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Criticism and Culture - Deconstructing Film PDF
Criticism and Culture - Deconstructing Film PDF
DECONSTRUCTING FILM
Seminar Series
Lent Term 2015
Dr Sarah Dillon
<sjd27@cam.ac.uk>
Course Structure: 6 x 1.5 hr seminars, weeks 2-7, Lent Term. Mondays at 4pm, MML Rm.
142.
Essays: Students are asked to generate their own essay topics, arising from, responding to, or
extending the ideas and approaches of the course.
Overview: Film studies and continental philosophy are no strangers to each other, but film
theory has been dominated by psychoanalytic approaches (in particular those influenced by
Lacan) or by Deleuzean approaches (inspired by his two volumes on cinema). The
relationship between deconstruction in particular Jacques Derridas thought and film, has
been less well explored. In fact, Peter Brunette describes Derridas influence on film studies
and theory as powerful, but subterranean. On this course we will venture into this
underground area in order to shed light on the productive, if strange, intimacy between
deconstruction and film.
The course is ostensibly divided into two halves. In the first three weeks we will focus on
creating a solid theoretical grounding in the relationship between deconstruction and film. In
the second three weeks we will use this theoretical grounding in order to venture into
practical analysis of films, informed by ideas from deconstruction. The weeks in the second
half of the course are case studies in how a deconstructive film criticism might work. At the
same time, however, the course will deconstruct this very distinction between theory and
practice, with the theoretical weeks involving close reading of specific films, and the film
weeks engaging productively with relevant theory. It is intended that the combination of a
solid theoretical grounding and some example practical criticism will provide students with
the skills needed in order to explore their own combinations of philosophy and film.
Playing himself in the film Ghost Dance, Derrida famously described cinema as the science
of ghosts. Inspired by this, discussion in all weeks will be haunted by ideas of the spectre,
loss, betrayal, mourning, resurrection and the living dead.
1
BACKGROUND READING SUGGESTIONS
This course will be taught based on the assumption that many students will have little or no
previous knowledge of film criticism and theory and/or the philosophy of deconstruction. It
will, however, of course be advantageous if students can develop their background
knowledge in some or all of these areas before the start of the course. Below are suggestions
for works that students might look at in order to do so. Please note you are not expected to
read all of the works below. You should browse amongst them for those you find most
interesting and stimulating and/or relevant to you specific interests.
Arnheim, Rudolp, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; first published
1957).
Bazin, Andr, What is Cinema?, Volumes 1 and 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005; first published 1967 and 1971).
Bordwell, David and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
Bordwell, David, On the History of Film Style (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings,
7th edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Carroll, Noel, Interpreting the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
Stam, Robert and Toby Miller, eds., Film and Theory: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000).
Andrew, J. Dudley, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1976).
Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (Maidenhead: McGraw-
Hill, 2012; first published 1979).
Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
Kuhn, Annette and Guy Westwell, eds., A Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012).
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Lapsely, Robert and Michael Westlake, Film Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006).
Monaco, James, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009).
Colman, Felicity, ed., Film, Theory and Philosophy: The key thinkers (Durham: Acumen,
2009).
Freeland, Cynthia A. and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds., Philosophy and Film (London:
Routledge, 1995).
Gaut, Berys, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Mullarkey, John, Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
Phillips, James, ed., Cinematic Thinking: Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).
Read, Rupert and Jerry Goodenough, eds., Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema After
Wittgenstein and Cavell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Singer, Irving, Cinematic Muthmaking: Philosophy in Film (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).
Deconstruction
Glendinning, Simon, Derrida: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011).
3
COURSE OUTLINE
PART I: THEORY
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
Burchill, Louise, Jacques Derrida in Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, ed.
Felicity Colman (Durham: Acumen, 2009), pp. 164-78.
Lapsely, Robert and Michael Westlake, Chapter 2: Semiotics and Derrida, Film Theory:
An Introduction, 2nd edn. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 32-66 and
256-62.
Brunette, Peter and David Wills, Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Brunette, Peter, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction, in John Hill and Pamela Church
Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 91-5.
Dienst, Richard, Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1995).
Easthope, Anthony, Derrida and British Film Theory in Applying: To Derrida, ed. John
Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 184-94.
Kamuf, Peggy, The Impossible Science of the Unique Being: Jacques Derrida and Film
Theory, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 12:4 (1991), 77-91.
4
Rosen, Philip, The Politics of the Sign and Film Theory, October 17 (Summer 1981), 2-21.
Smith, M., Review of Screen/Play, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49: 3 (1991), 268-
9.
Ulmer, Gregory L., Teletheory, 2nd edn. (New York: Atropos Press, 2004).
Ulmer, Gregory L., Heuristics: The Logic of Invention (Blatimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994).
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
Derrida, Jacques, Envois in The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans Alan
Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 1-256.
Ames, Christopher, Movies about the Movies: Hollywood Reflected (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1997).
5
Callaghan, Joanna and Martin McQuillan, Love in the Post: From Plato to Derrida. The
Screenplay and Commentary (London: Rowman & Littlefield).
Holland, Norman N., The Neuroscience of Metafilm, Projections 1:1 (2007): 59-74.
Stam, Robert, Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Goddard
(Columbia University Press, 1985).
Vierling, David L., Bergmans Persona: The Metaphysics of Meta-Cinema, Diacritics 4:2
(2974): 48-51.
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
Derrida, Jacques, Artifactualities, The Archive Market: Truth, Testimony, Evidence and
Spectographies, in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television:
Filmed Interviews, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 1-27, 82-99
and 113-134.
6
Brunette, Peter, and David Wills, The Spatial Arts: An Interview with Jacques Derrida, in
Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media and Architecture, ed. Peter Brunette and
David Wills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 9-32.
Burt, Jonathan, Morbidity and Vitalism: Derrida, Bergson, Deleuze, and Animal Film
Imagery, Configurations 14:1-2 (2006), 157-79.
Chisholm, Ann, Missing Persons and Bodies of Evidence, Camera Obscura 15:43 (2000),
123-61.
David, Colin, Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, and the Return of the Dead
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Derrida, Jacques, The Ghost Dance: An Interview with Jacques Derrida, an interview with
Mark Lewis and Andrew Payne (trans. Jean-Luc Svoboda), Public 2 (1989), 60-74.
Derrida, Jacques and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews, trans.
Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
Dick, Kirby and Amy Ziering Kofman, Screenplay and Essays on the Film Derrida
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Franko, Mark (2004) Given Movement: Dance and the Event in Andr Lepecki (ed.) Of the
Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory (Middletown, Connecticut:
Wesleyan University Press), pp.113-23.
Hamelman, Steven, The Deconstructive Search for Oz, Literature/Film Quarterly 28:4
(2000), 312-19.
Imboden, Roberta, The Dark Creative Passage: A Derridean Journey from the Literary Text
to the Film (Trier: WVT, 2005).
Kamuf, Peggy, Derrida on Television, in Applying: To Derrida, ed. John Brannigan, Ruth
Robbins and Julian Wolfreys (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 195-211.
Kamuf, Peggy, Stunned: Derrida on Film in To Follow: The Wake of Jacques Derrida
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 108-19.
7
Michele, Zoey Elouard, On the Politics of Re/Presentation, in Killing Women: The Visual
Culture of Gender and Violence, ed. Annette Burfoot and Susan Lord (Waterloo, OM:
Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2006), pp.
Oswald, Laura, Semiotics and/or deconstruction: In quest of cinema, Semiotica 60: 3/4
(1984), 315-41.
Pope, Richard I., In Kubricks Crypt, a Derrida/Deleuze Monster; or, An-Other Return to
2001, Film-Philosophy 7:22 (2003). Available at: http://www.film-
philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/743/655 [accessed May 2011].
Ropers, Marie-Claire, The Disembodied Voice (India Song), Yale French Studies, Special
Issue on Cinema/Sound, 60 (1980), 241-68.
Royle, Nicholas, Jacques Derrida (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
Schwartz, Louis-Georges, Cinema and the Meaning of Life, Discourse: Journal for
Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 28:2/3 (Spring 2006), 7-27.
Tucker, Thomas Deane, Frames of Reference: Peter Greenaway, Derrida, and the Restitution
of Film-Making, Enculturation 2:1 (Fall 1998). Available from:
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_1/tucker.html [accessed May 2011].
Wills, David, Derrida, Now and Then, Here and There, Theory & Event, 7: 2 (2004).
Available from: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v007/7.2wills.html [accessed
May 2011].
Seminar 4: On Photography
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder).
8
Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987, dir. Patricia Rozema).
Frames from the Edge: Helmut Newton (2009, dir. Adrian Maben).
Aaron, Michele, New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2004).
Agamben, Georgio, Nudities. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2011).
Ahmed, Sara, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 2006).
Cadava, Eduardo, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997).
Cholodenko, Lisa, Interview with Marty Mapes, Movie Habit (April 3, 2003). Available
from: <http://www.moviehabit.com/essays/cholodenko_03.shtml>
de Lauretis, Teresa Film and the Visible. How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video.
Ed. Choices, Bad-Object (Seattle: Bay, 1991), pp. 223-64.
Dean, James Joseph (2007) Gays and Queers: From the Centering to the Decentering of
Homosexuality in American Films, Sexualities 10.3: 363-86.
Derrida, Jacques, Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography, trans. Jeff Fort
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
9
Derrida, Jacques, Athens, Still Remains: The Photographs of Jean Franois Bonhomme.
Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).
Doane, Mary Ann, Indexicality and the Concept of Medium Specificity in The Meaning of
Photography, ed. Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2008), 3-33.
Earls, Jennifer, Lesbians on High, Lesbian News 24:1 (Aug. 1998), 28.
McWhorter, Ladelle, Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual
Normalization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
Prammaggiore, Maria, Fishing for Girls: Romancing Lesbians in New Queer Cinema,
College Literature 24:1 (1997), 59-75.
Rich, B. Ruby, Queer and Present Danger, Sight and Sound (March 2000): 17 paras.
Sutton, Damian, Photography and Cinema from Birth to Death, Film Philosophy 5:8
(March 2001): 1-17.
Wiegman, Robyn, Introduction: Mapping the Lesbian Postmodern, in Laura Doan, ed. The
Lesbian Postmodern (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 1-20.
Wills, David, Deposition: Introduction to Right of Inspection [Driot de regards], Art & Text
32 (1989), 10-18.
Seminar 5: On Mourning
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
Derrida, Jacques, Fors: the anglish words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, trans.
Barbara Johnson, in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Wolf Mans Magic Word: A
Cryptonymy, trans. Nicholas Rand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp.
xi-xlviii.
10
Bright Lights, Big City (1988, dir. James Bridges).
Armstrong, Richard, Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in Cinema
(McFarland, 2012).
Bersani, Leo, Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity (London: British Film
Institute, 2004).
Bersani, Leo and Adam Phillips, Intimacies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 2008).
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge,
MA and London: The MIT Press, 2000).
Derrida, Jacques, The Gift of Death, trans David Wills (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1995).
Doane, Mary Ann, The Voice in Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space, Yale French
Studies, Special Issue: Cinema/Sound 60 (1980): 33-50.
Ebert, Roger, My Life Without Me, rogerebert.com, 17 October 2003, URL (consulted
October 2010):
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031017/REVIEWS/310170304/
1023
Kaufman, Sarah, My Life: No Time for Tears, The Washington Post, 17 October 2003,
URL (consulted October 2010):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2003/10/17/AR2005033117020_pf.ht
ml
Kipnis, Laura, Adultery in Lauren Berlant (ed) Intimacy (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 9-47.
Kincaid, Nanci, Pretending the Bed is a Raft (New York: Delta, 1997).
Lee, Ann, My Life Without Me, kamera, (2003) URL (consulted October 2010):
http://www.kamera.co.uk/reviews_extra/my_life_without_me.php
11
Phillips, Adam, Monogamy (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).
Richardson, Brian, At First You Feel a Bit Lost: The Varieties of Second Person
Narration, in Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction
(Ohio State University Press, 2006), pp. 17-36.
Scott, A. O. (2003), My Life Without Me; Film Review; With Just a Few Months to Live, A
Lifetime of Changes to Make, The New York Times, 26 Sep 2003, URL (consulted Nov
2010):
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D0DEFDD153DF935A1575AC0A9659C8B
63
Sealy, Shirley, My Life Without Me (Movie Review), Film Journal International 106.10
(2003): 109.
Seminar 6: On Touching
Set Viewing:
Set Reading:
Derrida, Jacques, On Touching Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Chrstine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005). [Selected chapters will be distributed in advance.]
Brinkema, Eugenie, The Forms of Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
Nancy, Jean-Luc, Corpus, trans. Richard A. Rand (New York: Fordham University Press,
2008).
Marks, Laura U., The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).
Marks, Laura U., Sensous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minneapolis: University of
Minessota Press, 2002).
Sanders, Steven M., The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film (The University Press of
Kentucky, 2009).
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