Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema2020
Turning Anew to the Ontology of Film a Half-Century after the World Viewed
by David LaRocca
"Stanley Cavell, just recently deceased, 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 seriously as a subject for philosophical criticism, he had first to invent that legitimacy. Part of his efforts 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 a concerted group effort to analyze and reflect anew upon Cavell's still-scintillating contributions to the very thought of film-and its philosophical significance. Mounted by some of today's most compelling writers on cinema, these investigations take careful...