This book reads a series of Godard films as interventions in
contemporary debate about the language of difference. Godard has
something he wants both to preserve (singularity) and destroy (visual
and aural totalitarianism). How is it possible to speak about the
Other? How is it possible for the Other to speak? Does all speaking
about or by the Other render that speaking common, thereby rendering
what is different identical? These questions gather together a number
of issues that cross and intersect disciplinary boundaries:
signification, representation, ethics, politics, and so on.
The problematics with which Drabinski is concerned begin in the debate
between Levinas and Derrida, then later in dialogue with Blanchot and
Irigaray. To this extent, Godard is particularly well-suited as an
interlocutor. Godard's work, especially in the 1970s, is itself a
self-conscious form of philosophy. His films theorize themselves,
produce a reflexive sound-image language, and so in many ways match
the very essence of philosophy: thought thinking thought.
Still, the medium of sound and image complicates any rendering of
Godard's work as philosophy. Godard produces a philosophically
significant cinematic language, rather than simply narrating or
representing philosophical ideas in the medium of film. And this
language must be taken seriously in the context of the problem of
difference. For, if difference is concerned with signification as
such, then the visual and aural retain equal rights with writing (and
all questions obtaining therein). Indeed, if part of the problem of
speaking about or by the Other is how such speaking traffics in
inscription, then cinematic language is certainly an important - and
authentically complex - intervention in that problem.
The nature of the debate in this project - how the language of
alterity is possible or impossible - immediately breaks disciplinary
borders between philosophy, literary theory, film studies, and
cultural studies. What it means to engage with film in this context,
however, is complicated. To wit, there are two standard treatments of
film in philosophy. Film is typically either an example of a
philosophical position or philosophy is used to interpret motifs,
characters, plot lines, etc. In neither case is film engaged as a form
of philosophizing itself, that is, as a language engaged with
philosophical problematics.
It is articulating exactly this engagement that this book takes as its
primary task. The aim of the project is to read Godard's work as
primary texts, with all the attention due the idiosyncratic language
of those texts. Framed by the debate about difference and
signification, these primary texts register and resonate as
transformative interventions. The overarching argument of the book is
that Godard's conception and practice of cinematic language opens new,
important possibilities for thinking about radical alterity.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781441158482
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Bloomsbury USA
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter