past, 2002) who is, more precisely, a token of what Catherine Malabou calls “the new wounded” (those subjects which trauma-induced brain lesions turn into different persons, utterly emotionally indifferent, with no recollection of what they used to be). The latter’s manifold philosophical and socio-political implications have extensively been elaborated upon by the French philosopher, whose radical revision of Freud’s death drive is the main analytical framework used by this essay to argue that Cerrar los ojos regards (like Malabou) the “new wounded” less as borderline cases than as the very epitome of human subjectivity per se qua existentially grounded on withdrawal, and sketches an ideal modelization of intersubjective/social space pivoting around them accordingly.

The full article is available here.

📷 Cerrar los ojos [2023], by Victor Erice

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07/08/2026

“Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films” is out now!

We are pleased to announce the completion of the Special Issue “Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films”, guest edited by Vasco Baptista Marques and Susana Viegas for Arts. The Special Issue brings together seven original articles examining testament films from a philosophical perspective. Rather than approaching filmmakers’ final works merely as […]
06/08/2026

New Open Access publication by Susana Viegas

We are pleased to share that the book chapter “Derrida on Cinema’s Spectral Images: Time, Repetition, and Belief” by PI Susana Viegas is now available in Open Access through the publisher Brill. Published in “Derrida and Film Studies”, edited by Kamil Lipiński and Andrzej Marzec (Brill, 2025), the chapter explores Jacques Derrida’s reflections on cinema […]
06/08/2026

Join us at the Goethe-Institut Portugal for the cycle “Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém)”!

Organized by the Goethe-Institut Portugal, with contributions from the FILM AND DEATH team, Death Café, the association Doulas do Fim da Vida, and many other partners, the festival Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém) [Speaking About Death (Never Killed Anyone)] will open on September 17 at 5:00 pm with the interactive sound installation Memorial […]
03/08/2026

Join Anderson Santos and Lucas Ferraço Nassif at the Centro Português de Psicanálise

On September 1, 7:00 PM, the Centro Português de Psicanálise (R. da Assunção 7, 2º) will host a talk by Anderson Santos, moderated by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, on “Félix Guattari: Psicanálise e o Paradigma Ético-Estético”. This presentation will be in Portuguese. This presentation addresses the shift initiated by Félix Guattari within psychoanalysis, as he proposes […]
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