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September 1995, Week 4

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Thu, 21 Sep 1995 13:08:57 GMT
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In the discursive tradition known in the west as "philosophy" a
hierarchy of the senses is presented by writers from Plato to Heidegger
with only slight modulations. In that Hierarchy the non-appetative
senses (sight, touch, hearing) are placed above the appetative senses
(taste, smell) because they are disinterested and so more objective.
Among the non-appetative senses sight is the highest. It determins the
metaphorics of the philosophical quest fro truth: "seeing' reflection"
enlightenment" etc.(See *Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision* Ed. David
M. Levin)
 
So far so good. but things get tricky when one considers that another
part of the same philosphical tradition holds that writing and all other
representations that are cut off from their producer are inferior means
of communication to the speech of someone who is present. Inferior in
the sense that they are more prone to be false.
 
In moving images the tradition is confronted with a medium that is like
writing in that it is cut off from its producer and cannot be tended by
a living presence but that signifies throught the most privillaged sense
of sight. In additon notion pictures use sight to simulate a full
presence, (the philosophical traditon posits presence as truth itself).
 
So the emrgence of the moving image marks a crisis in philosophy where
by presence and speech come into question. Because the moving image can,
as this list has shown be unreliable in  a number of ways vision's
privillage among the senses is also problematized. This crisis is not
caused by the motion picture which is only one of its many marks.
Another name for this crisis might be "deconstruction."
 
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