A little self-promotion: Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image is now in paperback.
In their wisdom, Palgrave decided to swap around the PB's title and subtitle for marketing purposes. So it is now titled Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality. This should make for interesting bibliographies.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophy-Moving-Image-Refractions-Reality/dp/0230285015/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290099548&sr=1-8
Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010)
John Mullarkey
Description:
Why is film becoming increasingly important to philosophers? Is it because it can be a helpful tool in teaching philosophy, in illustrating it? Or is it because film can also think for itself, can create its own philosophy? Indeed many film-philosophers claim that film does more than merely illustrate philosophical texts: rather, film itself can philosophize in direct audio-visual terms. Too often, however, when philosophers claim to find indigenous philosophical value in cinema, it is only on account of refracting it through their own thought: film philosophizes because it accords with a favoured kind of extant philosophy.
Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality is the first book to examine all the central issues surrounding the vexed relationship between the film-image and philosophy. In it, John Mullarkey tackles the work of particular philosophers and theorists (Žižek, Deleuze, Cavell, Bordwell, Badiou, Branigan, Rancière, Frampton, and many others) as well as general philosophical positions (Analytical and Continental, Cognitivist and Culturalist, Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological). Moreover, he also offers an incisive analysis and explanation of several prominent forms of film theorizing, providing a meta logical account of their mutual advantages and deficiencies that will prove immensely useful to anyone interested in the details of particular theories of film presently circulating, as well as correcting, revising, and re-visioning the field of film theory as a whole.
Throughout, Mullarkey asks whether the reduction of film to text is unavoidable. In particular: must philosophy (and theory) always transform film into pre-texts for illustration? What would it take to imagine how film might itself theorise without reducing it to standard forms of thought and philosophy? Finally, and fundamentally, must we change our definition of philosophy and even of thought itself in order to accommodate the specificities that come with the claim that film can produce philosophical theory?
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Preface: The Film-Envy of Philosophy
Introduction: Nobody Knows Anything!
Illustrating Manuscripts
Bordwell and Other Cogitators
Žižek and the Cinema of Perversion
Deleuze's Kinematic Philosophy
Cavell, Badiou, and Other Ontologists
Expanded Cognitions and the Speeds of Cinema
Fabulation, Process and Event
Refractions of Reality Or, What is Thinking Anyway?
Conclusion: Code Unknown - A Bastard Theory for a Bastard Art
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
Reviews:
'In this engaging, comprehensive, incisive work, Mullarkey addresses whether film can philosophize on its own, adding something original, rather than simply illustrating concepts that philosophers extract from their own discourse...An indispensible work for students/scholars in philosophy of film/art, aesthetics, and film studies.' – D.W.Rothermel, CHOICE
'...addresses the question of the relation between art and philosophy - the age-old problem of aesthetics - in an entirely original manner by examining how film changes the terms of this debate.' – Amanda Dennis, The International Journal for Philosophical Studies
'Mullarkey brings an informed, critical view to a number of theories from both the Continental tradition (his specialization) and the Anglo-American tradition...Refractions of Reality is an original and valuable contribution to the field of film philosophy...It is perhaps most valuable in its highly successful dislocation of the rigid, myopic perspective of so many contemporary theories' – Joseph Mai, Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews
'This book, in some sense, brings to an end a certain phase of film theorizing and instead looks toward something quite new: how theories have been written and how they may be written, how they fall into types, how these types are filling out not a logical grid but a grid of the anxieties we feel, and the defenses we erect toward the everyday. A wonderful, ground-breaking book.' – Edward Branigan (University of California, Santa Barbara), author of Projecting a Camera: Language-Games in Film Theory and Narrative Comprehension and Film
'Highly original both in its concern for avoiding the illustrative approach generally favoured by philosophers, and in the speculative ambition that looms behind the critical edge of its readings of contemporary film- philosophers. The very question "when does the film itself happen?" is a fundamental one, which is rarely addressed. Mullarkey is opening the door to a brand new type of philosophical engagement with films.' – Elie During (Université de Paris X-Nanterre), author of Matrix: Machine philosophique
Professor John Mullarkey, MA, PhD
Film and Television Studies
School of Performance and Screen Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Kingston University, London
Room MB333
Penryhn Road
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey KT1 2EE
England, UK
020 841 77427
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Executive Member, London Graduate School
Chair, Society for European Philosophy
Executive Editor, Film-Philosophy
http://kingston.academia.edu/JohnMullarkey
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