Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image

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 philosophise 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 philosophises because it accords with a favoured kind of extant philosophy. Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image 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 (A iA ek, Deleuze, Cavell, Bordwell, Badiou, Branigan, Ranciere, Frampton, and many others) as well as general philosophical positions (Analytical and Continental, Cognitivist and Culturalist, Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological). Moreover, it also offers an incisive analysis and explanation of several prominent forms of film theorising, providing a metaa'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 rea'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 specii-- cities that come with the claim that film can produce philosophical theory?

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface: The Film-Envy of Philosophy Introduction: Nobody Knows Anything! Illustrating Manuscripts Bordwell and Other Cogitators A iA ek 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 Index

About the Author :
JOHN MULLARKEY is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. His publications include Bergson and Philosophy (1999) and Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006). He is an editor of Film-Philosophy.com.

Review :
'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 (Universite de Paris X-Nanterre), author of Matrix: Machine philosophique