Page - 78 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

78 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 Citizenship inevitably involves all sorts of acts, because the “ways of being consti- tute the existential conditions of possibility of acts”,29 which, however, do not neces- sarily produce an action. Isin argues that acts cannot be reduced to calculability, that they are not inherently positive or negative, and that acts produce qualities not as causes but only as their effects.30 Action is the actualisation of an act. As a deed in space and time, action is praxis (πραξις). Action also represents a quality of acts, an effect of the act, and as such it is interpretative. Being ontological, acts do not necessarily originate in the name of anything; it is frequently our interpretation of the quality of action that gives meaning to the acts. The actor is crucial, for the actor carries out the action, and, according to Isin, the actor “is constituted by the act itself and produced through the scene”.31 Further- more “subjects, constituted by acts, become activist citizens through the scenes created”.32 Film is a particularly interesting site for this investigation because it is “a scene of a scene” by the very fact that it is reproducing reality. If “a performative utterance produces the event of which it speaks”, it is this event, as Isin points out, that “transforms a performative utterance into an act”.33 This link between act and performativity is crucial for understanding the correlation between acts, activism, and peacebuilding in film. Finally, it is important to bear in mind that acts are always related to the Other; in fact “acts are ways of being with Others”.34 Isin makes the distinction here between, on one hand, answerability as an ontological orientation towards the Other and, on the other hand, responsibility as ontic, or calculable, orientation towards others.35 It is doubtless that being-with-Others is the existential way of being.36 The substance of being does not exist without a mode of existence.37 This mode, through which a person exercises absolute freedom, is the mode of being-with-Others. As I have noted, although not every act is intended to be political, it becomes so through interpretation of our action that carries out the quality of our relation to the Other. Approaching activist citizenship on an interdisciplinary basis, Isin argues, im- plies a shift from the institution of citizenship to acts of citizenship – to an investi- gation of “collective or individual deeds that rupture socio-historical patterns”.38 As these deeds do not need to be grounded in law, “activist citizens that acts produce 29 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 2. 30 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 37–38. 31 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 34. 32 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 38. 33 Isin 2012, 126. 34 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 19. 35 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 31. 36 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 34. 37 Zizioulas 1985, 41. 38 Isin/Nielsen 2008, 2.