American avant-garde cinema's philosophy of the "in-between"

Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the field of film-philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde indeed “do” philosophy, and it illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The author traces the avant-garde’s philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how reflections on the creation and reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself. This entails the avant-garde’s locating of cinema’s—and thought’s—ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found, that unites with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Rectifying film-philosophy’s neglect of the American avant-garde, the book demonstrates how, rather than showing their interest in the revelation of authoritative truths, the avant-garde’s interest in the re-encounter and review of the seen and known emerge from an American Transcendentalist tradition that opposes such notions. The author reads the avant-garde’s interest in the contingencies of spectatorial experience as an extension of Pragmatism’s commitment to replacing the authority of a priori knowledge with that of individual experience. She also shows how Emerson’s influence on Friedrich Nietzsche connects the American avant-garde’s philosophies to Deleuze’s time-image, premised largely upon Nietzsche’s “powers of the false.” Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this crucial question for the emergent field of film philosophy, American Avant-Garde Cinema's Philosophy of the In-Between argues that the films of the American avant-garde do in fact do philosophy and illuminates the ethical stakes of their aesthetic interventions. Author Rebecca A. Sheehan contends that American avant-garde cinema's characteristic self-reflexivity is an interrogation of the modes and stakes of our engagement with the world on and beyond the screen. The book demonstrates this with the theory of the in-between: a pervasive figure that helps clarify how avant-garde cinema's reflections on the creation of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production.The book is structured by a taxonomy of the multiple in-betweens evident in American avant-garde filmmaking. Rather than systematically seeking reproductions of particular philosophers' ideas in avant-garde films, Sheehan derives categories of analysis and the philosophical claims they disclose from close readings of the films themselves. This methodology opposes mapping preconfigured philosophical concepts and values onto these films, as too many philosophical approaches to cinema have done, silencing the philosophies uniquely articulated by these films in the interest of making them ventriloquize philosophies advanced elsewhere. The chapters of this book trace three modes of the in-between that function philosophically in American avant-garde cinema: the material, the dimensional, and the conceptual. Although the chapters are organized around discrete aesthetic and philosophical preoccupations that unify several filmmakers, these three presentations of the in-between cut through all the chapters, allowing the subjects of each to converse over the course of the book. Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this crucial question for the emergent field of film philosophy, American Avant-Garde Cinema's Philosophy of the In-Between argues that the films of the American avant-garde do in fact do philosophy and illuminates the ethical stakes of their aesthetic interventions. Author Rebecca A. Sheehan contends that American avant-garde cinema's characteristic self-reflexivity is an interrogation of the modes and stakes of our engagement with the world on and beyond the screen. The book demonstrates this with the theory of the in-between: a pervasive figure that helps clarify how avant-garde cinema's reflections on the creation of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. The book is structured by a taxonomy of the multiple in-betweens evident in American avant-garde filmmaking. Rather than systematically seeking reproductions of particular philosophers' ideas in avant-garde films, Sheehan derives categories of analysis and the philosophical claims they disclose from close readings of the films themselves. This methodology opposes mapping preconfigured philosophical concepts and values onto these films, as too many philosophical approaches to cinema have done, silencing the philosophies uniquely articulated by these films in the interest of making them ventriloquize philosophies advanced elsewhere. The chapters of this book trace three modes of the in-between that function philosophically in American avant-garde cinema: the material, the dimensional, and the conceptual. Although the chapters are organized around discrete aesthetic and philosophical preoccupations that unify several filmmakers, these three presentations of the in-between cut through all the chapters, allowing the subjects of each to converse over the course of the book. "Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the emergent field of film philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde do "do" philosophy and illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The book traces the avant-garde's philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how this cinema's reflections on the creation and reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. This entails the avant-garde's locating of cinema's-and thought's-ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found that unites their films with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed the "journey's end is found in every step of the road" (Cavell). Rectifying film-philosophy's neglect of the American avant-garde, the book demonstrates how rather than showing their interest in the revelation of authoritative truths, the avant-garde's interest in the re-encounter and review of the seen and known emerges from an American Transcendentalist tradition that opposes such notions. Sheehan reads the avant-garde's interest in the contingencies of spectatorial experience as also an extension of Pragmatism's commitment to replacing the authority of a priori knowledge with that of individual experience. She also shows how Emerson's influence on Friedrich Nietzsche connects the American avant-garde's philosophies to Deleuze's time-image, premised largely upon Nietzsche's "powers of the false.""-- Provided by publisher Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this crucial question for the emergent field of film philosophy, ?American Avant-Garde Cinema's Philosophy of the In-Between? argues that the films of the American avant-garde do in fact do philosophy and illuminates the ethical stakes of their aesthetic interventions. Author Rebecca A. Sheehan contends that American avant-garde cinema's characteristic self-reflexivity is an interrogation of the modes and stakes of our engagement with the world on and beyond the screen. The book demonstrates this with the theory of the in-between: a pervasive figure that helps clarify how avant-garde cinema's reflections on the creation of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. 0The book is structured by a taxonomy of the multiple in-betweens evident in American avant-garde filmmaking. Rather than systematically seeking reproductions of particular philosophers' ideas in avant-garde films, Sheehan derives categories of analysis and the philosophical claims they disclose from close readings of the films themselves. This methodology opposes mapping preconfigured philosophical concepts and values onto these films, as too many philosophical approaches to cinema have done, silencing the philosophies uniquely articulated by these films in the interest of making them ventriloquize philosophies advanced elsewhere Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the field of film-philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde indeed "do" philosophy, and it illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The author traces the avant-garde's philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how reflections on the creation and reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself. This entails the avant-garde's locating of cinema's - and thought's - ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found, that unites with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson