The Priority of the Example: Speculative Identity in Film Studies

Abstract

Examples are always suspicious. They receive bad press from all sides. Those who want to follow a rigorous theoretical argument find the turn to the example spurious, a concession to the reader that one could almost always do without. The example enables readers to make sense of an argument that would otherwise bewilder them, but at the same time, it marks an interruption in the line of reasoning of the argument. An example may be convincing, but it is a theoretical sideshow. Those who focus on works of art rather than philosophical arguments have the opposite complaint about examples. The disdain that surrounds attempts to apply theoretical perspectives to works of art stems from the sense that a work of art does not simply exemplify certain concepts. No one likes “applied psychoanalysis” or “applied Marxism.” To reduce the work of art to the status of an example is to violate its particularity, to use this particularity in the service of a theoretical position that has nothing intrinsically to do with the work of art itself. At best, the example is a necessary evil; at worst, it is the site of epistemic violence.