40368491

An Elegy for Theory
Author(s): D. N. Rodowick
Source: October, Vol. 122 (Fall, 2007), pp. 91-109
Published by: The MIT Press
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An Elegy for Theory*
D. N. RODOWICK
Eloge. n. m. (1580: lat. elogium, pris au sens gr.

eulogia). 1. Discours pour celebrer qqn. ou qqch.
Eloge funebre, academique. Eloge d'un saint.
-Le Petit Robert
He sent thither his Theory, or solemn legation for

sacrifice, decked in the richest garments.
-George Grote, A History of Greece (1862)
From the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the institutionalization of
cinema studies in universities in North America and Europe became identified
with a certain idea of theory. This was less a "theory" in the abstract or natural sci-
entific sense than an interdisciplinary commitment to concepts and methods
derived from literary semiology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Althusserian
Marxism, echoed in the broader influence of structuralism and post-structuralism
on the humanities.
However, the evolution of cinema studies since the early 1980s has been
marked both by a decentering of film with respect to media and visual studies and
by a retreat from theory. No doubt this retreat had a number of salutary effects: a
reinvigoration of historical research, more sociologically rigorous reconceptualiza-
tions of spectatorship and the film audience, and the placement of film in the
broader context of visual culture and electronic media. But not all of these inno-
vations were equally welcome. In 1996, the Post-Theory debate was launched by
* This essay was originally prepared as a keynote lecture for the Framework conference on "The
Future of Theory," Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, November 3-4, 2006. I would like to thank
Brian Price for his invitation and perceptive comments. I would also like to thank the participants at
the Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar on "Contesting Theory," co-organized by Stanley Cavell, Tom
Conley, and myself at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, May 4-5, 2007 - including Richard
Allen, Sally Banes, Dominique Bluher, Edward Branigan, Noel Carroll, Francesco Casetti, Joan Copjec,
Meraj Dhir, Allyson Field, Philip Rosen, Vivian Sobchack, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg -
for their challenging discussions of these and other matters.
OCTOBER 122, Fall 2007, pp. 91-109. © 2007 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
92 OCTOBER
David Bordw
Theory as in
and Carroll i
subject to inv
ously, other
by analytic p
debates emer
1990s and the
Confusing "t
edgment that
absence of qu
advised. To w
standards; it
knowing. In
theory, but r
of the human
mological and
A brief look
Retrospectivel
associated wi
Already in 192
compass of ar
cation of theo
German philo
method and e
would rarely s
film theory.
"Theory," ho
cept. One find
speculation, o
activity; in Ar
was not only
of life or mode of existence.2
1. Bela Balazs, Der sichtbare Mensch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001). The original citation is:
"Die Theorie ist, wenn auch nicht das Steuerruder, doch zumindest der Kompass einer Kunstentwicklung.
Und erst wenn ihr euch einen Begriff von der guten Richtung gemacht habt, durft ihr von Verirrungen
reden. Diesen BegrifF: die Theorie des Films, musst ihr euch eben machen" (p. 12). Balazs does, however,
associate this theory with a "film philosophy of art" (p. 1).
2. On the question of ethics as the will for a new mode of existence, see Pierre Hadot, What Is
Ancient Phibsopy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). An influ-
ence on Michel Foucault's later works on the "care of the self," Hadot argues that the desire for a philo-
sophical life is driven first by an ethical commitment or a series of existential choices involving the
selection of a style of life where philosophical discourse is inseparable from a vision of the world and
the desire to belong to a community.
An Elegy for Theory 93
Bringing together thea [sight]

linked to vision and spectacle. (Pe
when he names sight as the most
Williams identifies four primary
century: spectacle, a contemplat
scheme. With its etymological lin
young medium of film should ca
of associating thought about film
tions of the term from spectatin
notion follows from the last tw
proposing concepts, but in this t
tice. In this manner, Williams
practice."3 This is certainly th
Eisenstein invoked the notion of
In The Virtual Life of Film, I arg
emergence of electronic and d
granted what "film" is - its onto
we are compelled to revisit co
ungroundedness is echoed in the
by what I call the "metacritical a
interest both in excavating its ow
theory is or has been. The reflex
my own Crisis of Political Moderni
itself in a variety of conflicting
Classical Film Theory and Mystif
Mayne's Cinema and Spectatorship,
Carroll's Post-Theory: Reconstruc
Theory and Philosophy, Francesco C
Malcolm Turvey's Wittgenstein, The
In detaching "theory" as an ob
examination, these books take th
els inspire one approach, both p
3. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Voca

Press, 1976), p. 267.
4. See D. N. Rodowick, Crisis of Political M
(1988; Berkeley and Los Angeles: Unive
Problems of Classical Film Theory (Prin
Mystifying Movies (New York: Columbi
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University P
Routledge, 1993); Richard Allen, Project
David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post
Wisconsin Press, 1996); Richard Allen an
Clarendon Press, 1997); Francesco Casetti
Press, 1999); and Richard Allen and Malco
Routledge, 2001).
94 OCTOBER
epistemologic
tual framewo
there is an id
Alternatively
respect to de
by self-descr
those stateme
my own appro
that the cond
knowledge. E
order and dis
objects, inven
cal strategies
and variable discursive contexts.
As a first move, it might indeed seem strange to associate theory with history.
Introducing a series of lectures at the Institute for Historical Research at the
University of Vienna in 1998, 1 astonished a group of students by asserting that film
theory has a history, indeed multiple histories. Here the analytic approach to the
ory, on one hand, and sociological and archaeological approaches on the other,
part ways. The fact of having a history already distinguishes film theory, and indeed
all aesthetic theory, from natural scientific inquiry, for natural and cultural phe
nomena do not have the same temporality. Aesthetic inquiry must be sensitive t
the variability and volatility of human culture and innovation; their epistemologie
derive from (uneven) consensus and self-examination of what we already know an
do in the execution of daily life. Examination of the natural world may presume
teleology where new data are accumulated and new hypotheses refined in model-
ing processes for which, unlike human culture, we have no prior knowledge.
I believe we need a more precise conceptual picture of how film became

associated with theory in the early twentieth century, and how ideas of theory vary
in different historical periods and national contexts. But let us return to the mor
recent, metacritical attitude toward theory.
By the mid-1990s, film theory and indeed the concept of "theory" itself were
challenged from a number of perspectives. This contestation occurs in three over
lapping phases. The first phase is marked by Bordwell's call throughout the 1980
for a "historical poetics" of film and culminates in the debates engendered by th
publication of Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinem
and by the special issue of iris on "Cinema and Cognitive Psychology," both pub-
lished in 1989. The capstone of the second phase is the 1996 publication o
Post-Theory, Subtitled Reconstructing Film Studies, the book represents an attempt to
establish film studies as a discipline modeled on cognitivist science and historical
poetics, and to recenter "theory

ural scientific reasoning. If the
to return theory to a model of "
phase subjects the association of
found in the recent work of All
stein's critique of theory in the Ph
a new orientation in the examin
phy of the humanities. In this
triple displacement of theory - by
It is important to appreciate B
terized as the metacritical or m
his generation, Bordwell was am
tory of film study itself, and to
respect to questions of historic
and style. Throughout the 1980
methodological essays promoting
and the Fiction Film (1985) to M
are made apparent. Bordwell can
one's commitment to good theor
he wants to recast theory as hist
empirical historical research. In
as the twin threats of cultural and media studies. On the one hand, there is a risk
of methodological incoherence for a field whose interdisciplinary commitments
had become too broad; on the other, the risk of diffusing, in the context of media
studies, cinema studies' fundamental ground - film as a formal object delimiting
specifiable effects. The aim of historical poetics, then, is to project a vision of
methodological coherence onto a field of study perceived to be losing its center,
and to restore an idea of film as a specifiable form to that center. In this respect,
poetics concerns questions of form and style. It deals with concrete problems of
aesthetic practice and describes the specificity of film's aesthetic function while
recognizing the importance of social convention in what a culture may define as a
work of art. In Narration and the Fiction Film, the historical side of poetics addresses
the proliferation of distinct modes of narration (classical Hollywood, Soviet or
dialectical materialist, postwar European art cinema, etc.) as delimitable in time
and sensitive to national and/or cultural contexts. Here Bordwell makes his best
case for basing the analysis of individual works upon sound historical investigation
and explicit theoretical principles in a way that avoids arbitrary boundaries
between history, analysis, and theory.
5. See especially Bordwell's introduction to Cinema and Cognitive Psychology, "A Case for
Cognitivism," iris 5, no. 2 (1989), pp. 11-40. Here I am especially interested in Bordwell's characteriza-
tion of theory as "good naturalization."
96 OCTOBER
By 1989, ho
cognitivism
three particu
pulling back
on film's int
turn from ps
sion as groun
Finally, his r
conceptual co
selves and th
Thus, Bordw
abstract con
disappears in
Moreover, th
they execute
the same heuristics to model different films.
The sometimes unruly responses to Making Meaning and Cinema and

Cognitive Psychology demonstrate that Bordwell's criticisms touched a nerve, and
there is little doubt that these works are a genuine and important response to the
impasse in theory that cinema studies began to confront by the end of the 1980s.
In the critique of so-called Grand Theory, what is most interesting here is the
implicit alliance between historical poetics and analytical philosophy. In the two
introductions to Post-Theory, Bordwell and Carroll promote strong views of what
comprises good theory building in stark contrast to the then current state of con-
temporary film and cultural theory. Here I am less concerned with assessing their
critique of contemporary film theory than in evaluating the epistemological ideals
embodied in their common appeal to natural scientific models.6 Looking at the
reverse side of Bordwell and Carroll's criticisms, I think it is important to examine
their ideal projection of "good theory" as the ethical appeal for a new mode of
6. Ironically, one consequence of this appeal, strongly implicit in Carroll's contribution, is that
film theory does not yet exist. Carroll, for example, criticizes both classical and contemporary film
theory according to three basic arguments: they are essentialist or foundationalist, taking films as
examples of a priori conditions; they are doctrine driven rather than data driven, meaning not sus-
ceptible to empirical examination and verification; and finally, they deviate to widely from film-based
problems, that is, the concrete particularity of filmic problems disappears when they are taken up to
illustrate broader concepts of ideology, subjectivity, or culture. Characterized by "ordinary standards of
truth" as a regulative ideal, good theory seeks causal reasoning, deduces generalities by tracking regu-
larities and the norm, is dialectical and requires maximally free and open debate, and, finally, is char-
acterized by fallibilism. In this sense, good theory is "historical" in the sense of being open to revision
through the successive elimination of error. In this respect, middle-level research presents the provi-
sional ground for a theory or theories of film projected forward in a teleology of debate, falsification,
and revision. The "post" in Post-Theory is a curious misnomer, then. For what has been characterized
as Theory is epistemologically invalid, and, ironically, what comes after may only appear after a period
of long debate and revisionism. A legitimate film theory remains to be constructed, the product of an
indefinite future.
existence where, in their view,

Here "dialectics," as Carroll prese
munity of rational agents workin
that are falsifiable according to "or
ideals, I would argue, rest on no
theories they critique. For exa
obsession with an irrational and
actions, Bordwell promotes a "
which is in fact the subject of go
to examine.8 The concept of the
projection where the ideal scienti
the model of mind it wishes to
strives to be free of ideological
value-neutral, the introductions t
a different world modeled on an idealized vision of scientific research: a commu-
nity of researchers united by common epistemological standards who are strivin

for a universalizable and truthful picture of their object.
Richard Allen and Murray Smith's critique of contemporary film theory in
Film Theory and Philosophy echoes Bordwell and Carroll's perspective. Accusing
Theory of an "epistemological atheism" powered by an exaggerated ethical con-
cern with the critique of a capitalist modernity, Allen and Smith's criticisms mak
clear a number of philosophical assumptions absent from the Post-Theory cri-
tique. From the analytic point of view, arguments for and against "theory" take
place against the background of a philosophy of science. One engages in theory
building or not according to an epistemological ideal based on natural scientific
models. In employing the methods and forms of scientific explanation, however,
philosophy becomes indistinguishable from science, at least with respect to theor
construction. Philosophy disappears into science as "theory" becomes indistin-
guishable from scientific methodology.
In this manner, I want to argue that from the beginning of the twentieth
century analytic philosophy has been responsible for projecting an epistemologi-
cal ideal of theory derived from natural scientific methods. This ideal produced
disjunction between philosophy's ancient concern for balancing epistemological
inquiry with ethical evaluation.9 Here, theory, at least as it is generally conceive
7. In a so-far-unpublished essay, "Film Theory and the Philosophy of Science," Meraj Dhir has pre-
sented an excellent defense of Carroll's position.
8. For related arguments, see Richard Allen's essay, "Cognitive Film Theory, in Wittgenstein, Theor
and the Arts, pp. 174-209.
9. Bertrand Russell's 1914 essay "On Scientific Method in Philosophy" presents a succinct defin
tion of this ideal: "A scientific philosophy such as I wish to recommend will be piecemeal and tentative
like other sciences; above all, it will be able to invent hypotheses which, even if they are not wholly tru
will yet remain fruitful after the necessary corrections have been made. This possibility of successi
approximations of the truth is, more than anything else, the source of the triumphs of science, and to
transfer this possibility to philosophy is to ensure a progress in method whose importance it would be
98 OCTOBER
in the human
over to scienc
it would seem
scientific ide
There is the im
it draws on c
outside of th
ophy." Cons
scientific mo
not yet exist,
studies thus
concerns bo
humanities an
phy wants to
of science. At
teristic of th
scientifically
epistemologic
Throughout
science as a c
tested term.
philosophy o
both. Importa
his Philosophi
the humanitie
The interest
general, conc
asserting tha
Philosophicu
conception o
natural scienc
be the only m
of philosophy
on "theory" a
However, my
phy of the hu
almost impossibl
and Co., 1918), p
which Carroll su
and one must es
theory then adva
further tested, r
If philosophy involves anothe

the alternative not amount to a
introduction to Wittgenstein, The
that its subject matter is not em
gation by empirical methods. "E
which we can have no prior kn
with problems of sense and mea
sense that language use and cre
accessible stock of human know
This involves a second criterio
are, and must be, necessarily fal
concerns testing the limits of s
way, Wittgenstein's case for phil
ing human behavior and creativ
linguistic meaning." This concep
sons and causes. In a causal expl
identified by a hypothesis, whic
further evidence. Causal explana
actions have origins that derive
knowledge. Most human action
explanation, for agents have the
"Autonomy" now indicates that
examination and self-justificatio
and philosophical inquiry is that
nomena, that is, the natural wo
self-investigation. This is less a qu
ing the "rightness" of a propositio
This is one way to begin to un
the idea of theory in cinema stu
been so wedded to a certain idea
tural or psychoanalytic perspect
intelligent people. As Turvey p
empirical research in film theor
the laws governing natural phen
unnecessary to film theorists? A
one that they are plausible in t
these criteria are irrelevant f
10. Malcolm Turvey, "Can Science Hel

(2001), http://www.uca.edu/org/ccsmi/
ently in the latest published version of
Help Film Theory?," in The Philosophy of
Thomas E. Wartenberg (London: Blackw
100 OCTOBER
humanistic i
degree of prio
cinema is a h
that form th
edge of these
them in the f
coherent and
ment in the a
plausibility is
already know
beyond the cr
However, wha
might more a
we could ach
aside "theory"
ties, and, inde
I would prefe
for theory I h
the English se
can be both p
addition, it c
one's favor.) C
why, in conte
love it?
We must fir
peting episte
concept has b
shores of scie
Initially, this
the late Witt
questioned th
the humaniti
logical perfec
ancient task of
to much soul
to find and re
theoria, as re
Wittgenstein
renewed dialo
ion themselves
Ultimately, I want to argue that

broad and too restrictive, but here
later Wittgenstein brings to a phi
istic inquiry from the bonds of em
humanities may make propositiona
they only require suasion and clear
humanistic theories are culture-ce
nomena, philosophical investigatio
and do, and this knowledge is i
Bordwell's sense of the term, "natu
vance here as humanistic (self-) inq
but rather only clarifying and eva
how to do, and understanding why
Wittgenstein's philosophical inves
aspect of historical poetics - th
objects and of our everyday sense
Nonetheless, a "nonempirical" not
philosophical reasons. Natural la
context, and thus are appropriate
tions. Alternatively, cultural kn
emerges and evolves in the contex
interactions that require constant
history and natural history may n
with respect to certain problems,
the humanist must examine phenom
She must account for change in t
might be in a process of self-transfo
To what extent, then, is the en
might we return to philosophy the s
different yet related, and both are
first century and the place of f
answers begin in recognizing that
an ethical critique of modernity.
most ancient origins are the intertw
ing with the examination of our
transformation. I want to conclud
cussing two contemporary philoso
ethical and epistemological evaluat
and Cavell are the two contempor
ment to cinema, yet with distinc
philosophy and of philosophica
unlikely pairing, reading these tw
their original contributions to ou
102 OCTOBER
philosophy. He
be distinguish
humanities a f
that we may co
Deleuze 's cine
philosophy m
sophical work
creation of Co
Image become
world. The sec
presentation o
Deleuze ends
Already in 198
ema, seeming
separate from
of concepts.
For theory too is something which is made, no less than its object. . . .
A theory of cinema is not "about" cinema, but about the concepts that
cinema gives rise to and what are themselves related to other concepts
corresponding to other practices. . . . The theory of cinema does not
bear on the cinema, but on the concepts of cinema, which are no less
practical, effective or existent than cinema itself. . . . Cinema's con-
cepts are not given in cinema. And yet they are cinema's concepts, not
theories about cinema. So that there is always a time, midday-midnight,
when we must no longer ask ourselves, "What is cinema?" but "What is
philosophy?" Cinema itself is a new practice of images and signs, whose
theory philosophy must produce as a conceptual practice.11
A slippage is obvious here with theory standing in for philosophy. But that being
said, what does Deleuze wish to imply in complaining that the contemporary
moment is weak with respect to creation and concepts? The most replete response
comes from the most obvious successor to the problems raised in the cinema
books - Deleuze and Felix Guattari's What Is Philosophy?
For Deleuze and Guattari, the three great domains of human creation are
art, philosophy, and science. These are relatively autonomous domains, each of
which involves acts of creation based on different modes of expression - percep-
tual, conceptual, or functional. The problem confronted in What Is Philosophy? is
knowing how philosophical expression differs from artistic or scientific expres-
sion, yet remains in dialogue with them. Percepts, concepts, and functions are
different expressive modalities, and each may influence the other, but not in a way
11. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 280.
that affects the autonomy of the

doubt profoundly engages in conc
phy. Yet the outputs of that activ
and specificity.
From one perspective, the distin
The aim of science is to create fun
of philosophy to create concepts,
refer to the creation of affective ex
rials. In painting, these expressive m
blocks of movements/durations/s
clarify the relation of philosophy t
Deleuze explains, as soon as two
Newton's inverse square law provi
matical expression orienting thou
propagation of energy). As expressio
of course, nor is it analogous to thin
Its descriptiveness of behaviors in
the key to its specificity. It is abstr
its time-independence. It produce
for all times and all places - thus,
ness of future behaviors, then, t
"theory," and when this predictiven
Contrariwise, the concept is abst
own temporality and human specifi
to art than it is to science. The ex
sensuous products of art and its h
finds its confirmation in the pre
cepts express only thought and ac
purely an interior activity cut off
important answers to this question
In 1991, Deleuze gave an importa
des metiers de Vintage et du son], t
excerpt of which was published a
to have an Idea in art and how do
a domain, a milieu, or a material.
potentials that are already engaged
ble from it, so much so that I ca
the techniques that I know, I can
ema or rather an idea in philos
12. Gilles Deleuze, "Having an Idea in Ci

New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy,
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pre
104 OCTOBER
oriented by a
and so a conne
of thought is
ideas emerge
what it means
to express tho
what Deleuze
thought, but
autonomous s
catenatio. Th
thought as a s
action, or crea
The importa
complete acc
and show how
that is, how th
losophy in th
that the imag
the terrain f
thought and
movements, b
junctions of p
implies a conc
constructions
art's ideas. It
make a necess
There is also
image and con
Nietzschean e
evaluation. "T
sense to a thin
a thing."14 W
Nietzsche, bu
word and Del
not the being
of being that a
express for us
philosophers,
13. Gilles Deleuz

Columbia Univers
14. Gilles Deleuze
Press, 1983), p. 5
A n Elegy for Theory 105
how we think, and whether we sus

with our modes of existence and our relations with others and to the world.
The key to grasping this relation in Deleuze is to understand the originality

of his characterization of the image as both an ontological and ethical concept.
Especially in the cinema books, the image is not the product of cinematic creation
but rather its raw material, the worldly substance that it forms and to which it
gives expression. Hence the key place of Henri Bergson's assertion from Matter
and Memory that there is already photography in things. Like energy, images can
neither be created nor destroyed - they are a state of the universe, an asubjective
universal perception or luminosity that evolves and varies continuously. Human
perception is therefore largely a process of subtraction. Because we must orient
ourselves in this vast regime of universal change according to our limited percep-
tual context, we extract and form special images or perceptions according to our
physiological limits and human needs. This image is the very form of our subjec-
tivity and persists in the crossroads between our internal states and our external
relations with the world.
The image is thus in relation with ourselves (interiority) and in relation with
the world (exteriority) in an intimately interactive way. It is absurd to refer to sub-
jectivity as pure interiority as it is ceaselessly engaged with matter and with the
world. By the same token, thought is not interiority but our way of engaging with
the world, orienting ourselves there and creating from the materials it offers us.
Thus, another way of considering the autonomy of art, philosophy, and science is
to evaluate the different though related images of thought they offer us. The per-
cept is visually and acoustically sensuous, provoking affects or emotions in us.
Concepts and functions are more abstract. What the function is to scientific
expression, the sign is to aesthetic expression. Art's relation to thought, then, lies
not in the substance of images, but in the logic of their combination and enchain-
ment. No doubt every artistic image is an image of thought, a physical tracing and
expression of thought given sensual form, no matter how incoherent or inelegant.
However, while the aesthetic sign may imply a precise concept, it is nonetheless
entirely affective and preconceptual. Yet there is a philosophical power in images.
The artist's ildea is not necessarily the philosopher's. But images not only trace
thoughts and produce affects; they may also provoke thinking or create new pow-
ers of thinking. In so doing, we are thrown from sensuous to abstract thought,
from an image of thought to a thought without image - this is the domain of
philosophy. And in moving from one to the other, art may inspire philosophy to
give form to a concept.
What does philosophy value in art? To ask this question is to demand what
forces expressed in art, in images and signs, call for thinking? Philosophy parts
ways with science to the extent that time is taken as an independent variable - in
fact, the simplest way of describing Deleuze's (or Bergson's) philosophical project
is as the will to reintroduce time and change to philosophy's image of thought.
Philosophy finds inspiration in art because there the will to create is brought to its
106 OCTOBER
highest powers
contemporary
of creation, it
need concepts
closer to art, an
philosophy that
innovations we
further, that t
while nonethele
That art may
between Deleuze
are not studies
phy first and
studies of film
daily life of the
ent ways, bot
being in the wo
philosophy, an
exemplifies this
of cinema. At
and time in re
neither as an ef
is the aesthetic
should one say
the direct phil
signs, of proble
Cavell present
problems of on
losophy of and
the concerns of
Cavell's philoso
iterations of th
cally, namely,
moral perfecti
panion or exem
important Cave
to say that art
way of thinking
represented by
responses to th
15. Stanley Cavell

(Albany: State Univ
refers neither to the medium of ar

how art expresses our modes of exis
into and return from skepticism.
Here an ontology of film is less c
film than with understanding how
relating to it are "cinematic." In its
tion, cinema expresses a particular p
its overcoming. If, as Cavell argues
cism," it neither exemplifies nor is
cinema expresses both the problem
"movement" in this philosophical im
sense. In its very dispositif for view
sents philosophy's historical dilemm
the world) as past, while orienting
That skepticism should reproduce i
that it is no longer the ontological
philosophical culture. If, as Cavell ar
that of our own perceptual conditio
being present to self or acknowledg
selves. (Indeed Cavell's examination o
helps clarify a Deleuzian cinematic e
for change.17) For these reasons, film
decline. Cinema takes up where p
expression of the passage to anothe
presentation of and withdrawal from
the form of skeptical perception as
world and asserting its existential fo
recognition now is that modernity m
or of looking, and we must then ant
In the major books that follow, culm
of this epistemological condition is
evaluation. The key concept of ethic
tionism. Moral perfectionism is t
change or becoming. Here our cinem
perception and thought, but rather
logical to ethical questions is exemp
description of the subjective conditi
worldly or epistemological domain
16. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Refle

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
17. See my essay, "A World, Time," in The A
Rodowick (Minneapolis: University of Minnes
108 OCTOBER
confronts the p
disappointmen
ity - all we can
The second res
my current m
haps primarily
standing, of k
tific attitude
variable. What
the powers of
the problem t
moral freedom
characterize h
ject to causal r
creatures we a
phy's task is
change in the
Therefore, in
of skepticism
lem of evaluat
anticipation of
come my mor
changing it an
Nietzsche, or F
disappointmen
us peace. Alter
pointment an
desire for self
finality. "In E
"there is no qu
taking the ne
self that is alw
wrong to righ
sociability."18
This idea for
and melodramas of the unknown woman. The interest of film here is to show it as
the ordinary or quotidian expression of the deepest concerns of moral philoso-
phy. And just as Wittgenstein sought to displace metaphysical expression into
ordinary language and daily concerns, film brings moral philosophy into the con-
text of quotidian dramatic expression:
18. Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 13.
These films are rather to be th

intellectual and emotional avenu
ration of, but which, perhaps, i
maturely, particularly in its form
mization. . . . The implied claim is
shows philosophy to be the ofte
nary lives that film is so apt to c
Where contemporary philosophy

ism, film has responded, thoug
sensuous expression. Thus the grea
help reinvigorate this moral refle
phy's relation to everyday life.
In the prologue to Cities of Wo
"There are nowadays professors o
admirable to profess because it w
foresaw the difficult life of philoso
If one must compose an elegy for th
losophy in the current millennium
19. Ibid., p. 6.

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An Elegy for Theory

Eloge. n. m. (1580: lat. elogium, pris au sens gr.

He sent thither his Theory, or solemn legation for

-George Grote, A History of Greece (1862)

Bringing together thea [sight]

3. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Voca

I believe we need a more precise conceptual picture of how film became

poetics, and to recenter "theory

The sometimes unruly responses to Making Meaning and Cinema and

existence where, in their view,

nity of researchers united by common epistemological standards who are strivin

If philosophy involves anothe

10. Malcolm Turvey, "Can Science Hel

Ultimately, I want to argue that

that affects the autonomy of the

12. Gilles Deleuze, "Having an Idea in Ci

13. Gilles Deleuz

how we think, and whether we sus

The key to grasping this relation in Deleuze is to understand the originality

15. Stanley Cavell

refers neither to the medium of ar

16. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Refle

These films are rather to be th

Where contemporary philosophy

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