Mauro Carbone - Philosophy-Screens

Philosophy-Screens

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

Philosophy-Screens

From Cinema to the Digital Revolution

Mauro Carbone

Translated by

Marta Nijhuis

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Philosophie-crans. Du cinma la rvolution numrique

Librairie Philosophique J. VRIN, Paris, 2016.

http://www.vrin.fr

2019 State University of New York

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Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carbone, Mauro, 1956 author. | Nijhuis, Marta, 1983 translator.

Title: Philosophy-screens : from cinema to the digital revolution / Mauro Carbone ; translated by Marta Nijhuis.

Other titles: Philosophie-crans. English

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018033266 | ISBN 9781438474656 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438474663 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion picturesPhilosophy. | Philosophy, Modern20th century.

Classification: LCC PN1995 .C341313 2019 | DDC 791.4301dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033266

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

P ART O NE
W HAT I S A P HILOSOPHY -C INEMA ?

Chapter One
Sartre and Deleuze via Bergson

Chapter Two
The Philosopher and the Moviemaker: Merleau-Ponty and the Meaning of Cinema

Chapter Three
The Torn Curtain: Lyotard, the Screen, and a Cinema Named Desire

P ART T WO
T HE A NIMATED L IFE of S CREENS

Chapter Four
Delimiting to Exceed: The Theme of the Arche-Screen Founding Itself with Its Variants

Chapter Five
Come Live with Me: The Seduction of the Screens Today

Chapter Six
Making Philosophy among and through the Screens

There is no need to recall the Allegory of the Cave: philosophy always made its distaste for screens quite clear, regardless of the kind. One could even claim that philosophy traditionally identified itselfi.e., found its very identity in a fight against the screens, which it assimilated with the illusion, the deceit, the obstacle preventing from the contemplation of truth. Indeed, it is precisely under this sign that philosophys relation to the cinema began. In 1907, nearly twelve years after the birth of the cinematograph, Henri Bergson stated, in Creative Evolution , that this technology rendered but a pure illusion of movement.

Still, if only one looks deeper, things are not quite as simple. Rather, they are ambiguouseven literally ambiguous, that is to say, such as to present two possible meanings. In fact, what Plato describes in the Allegory of the Cave is not a single screen, but precisely two : one showing, the other one concealing; both converging, however, in their global effect, as the two complementary possibilities of one single configuration . In the following pages, I shall call such a configuration the arche-screen .

The ambiguity of this configuration makes us understand that philosophys relations to the screens have, in turn, always been ambiguous. Actually, as I suggested before, on the one hand, philosophy has always accused the screens of not making us see what it is decisive to know. Still, on the other hand, philosophy invariably ended up looking for some sort of screen, precisely to make us see , through them, at least the image of what it wants us to know. The Bergsonian condemnation of the cinematograph may just as well exemplify the first side of such an ambiguous relationship, while the metaphor of the black screen that Bergson himself posits in Matter and Memory , as well as the attempts of twentieth-century French philosophy to rehabilitate the cinema and its screenwhich I will take into account in the initial part of the bookrather refer to the other side. Indeed, this latter side suggests that (and why) philosophy has always hadgenerally in an implicit and (too) often unavowed wayits own specific need for screens . The reasons for such an exigency do not seem too different from the ones concerning our very vision, which is itself marked by a constitutive screens necessity, since it is the visual perception of a figure on a ground, that is to say, precisely a screen.

However, what happens when considering that the screens have a long and diverse cultural history? What happens when considering that such a history has been sedimenting in that of the very term defining them and of others that have gradually matched it in order to specify the function that the screens would provide? What happens when considering that such a history has also been sedimenting in certain metaphors through which we have tried to find figures that could give a fundament to our ways to conceive the screens themselves? And moreover, what happens when considering that those screens, as announced in the title of this books second part, keep living an animated life, namely, a life that animates ours all the more? Eventually, what happens when considering that our screens experience has crossed deep mutations and does not cease to report new ones, which cannot but influence and hence modify our ways of perceiving, desiring, knowing, and thinking? Such are questions that the philosophical reflection can no longer elude, not only as they strongly demand to be interrogated, but also as they interrogate it in turn. Let us hence go back to the beginning: What happens if the mutations that I just recalled no longer allow to continue to expect that philosophy identifies itself with the fight against the screens? Gilles Deleuze had raised a similar question when referring to the inescapable novelty of the advent of the cinema, which consequently demanded the elaboration of what he once called a philosophy-cinema. The choice to echo, in the title of this book, such an amazing formulationunexplored by Deleuze himself in the first placeaims at reviving the radicalness of the need it expresses, by trying to qualify, detail, and see it in a new lightthe light of our screens.

The starting points for this book are the research cores of my previous works The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty Between Painting and Cinema (2015, originally published in French in 2011) and tre morts ensemble: lvnement du 11 septembre 2001 (2013), whose last chapter I have developed and updated in the article Falling Man: The Time of Trauma, the Time of (Certain) Images.

I had the chance to develop and enhance such research cores thanks to the extraordinary opportunity I was given by being appointed Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France , which was crucial in providing me with the conditions to continue my researches. In fact, membership in such a prestigious French institution allowed me to establish and consolidate scientific contacts that were decisively beneficial to the preparation of the present book. My warmest thanks are hence addressed, first of all, to the Institut Universitaire de France as well as to the colleagues who supported my candidacy, namely, Renaud Barbaras and Vivian Sobchack. Also, I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart, for a continuous and friendly exchange that was both public and private, Emmanuel Alloa, Gabriela Basterra, Giovanna Borradori, Francesco Casetti, Michele Cometa, Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Vittorio Gallese, Richard Grusin, Galen Johnson, W. J. T. Mitchell, Pietro Montani, Andrea Pinotti, Pierre Rodrigo, Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Antonio Somaini, Bernard Stiegler, Luc Vancheri. For including me in the precious discussions that allowed me to submit the reflections I was elaborating for this book to the remarks of students and specialists from very different nations and domains, I am extremely grateful to Arthur Cools, Roberto De Gaetano, lie During, Ericson Falabretti, Arild Fetveit, Amy Foley, Jean-Baptiste Joinet, Rajiv Kaushik, Jos Manuel Martins, Marcos Jos Mller, Peter Reynaert, Jim Risser, Alejandro Vallega, Daniela Vallega-Neu. In turn, Dudley Andrew, Tom Gunning, Masaki Kondo, and Erica Nijhuis, by virtue of their competences and insight, gave me very important suggestions, confirmations, and critical remarks for which I am truly thankful.