The Crisis of Political Modernism

by Rodowick, David Norman

• ISBN13: 9780520087712
• ISBN10: 0520087712
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

D.N. Rodowick offers a critical analysis of the development of film theory since 1968. He shows how debates concerning the literary principles of modernism--semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and feminism--have transformed our understanding of cinematic meaning. Rodowick explores the literary paradigms established in France during the late 1960s and traces their influence on the work of diverse filmmaker/theorists including Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Gidal, Laura Mulvey, and Peter Wollen. By exploring the "new French feminisms" of Irigaray and Kristeva, he investigates the relation of political modernism to psychoanalysis and theories of sexual difference. In a new introduction written especially for this edition, Rodowick considers the continuing legacy of this theoretical tradition in relation to the emergence of cultural studies approaches to film.

Author Biography

D. N. RODOWICK is Professor of English and Visual/Cultural Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Rochester

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xxxi
The Discourse of Political Modernism	p. 1
Modernism and Semiology	p. 42
Ideology and Criticism	p. 67
Formalism and "Deconstruction"	p. 111
Anti-Narrative, or the Ascetic Ideal	p. 126
Language, Narrative, Subject (1): The Critique of "Ontological" Modernism	p. 147
Language, Narrative, Subject (2): Narration and Negativity	p. 180
Sexual Difference	p. 221
The Crisis of Political Modernism	p. 271
Index	p. 303
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