“Polemics of Disintegration: Advaita Metaphysics in the Works of Alejandro Jodorowsky”

The Chilean artist Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929) often engages with non-linearity and non-sense as narrative devices in his work. Throughout his career Jodorowsky’s thematic repertoire has adopted elements of the Kabbalistic science of the Marseille tarot, European alchemy, and New Age formulations of Hindu and Zen Buddhist thought. I attempt to trave the genealogical articulation of Jodorowsky’s brand of filmmaking and artistic practice by working through his depiction of Hindu, specifically Advaita (non-dualist), philosophy in two films, The Holy Mountain (1973) and The Dance of Reality (2013). Far from appealing to an Orientalist aesthetic, Jodorowsky incorporates Advaita conceptions of indeterminacy which “uses this disintegration {of meaning} and constructs order out of it.

Friday Forum Fall 2016 Schedule:

Fridays 12:20-2pm
Humanities 1 Room 202

A weekly interdisciplinary colloquium series for sharing graduate research across the humanities. Join us for light refreshments and weekly presentations by your fellow graduate students.

October 14th- Mikki Stelder, Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness
October 21st- Kali Rubaii, Anthropology
October 28th- Mitchell Winter, HAVC
November 4th- Hahkyung Darline Kim, Film and Digital Media
November 18th- Sophi Pappenheim, Literature
December 2nd- Nicole Vandermeer, History