Cinema Derrida: the law of inspection in the age of global spectral film and video
Date
2016-06-30
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Abstract
My contribution in the interdisciplinary field of film studies involves expanding the
concept of spectrality from its linguistic, deconstructive context to articulate new
cinematic subjectivities and visual forms of mourning. Spectrality emerges as a key
theme in Derrida’s cinematic collaborations, like Ghost Dance (1983), D’ailleurs Derrida
(1999), Derrida (2002), and has gained traction in the postmodernist cinema of Jean-Luc
Godard and contemporary documentary. Unlike many of his generation, Derrida made it a
critical point to experiment with film from the early 1980s onward by exploring and
exposing the archival, haunting nature of film. This dissertation studies the cinematic
collaborations of Jacques Derrida through the lens of both primary and secondary Derrida
literature with a view to critically examine the evolution of this idea that became so
central in his philosophical project and important for his legacy.
With postmodernism there is a break from the past and all we are left with
ostensibly is history without the foundations that would make it a teleological process.
Deconstruction’s critique of the transcendental signifier helped pave the way for much of
this shift in thinking. Hauntology comes into high relief with post-modernism and poststructuralist
philosophical movements to articulate the haunting of the sign. Poststructuralism
is the last great philosophical attempt to explain this sense of flickering
between presence and absence, and how spectrality stages an encounter with the other and
with the law of another time. I draw out the main tenets of spectrality from Derrida’s
seminal texts Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx and other writings, like
Echographies of Television, in order to fill a gap in studies of Derrida and film. For this
project, I draw on communication, media, and film theorists, including Jaimie Baron,
Barthes, Edgar Morin, Mulvey, Michael Naas, and John Durham Peters.
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Keywords
Derrida, inspection, law, film, video, ghosts, spectrality