File spoon-archives/film-theory.archive/film-theory_1995/film-theory_Feb.95, message 26


Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 16:06:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Point-of-view, primary id and all that jazz



I'm writing in return because I'm cranky as well as having-been-cranked. 
Anyway, the problem here is the "what kind of," as if a subject were 
subject to either cultural taxonomy or natural kinds. It is not _the_ 
subject that is constructed, but _a_ subject in a somewhat dialectical, 
somewhat contractual process (after all, I can be bored enough by Marker 
or anyone to simply wak out). There is no answer to the question because 
the question imply more of a determination than any cinematic experience 
produces. The nearest to a determination might be in examing those 
signifiers or instances that lend themselves to diegesis, and in Marker's 
film diegesis, with its interplay of temporality, is paradoxical and con- 
voluted.

One might, by the way, go so far as to say that there is no subject 
outside of construction, that we are not subjects (except in the sense of 
belonging to one or another physical or political entity), and that what 
might be called "subject" is a confluence of constructs, empty otherwise. 

Alan

On Tue, 7 Feb 1995, Malgosia Askanas wrote:

> Could somebody be kind and generous to me and lead me, in simple
> language, through the exercise of answering the question "what kind
> of a subject does this film construct?"?  Let's take Marker's "La Jetee",
> since it keeps coming up and I think a lot of people have seen it. 
> What kind of a subject does it construct?  I sense that James doesn't
> like to enter foundational divagations, but maybe someone else is less
> averse to them.  It would make me less cranky.
> 
> 
> - malgosia, very cranky 
> 
> -------- from list film-theory-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu -------
> 

-------- from list film-theory-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu -------

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