[in]Transition Special Issue: Screening Death

Guest Editors:

David H. Fleming (University of Stirling): david.fleming@stir.ac.uk
Pedro Inock (NOVA University of Lisbon): pedroinock@gmail.com

Projected Publication Date: Summer 2027

Mission & Scope (Call For Works):

Visual media do not simply represent and remediate death; they actively shape political responses, ethical debates, and practices of public mourning. This special ‘Screening Death’ issue of the videographic journal [in]Transition takes as its focus the contranym screen: to show, but also to filter or conceal. In an era marked by pandemics, global conflicts, genocide, and political assassinations, this double meaning becomes urgent in relation to death and mourning. 

Drawing on key contributions in death studies (Derrida 1995; Critchley 1997, 2009; Agamben 1998; Malpas & Solomon 1998; Mbembe 2011; Pentaris, Pitsillides, Ghorbani 2026) and screen-philosophy (Cavell 1980; Deleuze 1986; 1989; Frampton 2006; Wartenberg 2007; Armstrong 2012; Aaron 2013; Penfold Mounce 2018; Viegas 2023; Wheatley 2024), this special issue will examine how moving images stage and suppress, smooth and trouble, mediated encounters with mortality. The collection will be underpinned by three broad interfacing claims: Screen-philosophy offers distinctive insights into questions of death; These insights are best understood through screened modes of thinking time and finitude; Screen-based reflections on mortality renew philosophy’s historic role as a meditation on death. 

We particularly invite works that engage with topics associated with, but not limited to: Decolonising Death; Death and Genre; Death and Gender; Film Philosophy and Death; Death and Technology; Death and Race; Necropoilitics/Biopolitics; Hierarchies of grieveability; Death and the non-human/posthuman/inhuman; Mediated death; Animal Death; Mass Extinction; screening martyrdom and suicide; Animal and Ecological death; Death and the Anthropocene; The Ethics of Screening Death; Queering Death; (a)voiding death; Video Games and death; Death hacks; Death reportage; Documenting death; Afterlife/death; AI and death; Celebrity death; Celebrating death; bereavement and the screen; screening femicide; Crime and Death; Death and Ethics/Morality; Living death.

Call for Works:

We invite authors to submit proposals for contributions engaging with the special issue theme. Eligible works must have been produced within the last year and not previously published with any other journal. [in]Transition's policy permits submissions that authors have shared on their personal websites or their own Vimeo or YouTube accounts, even in non-private form.

Authors should note that [in]Transition operates an open peer review system. 

At this stage, we welcome:

• Abstracts for new works in development (300–500 words), or
• Completed or work-in-progress pieces, accompanied by a shorter abstract (50–200 words)
• Video work with one channel only or two channels collapsed into one 

Please email proposals or work for consideration to: david.fleming@stir.ac.uk

Abstract Submissions due August 31 2026.

Full work submission December 2026.

Work Submission:

To be considered for double peer review, final submissions must include:

• article title
• author name, preferred pronouns, and affiliation
• a 25–50 word abstract
• 3–6 keywords
• a 300–1000 word supporting statement that articulates the video's research aims and approach, as well as the ways in which those aims are achieved in the audiovisual form
• a brief biographical statement (no more than 150 words)
• a list of works cited
• links to video(s), with passwords if required (after submitting the work please do not alter links or passwords until the results are out)

Consolidated bibliography:

Aaron, M. (2013). Envisaging Death: Visual Culture and Dying. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Cambridge.

Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Armstrong, P. (2012). Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Cavell, S. (1979). The World Viewed [enlarged edition]. Harvard: Harvard University Press. 

Cavell, S. (1980/2025). Cavell on Film. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Critchley, S. (1997). Very Little… Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature. London:
Routledge.

Critchley, S. (2009). The Book of Dead Philosophers. London: Granta Books. 

Deleuze, G. (1986). Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. London & New York: The Athlone Press.

Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London & New York: The Athlone Press.

Derrida, J. (1995). The Gift of Death. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Fleming, D H. (2017). "Death 24X A Haecceity: Or Deleuze, Life and the Ethico-Aesthetics of
Documenting Suicide in (and off) The Bridge". In Unbecoming CInema: Unsettling Encounters With Ethical Event Films. Bristol: Intellect, 25-60.

Frampton, D. (2006). Filmosophy. London: Wallflower Press.

Mbembe, A. (2011). Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Malpas, J. & Solomon, R.C. (1998). Death and Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Malkowski, J. (2017). Dying in full detail: morality and digital documentary. Duke University
Press: Durham, NC and London.

Michael-Fox, B., and Visser, R. (2022). "Death and the Screen: Editor's Introduction". In Revenant Issue 8: 20-46.

Pentaris, P., Pitsillides, S. & Ghorbani, H. (eds.) (2026). Decolonising Death Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death. London: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Penfold Mounce, R. (2018). Death, the Dead and Popular Culture. Emerald: Bingley.

Viegas, S. (2023). Death as Film-Philosophy’s Muse: Deleuzian Observations on Moving Images
and the nature of time. In Film-Philosophy 27(2), 222-239. 

Wartenberg, T.E. (2007). Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London & New York:
Routledge.

Wheatley, H. (2024). Death/Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

Consolidated Filmography:

FILM AND DEATH Conceptual Knowledge Map: https://kumu.io/filmanddeath/filmanddeath#map-sdbMHejR