This chapter critically reflects upon Gilles Deleuze's cinematic ethics, which considers cinema to have the potential to restore belief in humanity's ability to act upon the world, or, to put it in a more Deleuzian manner, to provide a reason to believe in this world. Through close analysis of the Chinese documentary Wo sui si qu/Though I am Gone (Hu Jie, 2006) – in which time-images are used to reconsider history – a key point of Deleuze's cinematic ethics is highlighted for further investigation: namely, in a world of cinemas broadly conceived, it may not always be precisely this world which a cinematic ethics asks us to rejuvenate our belief in, but this world's history. Or more precisely, to rejuvenate a belief in the possibility that other records of the past can potentially relativise the official version of history.

This nuancing of Deleuze's cinematic ethics is relevant to our globalised world for two reasons. First, due to the need to understand not the so-called ‘end of history’ but rather the elusive totality of world history. Second, due to neoliberalism globalisation's preference for authoritarian governance, especially the state of exception (Agamben 2005: 87). The second of these is of particular importance. Although the historical moment the documentary engages with – China's Cultural Revolution of 1966–76 – is politically far-removed from the present-day reality many experience worldwide, what it can nevertheless illuminate, which remains pertinent, is the way in which the state of exception shapes history. Neoliberal globalisation's attempted normalisation of the state of exception makes the emphasis on history in the time-image (which is so integral to Deleuze's cinematic ethics), extremely apposite. As the time-images in Though I am Gone indicate, histories obscured during a state of exception can remain ‘alive’ for the present. Thus, Deleuze's cinematic ethics, when understood in relation to both the engagement with world history found in a world of cinemas, and, more broadly, globalisation's emphasis on the eradication of alternative pasts in the state of exception (the return of which indicate the contingency of the present's norms), provides not only a reason to believe in this world, but also, in this process, emphasises the importance of believing in this world's history (the maintenance of its potential to relativise the official version of history).