The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema: Turning Anew to the Ontology of Film a Half-Century after The World Viewed

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Stanley Cavell 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 as a subject for philosophical criticism; he had to first invent that legitimacy. Part of that effort 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, for the first time anywhere, a concerted effort mounted by some of today's most compelling writers on film to take careful account of Cavell's legacy. The contributors think anew about what precisely Cavell contributed, what holds up, what is in need to revision or updating, and how his writing continues to be of vital significance and relevance for any contemporary approach to the philosophy of film.

Reviews

[The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema] will be valuable to those interested in philosophy, film studies, literature, and US culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * CHOICE *
Stanley Cavell argued that film exists in a state of philosophy. Part of what he meant by this was that thinking about a film is a way of doing philosophy. That has been his influential and most controversial claim. The authors in this collection explore what he might have meant in ways more variegated, thoughtful, original and illuminating than anything I have seen before. The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema, exemplary in its clarity and carefulness, is a watershed both in our understanding of Cavell and of film itself. * Robert Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, USA *
A brilliant collection of original essays by major figures in the field. The genius of Cavell's writings on film is in sharp focus throughout -- likewise the continued provocation of The World Viewed and its successor books and essays. * Michael Fried, J. R. Herbert Boone Emeritus Professor of Humanities and the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, USA *

Author Bio

David LaRocca is the author, editor, or coeditor of more than a dozen books. He edited Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind (Bloomsbury, 2021), Inheriting Stanley Cavell (Bloomsbury, 2020), a commemorative issue of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies (2019), and Stanley Cavells Emersons Transcendental Etudes (2003). He has taught philosophy and cinema and held visiting research or teaching positions in the United States at Binghamton University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Ithaca College, the School of Visual Arts, the State University of New York College at Cortland, and Vanderbilt University.