Forms of the Imaginary Experience of Accompaniment
To accompany is, discreetly almost to the point of self-effacement, to stand alongside those who are on their own path. It is not a concrete act of support which involves assigned tasks, care protocols or demands a precise attitude, it is rather an act of presence, even just an act of thought, that implies a sense of availability and a particular sensitivity. Knowing how to accompany and knowing that we are accompanied establish the ontological confidence of the vulnerable beings that we are. But this receptiveness, this sensitivity, and this tenuous knowledge of accompaniment must constantly be remade and refined, and yet still sometimes is lost.
The current intervention hypothesizes that cinema – and more broadly any media capable of simulating a relational situation – offers an imaginary experience of accompaniment to the spectators and, via aesthetic forms, marks of enunciation, and actors’ performances, tests their capacity to accompany characters. This imaginary experience allows us to explore the emotional and moral complexity of this capacity to pay attention to others and to oneself, which has also sparked the interest of social science researchers in recent years. As an imaginary experience, it participates in a cultural history of sensibilities, and more broadly, in a history of sociality in the era of its audiovisual “remediation.”
This year's Martin Walsh Memorial Lecture will be delivered in French with simultaneous translation into English.