Flesh into Body into Subject: The Corporeality of the Filmic Discourse

Abstract

Following on from the previous chapter, our principal concern here will be to map out a particular type of film discourse. This is the discursive practice of the filmic body — which includes the body in film, the transformation of the body through film, and film as a corporeally driven form. In part this will be to explore further some of the critical issues raised by Foucault and Kristeva, but also to extend the idea of a filmic discourse, as illustrated through its treatment of the body, to other theoretical models and debates. The chapter will be divided into three closely related sections: cinematic libidinal economies; the mise-en-scine of flesh; the corporeality of filmic discourse. In each section one of the central themes will be how film treats, constructs, displays, manipulates, and invents a pluralism of the body, and how those cinematic bodies pose powerful influences within the cinematic discursive practices. In Foucauldian terms the body becomes a statement as it is displayed in film, and filmic statements are transformed through the power of desultory bodies. It is this quality of desultoriness that impacts significantly on the discursive practices of cinema, and beyond them.