Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies

Description

Hailed as one of America's original art forms, film has the distinctive character of crossing both high and low art. But film has done more than this. According to American philosopher Stanley Cavell, film was also a place where America in the 30s and 40s did its thinking, a tradition that was taken up and enriched throughout world cinema. Can film indeed think? That is, can film do the work of philosophy? The contributors in Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies argue that it can. A deliberately international text featuring pieces never before translated into English and an array of thinkers from across the analytic and continental traditions, Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies features work by established philosophers of film such as Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze, philosophers like Merleau-Ponty and Roland Barthes alongside contemporary thinkers like Stephen Mulhall and Vivian Sobchack and new, up-and-coming voices like Sandra Laugier, Irene Fernandez and Stephanie Rumpza. Each section focuses in on a particular aspect of 'thinking film' and is introduced by the book editors to provide history and context. Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies provides a novel and engaging 'way in' to thinking philosophically about this enduringly popular art form.

Richard Kearney is Charles B. Seelig Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, USA. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature (including two novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited or co-edited 14 more. Murray Littlejohn is Senior Instructor, Humanities and Languages, University of New Brunswick, Canada.

From the groundbreaking works of Cavell and Deleuze, through contemporary philosophies of film, to a philosophical working-through of particular films, this book provides a detailed guide to some of the most important philosophical work on film of the last half-century. Kearney and Littlejohn have done something remarkable here. * Joseph Westfall, Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston-Downtown, USA *