Between The Symbolic And The Sublime : Slavoj Žižek In Film Studies ... And Out
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The following dissertation examines film theory' s contribution to the Marxian theory of ideology. I argue that while early film theorists sought to develop a theory of film, film theory better serves the study and critique of ideology. I claim that the study of film and spectatorship can add to knowledge of ideology and subjectivity. To this end, I examine the relevance of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Žižek, for contemporary film studies. I locate Žižek's place within film studies through a debate between himself and the prominent American film scholar, David Bordwell. Bordwell is well known for his advocacy of cognitive and middle-level research in film studies, and for his criticism of film theory (or, 'Theory'). He is one of the leaders of a movement in film studies known as post-Theory. I take up the debate between Žižek and Bordwell, and argue that the post-Theory rejection of Theory is an ideological effect of the class struggle. After carving out a place for Žižek in film studies, I examine the relevance of his psychoanalytic interpretations of cinema for a critique of ideology. Žižek is known for using examples from films as tools of exegesis for an interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, I argue that while this is true for some of his writing on film, Žižek also practices a psychoanalytic interpretation of cinema that reveals something about the function of ideology. Referring to Žižek, I also argue against early film theorists who thought it possible to interpellate political subjectivities through alternative or avant-garde cinema. In contrast, I argue that the work itself in not powerful enough to interpellate political subjectivity. It is, rather, the interpretation that politicizes the work. I claim that films do not create subject-positions, as early film theorists argued; rather, they reproduce the already existing subject-positions of the spectators by reproducing pleasure or desire. However, without rejecting the efforts of early film theory, I conclude, against Bordwell and other post-Theorists, that Theory is still important in film studies, particularly in the area of political critique, and that Žižek's work is exemplary of the kind of political criticism needed in film studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".