Presented by the Centre for Cinema Studies and Cinema Thinks the World, the Critical Thinkers Series features research talks by notable and emerging scholars in Cinema and Media Studies. Join us for the next talk in the Spring 2026 Series by Victor Fan, Professor of Film and Media Philosophy, King’s College London.
Interthinking: Vijñāna and the Cultural Logic of Cognitive Unconscious
In her recent books, Katherine Hayles proposes the term “cognitive unconscious,” defined as a cognitive operation that enables both sentient and nonsentient beings/objects to engage in “the processes of interpreting information, drawing inferences, and making meaning.” It does so, however, “below the threshold of consciousness” and can take place with or without the actant’s awareness of it. For Hayles, this concept allows scholars to address the ability of technical objects to carry out tasks that seem to suggest that they think, when in fact they have no awareness of their own being. Hayles’s term steers scholars away from claiming that technical objects have consciousness or that they have become part of human consciousness. It also connects humans and technics by acknowledging that they can carry out cognitive functions on their own or with one another.
In my presentation, I do not intend to refute Hayles’s claim, though I argue that her term is limited by the cultural logical of the Euro-American understanding of consciousness and relationality. Hayles’s claim is based on a common underlying assumption in Euro-American philosophy and sciences that consciousness is a form of (self-)awareness. In English-language literature on Buddhism, however, the term vijñāna is often used interchangeably with “consciousness.” Nonetheless, it refers to a knowledge-building process among beings that is based on binary discrimination (e.g., between self/other, oneness/plurality, or particularity/universality) and manifestation (of a binarized perception onto the body itself and its associated milieu). In fact, such a knowledge-building process operates often without one’s awareness of it and one’s interdependency with other beings/objects. One’s inability to become aware of such a process imposes one’s understanding of the world and our knowledge-building process in binary terms. In this light, Hayles’s argument itself may be limited by its own cultural logic, and the Buddhist notion of vijñāna indeed has been giving rise to a different understanding of the interdependency between technical and sentient beings. In my discussion, I will revisit Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Rak ti Kohn Kaen [Cemetery of Splendour, 2015] as a cinematic example.
About Victor Fan
Victor Fan is Professor of Film and Media Philosophy, King’s College London and a film festival consultant. He is also Vice President of the Asian Cinema Studies Society. He is the author of Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media (Edinburg University Press, 2019), and Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). His articles appeared in journals including Camera Obscura, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen, and Film History. His film The Well was an official selection of the São Paolo International Film Festival; it was also screened at the Anthology Film Archives, the Japan Society and the George Eastman House.
This event is free and there is no need to RSVP.