Abstract
This chapter offers a critical discussion of the relationship between poststructuralism and film theory. I commence with a brief account of poststructuralism’s distinctive features (the critique of structuralist universalism, the championing of a philosophy of difference, and the shift from work to text). I then turn to the key poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida and Deleuze, and explore why poststructuralist thinkers themselves may have eschewed reflecting on the medium. I then consider the critique of poststructuralist contribution to film theory, suggesting what elements of that critique remain pertinent. Finally, I consider Deleuze, the only poststructuralist thinker to have focused on cinema, and argue that much of his cinematic philosophy implies a critical distancing from the psycho-semiotic/poststructuralist approach to film theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Some theorists distinguish poststructuralism as a more philosophically grounded critique of structuralism as well as key assumption of Western metaphysics, and postmodernism as a more historically oriented critique of principles of Enlightenment rationality prevailing in modernity. See Manfred Frank, What is Neostructuralism?, trans. Sabine Wilke and Richard Gray, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 45 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge MA.: The MIT Press, 1985); Patrick Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000); Mark Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1989); Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (Malden, MA. and Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
- 2.
David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
- 3.
Richard Smith, “The Philosopher with Two Brains”, Film-Philosophy 5, no. 34 (November 2001): http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/655/568
- 4.
Brunette and Wills identify Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier as the sole ‘Derridian’ deconstructionist film theorist. Peter Brunette and David Wills, Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). As Robert Stam notes, despite the important influence of poststructuralist theory in looking for ‘moments of rupture or change’, it has not been an especially explicit presence in much film studies: ‘Perhaps because it was intimately linked to language-based disciplines (literature and philosophy), Derridian poststructuralism has been a quiet but hardly overwhelming presence within film theory’. Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (Malden, MA. and Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 181. Brunette nonetheless offers a decidedly ‘Derridian’ account of poststructuralism in film studies. See Peter Brunette, ‘Post-structuralism and deconstruction’, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 91–95. For an impressive recent version of Derridian feminist film theory, see Sarah Dillon, Deconstruction, Feminism, and Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
- 5.
See Colin Gardner, ‘Roland Barthes’, in Felicity Colman (ed.), Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (Durham: Acumen Press, 2009), 109–121.
- 6.
Michel Foucault, ‘Film and Popular Memory: An Interview with Michel Foucault’, Radical Philosophy 11, no. 11 (1975): 24–29.
- 7.
See Patricia MacCormack, ‘Julia Kristeva’, in Felicity Colman (ed.) Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (Durham: Acumen Press, 2009), 276–285.
- 8.
Catherine Constable, ‘Jean Baudrillard’, in Felicity Colman (ed.) Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (Durham: Acumen Press, 2009), 212–221. See also Constable’s Adapting Philosophy. Jean Baudrillard and ‘The Matrix Trilogy’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) for a helpful account of Baudrillard’s relationship with cinema, which gained traction during the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the cultural studies’ fascination with ‘simulacra’, and again came to prominence following the release of The Matrix (L and L Wachwoski 1999).
- 9.
After a series of strictly philosophical-historical studies (of Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Kant, and Spinoza) published during the 1960s, Deleuze published Proust and Signs in 1964, an essay (‘Coldness and Cruelty’) on Sacher-Masoch in 1967, co-authored a book on Kafka with Felix Guattari in 1975, and published a book on the paintings of Francis Bacon (Logic of Sensation) in 1981.
- 10.
David Bordwell and Noël Carroll, (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); Richard Allen and Murray Smith (eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
- 11.
See Mark Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1989).
- 12.
See Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
- 13.
See Frank, What is Neostructuralism? and Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism.
- 14.
See Reda Bensmaïa, ‘Poststructuralism’, in The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 92–95; Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory, and Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism.
- 15.
Bensmaïa, “Poststructuralism”, 93.
- 16.
Bensmaïa, ‘Poststructuralism’, 93.
- 17.
I leave aside here the work of Bernard Stiegler—influenced by Derrida and Heidegger, but also Gilbert Simondon, Henri Leroi-Gourhan, and others—since his work marks an independent critical project in the philosophy of technology that encompasses audiovisual media and its relationship to subjectivity and individuation. Jean-Luc Nancy, whose work draws on Derrida and Heidegger, is another French philosopher to have written specifically on cinema (see his 2001 book, L’Évidence du film/The Evidence of Film (Paris: Yves Gaevert, 2001)), but his work belongs to the generation following, but also critical of, the 1960s/1970s ‘poststructuralist’ generation of French philosophers. See Claire Colebrook, ‘Jean-Luc Nancy’, in Colman (ed.) Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, 154–163, for a fine discussion of Nancy’s contribution to film-philosophy.
- 18.
See Frank, What is Neostructuralism?
- 19.
Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, Second Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
- 20.
Ferdinand De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959 [1913]).
- 21.
See Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, and Stam, Film Theory.
- 22.
See Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990 [1969]).
- 23.
A poststructuralist variation on Heidegger’s ontological remark, ‘language is the house of Being’. See Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings, Second Edition, ed., David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 213–265; remark at 236, 237.
- 24.
See Descombes, Modern French Philosophy.
- 25.
Bensmaïa, ‘Poststructuralism’, 93.
- 26.
See Descombes, Modern French Philosophy.
- 27.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 [1968]), 1.
- 28.
See Robert Sinnerbrink, Understanding Hegelianism (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).
- 29.
Drawing a link with earlier traditions of film theory, Fuery claims that poststructuralism and postmodernism ‘are vital to the study of film because it is through the complex ideas of these theories that we might come to better understand the nature of the cinematic apparatus’. Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory, 1.
- 30.
Cf. Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory, 2: ‘Gone is a sense of certainty, wholeness, resolution, and completion. They have been replaced by restless signs, driven by certain passions towards a status of the question and absence, rather than answers and presence’.
- 31.
As Fuery remarks, ‘[t]he intellectual projects of poststructuralism and postmodernism, such as the interpretation and re-evaluation of topics such as subjectivity, culture, meaning, gender, power, discourse, pleasure, language (to name but a few), represent a profound shift in the climate of Western thought’. Fuery New Developments in Film Theory, 2.
- 32.
Ian Aitken, European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 113.
- 33.
Noël Carroll, “Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment”, in Bordwell and Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 37.
- 34.
Carroll, “Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment”, 37–68.
- 35.
See Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, 13–27.
- 36.
Carroll, “Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment”, 38–56.
- 37.
Richard Allen and Murray Smith (eds). Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6.
- 38.
Carroll, ‘Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment’, 56–68.
- 39.
See Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981).
- 40.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 25–28; Deleuze, ‘The Brain is the Screen’, 366.
- 41.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 204–215.
- 42.
Deleuze, ‘The Brain is the Screen’, 367.
- 43.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, ix.
- 44.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, ix.
- 45.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, ix.
- 46.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 1–11.
- 47.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 29.
- 48.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 1.
- 49.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 1.
- 50.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 2–3.
- 51.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 3–4.
- 52.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 6.
- 53.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 8.
- 54.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 8–9.
- 55.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 11.
- 56.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 69.
- 57.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 69.
- 58.
Deleuze, Cinema 1, 69.
- 59.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 29.
- 60.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 30–34.
- 61.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 29 ff.
- 62.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 29.
- 63.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 29.
- 64.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 189–211.
- 65.
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 1–24.
Bibliography
Aitken, Ian. 2001. European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Allen, Richard, and Murray Smith, eds. 1997. Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bensmaïa, Reda. 2005. Poststructuralism. In The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, 92–95. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bordwell, David, and Noël Carroll, eds. 1996. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Brunette, Peter. 1998. Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction. In The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, 91–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brunette, Peter, and David Wills. 1989. Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Carroll, Noël. 1996. Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment. In Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. D. Bordwell and N. Carroll, 37–68. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Colebrook, Claire. 2009. Jean-Luc Nancy. In Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, ed. F. Colman, 154–163. Durham: Acumen Press.
Colman, Felicity, ed. 2009. Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers. Durham: Acumen Press.
Constable, Catherine. 2009a. Jean Baudrillard. In Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, ed. F. Colman, 212–221. Durham: Acumen Press.
———. 2009b. Adapting Philosophy. Jean Baudrillard and ‘The Matrix Trilogy’. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
De Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959 [1915]. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw Hill.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986 [1983]. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson, and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1989 [1985]. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galatea. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1990 [1969]. Logic of Sense. Trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1994 [1968]. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2000. The Brain Is the Screen. An Interview with Gilles Deleuze. Trans. Marie Therese Guirgis. In The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, ed. Gregory Flaxman, 365–373. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Descombes, Vincent. 1980. Modern French Philosophy. Trans. L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Film and Popular Memory: An Interview with Michel Foucault. Radical Philosophy 11 (11): 24–29.
Frank, Manfred. 1989. What Is Neostructuralism? Trans. Sabine Wilke and Richard Gray. Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 45. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fuery, Patrick. 2000. New Developments in Film Theory. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Gardner, Colin. 2009. Roland Barthes. In Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, ed. F. Colman, 109–121. Durham: Acumen Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1985. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hawkes, Terence. 2003. Structuralism and Semiotics. 2nd ed. London/New York: Routledge.
Heidegger, Martin. 1993. Letter on Humanism. In Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, 2nd ed., 213–265. New York: Harper Collins.
MacCormack, Patricia. 2009. Julia Kristeva. In Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers, ed. F. Colman, 276–285. Durham: Acumen Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2001. L’Évidence du Film/The Evidence of Film: Abbas Kiarostami and Jean-Luc Nancy in Conversation. Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert Editeur.
Poster, Mark. 1989. Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
Sinnerbrink, Robert. 2011. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London/New York: Continuum.
Smith, Richard. 2001. The Philosopher with Two Brains. Film-Philosophy 5(34), November. http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/655/568
Stam, Robert. 2000. Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sinnerbrink, R. (2019). Poststructuralism and Film. In: Carroll, N., Di Summa, L.T., Loht, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19600-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19601-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)