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Spectatorship and Film Theory

The Wayward Spectator

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Carlo Comanducci

    1. Vistula University, Warsaw, Poland

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  • 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

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Film Theory, a Divided Passion?

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 1-15

  3. The Heteronomy of Subjectivity and the Spectator’s Emancipation

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 17-43

  4. Everyday Film Theory

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 45-71

  5. Situatedness and Contingency of Film Experience

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 73-97

  6. The Process of Free Association and Film as an Evocative Object

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 99-135

  7. The Indeterminacy of Embodiment

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 137-173

  8. The Spectator as a History of Encounters

    • Carlo Comanducci
    Pages 175-201

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 203-208
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Vistula University, Warsaw, Poland

    Carlo Comanducci

About the author

Carlo Comanducci teaches at Vistula University, Warsaw, Poland. He writes on cinema and spectatorship, psychoanalytic theory, anarchy and the politics of aesthetics.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Spectatorship and Film Theory

  • Book Subtitle: The Wayward Spectator

  • Authors: Carlo Comanducci

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96743-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-96742-4Published: 10 September 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-07240-7Published: 03 January 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-96743-1Published: 27 August 2018

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VII, 208

  • Topics: Film Theory, Aesthetics

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