Spectatorship and Film Theory
The Wayward Spectator
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Beschreibung
This book interrogates the relation between film spectatorship and film theory in order to criticise some of the disciplinary and authoritarian assumptions of 1970s apparatus theory, without dismissing its core political concerns. Theory, in this perspective, should not be seen as a practice distinct from spectatorship but rather as an integral aspect of the spectator’s gaze. Combining Jacques Rancière’s emancipated spectator with Judith Butler’s queer theory of subjectivity, Spectatorship and Film Theory foregrounds the contingent, embodied and dialogic aspects of our experience of film. Erratic and always a step beyond the grasp of disciplinary discourse, this singular work rejects the notion of the spectator as a fixed position, and instead presents it as a field of tensions—a “wayward” history of encounters.
This book interrogates the relation between film spectatorship and film theory in order to criticise some of the disciplinary and authoritarian assumptions of 1970s apparatus theory, without dismissing its core political concerns. Theory, in this perspective, should not be seen as a practice distinct from spectatorship but rather as an integral aspect of the spectator’s gaze. Combining Jacques Rancière’s emancipated spectator with Judith Butler’s queer theory of subjectivity, Spectatorship and Film Theory foregrounds the contingent, embodied and dialogic aspects of our experience of film. Erratic and always a step beyond the grasp of disciplinary discourse, this singular work rejects the notion of the spectator as a fixed position, and instead presents it as a field of tensions—a “wayward” history of encounters.
Offers a rereading of 1970s psychoanalytic film theory which attempts to overcome some of its traditional limitations without dismissing its core political concerns Foregrounds theory as an internal aspect of everyday spectatorship and as an element of the spectator’s “waywardness” rather than as an instrument for the explanation and normalisation of film experience Contributes to a theory of film experience by arguing for an intimate connection between the theory of spectatorship and a queer understanding of subjectivity Redraws the relation between spectatorship and film theory from the standpoint of Jacques Rancière’s discussion of politics and emancipation, combining it with an alternative understanding of the role of psychoanalysis in film studies
Autor*in
Carlo Comanducci
Themen in »Spectatorship and Film Theory«
apparatus Indisciplinarity Jacques Rancière Phenomenology heteronomy contingency free association cinema