Facing concepts: academic star personas in ‘The Toxic Reigns of Resentment’

Abstract

In this essay, I explore the relationship between film form, academic star personas, and the concept of resentment through a discussion of Jürgen Schaflechner’s film ‘The Toxic Reigns of Resentment’ (2020). I will argue that through its form, ‘Toxic Reigns’ allows us to consider different meanings of ‘faces’ – from individualising star personas, the circulation of resentment to a sense of affect that goes beyond individuation. By doing so, I argue that the film enables academic viewers to rethink how we often overly personalise the concepts we use in our everyday academic life. Furthermore, I argue that this also pertains to academic star-personas we come to see as the bearer of the concepts and who are often invested with resentment. In the course of my discussion, I will show how the film’s form leads us beyond the deadlocks of identitarian and personalised resentment that are tangled up with such academic star-personas.