The thought of Stanley Cavell and cinema

Bloomsbury Publishing

2020

xv, 313 pages

Includes bibliographical references and index

9781501349164

Preface. Stanley Cavell and cinema / Thomas Elsaesser -- Introduction. Philosophy's claim to film, film's claim to philosophy / David Larocca -- "Assertions in technique" : tracking the medial "thread" in Cavell's filmic ontology / Garrett Stewart -- Revisiting the world viewed / Noël Carroll -- The world heard / Kyle Stevens -- What a genre of film might be : medium, myth, and morality / Stephen Mulhall -- Cinemas of de-marriage : my troubled relationship with Cavell / Scott Macdonald -- Film as film and the personal / William Rothman -- Between skepticism and perfectionism : on Cavell's melodrama of the unknown woman / Robert Sinnerbrink -- Overcoming skepticism in Casablanca / Thomas E. Wartenberg -- A skeptic's reprieve : Cavell on comedy in Shakespeare and the movies / Lawrence F. Rhu -- Film exists in a state of philosophy : two contemporary Cavellian views / Shawn Loht -- The conception of film for the subject of television : moral education of the public and a return to an aesthetics of the ordinary / Sandra Laugier -- On film in reality : Cavellian reflections on skepticism, belief, and documentary / Mathew Abbott -- On the aesthetics of amateur filmmaking in narrative cinema : experiencing home movies after Adam's rib / David Larocca

"Stanley Cavell, just recently deceased, was, by many accounts America's greatest philosophical thinker of film. Like Bazin in France and Perkins in England, Cavell did not just transform the American capacity to take film seriously as a subject for philosophical criticism, he had first to invent that legitimacy. Part of his efforts involved the creation of several key-now canonical-texts in film studies, among them the seminal The World Viewed along with Pursuits of Happiness and Contesting Tears. The present collection offers a concerted group effort to analyze and reflect anew upon Cavell's still-scintillating contributions to the very thought of film-and its philosophical significance. Mounted by some of today's most compelling writers on cinema, these investigations take careful account of Cavell's legacy, once and ongoing. In these pages, seasoned scholars and emerging talent artfully and expertly explore what precisely Cavell bequeathed- what endures, what stands in need of revision or updating, and how his writing remains vital and essential to any contemporary approach to the philosophy of film"-- Provided by publisher

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