•  106
    Cinema and Its Shadow: Mario Perniola (2004) Art and Its Shadow
    Film-Philosophy 10 (2): 31-38. 2006.
    Book review of Mario Perniola, 'Art and Its Shadow', translated by Massimo Verdicchio with a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, London and New York: Continuum Press, ISBN: 082626243X
  •  96
    Recognitive freedom: Hegel and the problem of recognition
    Critical Horizons 5 (1): 271-295. 2004.
    This paper examines the theme of recognition in Hegel's account of self-consciousness, suggesting that there are unresolved difficulties with the relationship between the normative sense of mutual recognition and phenomenological cases of unequal recognition. Recent readings of Hegel deal with this problem by positing an implicit distinction between an 'ontological' sense of recognition as a precondition for autonomous subjectivity, and a 'normative' sense of recognition as embodied in rational …Read more
  •  86
    A Heideggerian Cinema? On Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line
    Film-Philosophy 10 (3): 26-37. 2006.
    In his 1979 foreword to The World Viewed, Stanley Cavell remarks on the curiousrelationship between Heidegger and cinema . Cavell is inspired to do so byTerrence Malick's Days of Heaven , a film that not only presents us with images ofpreternatural beauty, but also acknowledges the self-referential character of thecinematic image . For Cavell, Malick's films have a formal radiance thatsuggest something of Heidegger's thinking of the relationship between Being and beings,the radiant self-showing …Read more
  •  81
    Few cinephiles would deny the importance of mood in film, yet the aesthetics of mood are curiously overlooked today. On the one hand, mood is an essential dimension of cinema: we define certain genres, for example, by suggesting the moods they evoke. On the other hand, words frequently fail us when we try to articulate such moods in a more abstract or analytical vein. I offer in this essay some critical reflections on the significance of mood, suggesting that mood works in narrative film by the …Read more
  •  81
    This paper develops a genealogical critique of the concepts of biopower and biopolitics in the work of Foucault and Agamben. It shows how Heidegger's reflections on Machenschaft or machination prefigure the concepts of biopower and biopolitics. It develops a critique of Foucault's account of biopolitics as a system of managing the biological life of populations culminating in neo-liberalism, and a critique of Agamben's presentation of biopolitics as the metaphysical foundation of Western politic…Read more
  •  68
    he enigmatic films of David Lynch have been interpreted from a variety of perspectives. Among these we can find Lynch the postmodernist ironist, Lynch the transgressive neoconservative, and Lynch the visionary explorer of the unconscious. Martha P. Nochimson's recent study, for example, presents an eloquent case for regarding Lynch as a Jungian 'surfer of the waves of the collective unconscious', whose films combine the intuitive embracing of subconscious Life Energy with a celebration of the cr…Read more
  •  68
    Stanley Cavell's writing on film has been an important inspiration for the recent 'philosophical turn' in film theory. But few studies have explored the significance of Cavell's style of writing, how it communicates his distinctive manner of thinking with film. This article explores Cavell's style as a way of doing philosophy, and suggests that his attempt to capture the aesthetic experience of film in evocative prose makes an important contribution to developing new ways of thinking in film-phi…Read more
  •  67
    Anatomy of melancholia
    Angelaki 19 (4): 111-126. 2014.
    :This article analyses some of the aesthetic and philosophical strands of Lars von Trier's Melancholia, focusing in particular on the film's remarkable Prelude, arguing that it performs a complex ethical critique of rationalist optimism in the guise of a neo-italictic allegory of world-destruction. At the same time, I suggest that Melancholia seeks to “work through” the loss of worlds – cinematic but also cultural and natural – that characterises our historical mood, one that might be described …Read more
  •  64
    Introduction: why did philosophy go to the movies? -- The analytic-cognitivist turn. The empire strikes back: critiques of "grand theory" -- The rules of the game: new ontologies of film -- Adaptation: philosophical approaches to narrative -- From cognitivism to film-philosophy. A.I.: cognitivism goes to the movies -- Bande à part: Deleuze and Cavell as film-philosophers -- Scenes from a marriage: film as philosophy -- Cinematic thinking. Hollywood in trouble: David Lynch's Inland empire -- "Cha…Read more
  •  57
    Given the so-called ?crisis? in film theory, the digital mutations of the medium, and the renewed interest in historicism, cinephilia, and film philosophy, André Bazin's thought appears ripe for retrieval and renewal. Indeed, his role in the renaissance of philosophical film theory, I argue, is less epistemological and ontological than moral and aesthetic. It is a quest to explore the revelatory possibilities of cinematic images; not only their power to reveal reality under a multiplicity of asp…Read more
  •  50
    Critical Theory As Disclosing Critique: A Response to Kompridis
    Constellations 19 (3): 369-381. 2012.
    What Kompridis admirably describes as the transformative power of disclosing critique should be incorporated into a renewed model of critical theory. At the same time, disclosing critique should be regarded as supplementing, rather than supplanting, those normative forms of analysis and reflection that remain rooted in experiences of social suffering, which are precisely what continue to give critical theory its normative ground and theoretical impetus. In this way, we could agree with Kompridis…Read more
  •  49
    Cinempathy: Phenomenology, Cognitivism, and Moving Images
    Contemporary Aesthetics. forthcoming.
    Some of the most innovative philosophical engagement with cinema and ethics in recent years has come from phenomenological and cognitivist perspectives. This trend reflects a welcome re-engagement with cinema as a medium with the potential for ethical transformation, that is, with the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience. This paper explores the phenomenological turn in film theory, emphasizing the ethical implications of phenomenological approaches to affect and empathy, emotion, an…Read more
  •  42
    The future of critical theory? Kompridis on world-disclosing critique
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 37 (9): 1053-1061. 2011.
    Nikolas Kompridis has recently argued that the future of critical theory depends upon a critical appropriation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, and hence on a transformation of critical theory into a form of ‘world-disclosing critique’ oriented towards the future. This article engages in a critical dialogue with Kompridis' account of world-disclosing critique, arguing that critical theory should embrace it as an innovative way of retrieving the forgotten tradition of aesthetic criti…Read more
  •  39
    This essay seeks to further the critical reception of Stiegler's philosophy of technology by situating his work within the legacy of critical theory and deconstruction. Drawing on what Richard Beardsworth has described as Stiegler's 'Left-Derrideanism'-his radical re-thinking of the problem of technics and related call for a "politics of memory"-I argue that Stiegler's transformation of both Heidegger and Derrida retrieves and renews the interrupted Frankfurt school tradition of culture industry…Read more
  •  37
    In the first part of the paper I consider the relative neglect of hope in the tradition of critical theory. I attribute this neglect to a low estimation of the cognitive, aesthetic, and moral value of hope, and to the strong—but, argue, contingent—association that holds between hope and religion. I then distinguish three strategies for thinking about the justification of social hope; one which appeals to a notion of unfulfilled or frustrated natural human capacities, another which invokes a prov…Read more
  •  37
    Love Everything
    Symposium 20 (1): 91-105. 2016.
    One of the questions that Gilles Deleuze explores is the relationship between cinema and belief: can cinema restore the broken link between us and the world? Does modern cinema have the power to give us ‘reasons to believe in this world’? My case study for exploring the question of belief in cinema, or what I call a Bazinian cinephilia, is Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011); a film whose sublime aesthetics and unorthodox religiosity have provoked polarized critical responses, but whose am…Read more
  •  32
    How can Benjamin's theses help us to understand the secret architectures of the present? This volume takes up the architectural challenge in a number of innovative ways, collecting essays by both well-known and emerging scholars on time in cinema, the problem of kitsch, the design of graves and tombs, the orders of road-signs, childhood experience in modern cities, and much more. Engaged, interdisciplinary, bristling with insights, the essays in this collection will constitute an indispensable s…Read more
  •  29
    Introduction: Film and / as Ethics
    with Lisa Trahair
    Substance 45 (3): 3-15. 2016.
    The relationship between film and philosophy, along with the idea of film as philosophy, has attracted widespread interest over the last decade. Film theorists and philosophers of film have explored not only the philosophical questions raised by cinema as an artform, but also the possibility that cinema might contribute to philosophical understanding or even engage in varieties of “cinematic thinking” that intersect with, without being reducible to, philosophical inquiry. Inspired by the work of…Read more
  •  28
    Goodbye Lenin?: Žižek on Neo-Liberal Ideology and Post-Marxist Politics
    International Journal of Žižek Studies 4 (2). 2010.
    A critical study of Zizek's recent ideology critique and political philosophy
  •  27
    This essay presents a critical interpretation of Derrida’s deconstructive reading of Walter Benjamin’s text, "Critique of Violence." It examines the relationship between deconstruction and justice, and the parallel Derrida draws between deconstructive reading and Benjamin’s account of pure violence. I argue that Derrida blurs Benjamin’s distinction between the political general strike and the proletarian general strike. As a consequence, Derrida criticises Benjamin’s metaphysical complicity with…Read more