KEYWORDS : home movies, amateur film making, photography, home videos, family, subjectivation, subjection, profanation
The article develops a theoretical and political reflection on the practice of home movies. By conceiving amateur cameras as “apparatus”, understood in a Foucaldian sense, we point out how families constantly negotiate the principles guiding their representations: on the one hand, by appropriating and reproducing the ideological injunctions of the society in which they live; on the other hand, trying to “profanate” them in the sense of Agamben. In this perspective, the study of the practice of home movies enables us to trace a history of the “ways” of seeing and representing the world, insisting on the subjectivating potential of private images. These audiovisual productions indeed do not simply reflect societal frameworks, but actively contribute to found or subvert them.
(Français) Un œil « moyen » Les films de famille entre assujettissement idéologique et profanation