Film Theory and Enunciation Virtuality and Filmic Textual Cinematic Concretion; Never Becomes a Person
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individuals with histories. A donor simply Film Theory and Enunciation virtuality and filmic textual cinematic concretion; never becomes a person. This is key or, to model viewers’ placement (e.g., “subject because in Germany a person cannot be positioning”) within the circuitry of cinematic perceived to die in order for someone else Francesco Casetti, Inside the Gaze: The Fiction to live. Thus, while the organ can “live representation. on” as described in transplant rhetoric, Film and Its Spectator, trans. by Nell Andrew No application of enunciation to cinema the person must not (159-60). with Charles O’Brien. Preface to the English passed without controversy. In a review of the Identification of the donor is circumscribed and edition by Dudley Andrew. Introduction by applications to cinematic narration, David prevented, then, by the identification of the Christian Metz. Bloomington: Indiana University Bordwell concludes that the challenges of German state with “stark images of power and Press, 1998. transferring enunciation from Benveniste’s inhumanity,” (187) particularly in connection linguistic model to the audio-visual art of cinema with medical uses of bodies. Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945- has never been resolved: “because a film lacks In both works dead bodies are critical 1995, trans. by Francesca Chiostri and Elizabeth equivalents for the most basic aspects of verbal vehicles for the expression of political identities Gard Bartolini, with Thomas Kelso. Revised and activity, I suggest that we abandon the and moral values. In Verdery’s work, rightful updated by the author. Austin: University of Texas enunciation account.” (1986: 26) Bordwell’s claims to territory are built on grave sites. Press, 1999. conclusion was retroactive. As far as English- Although territoriality does not figure as large in language cinema studies was concerned the identity-building aspects of Hogle’s work, Warren Buckland, The Cognitive Semiotics of enunciation had disappeared from its agenda by territoriality lingers in definitions of which organs Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, the 1980s. Controversy over enunciation arose are “better” for transplant. The re-identification 2000. because the complicated roles it played in film process brought about by the unification of the criticism overburdened the concept before film two Germanys necessarily continues repudiation Warren Buckland (ed.), The Film Spectator: semiotics had resolved basic theoretical problems. of Nazi approaches to the nation as a “social From Mind to Sign. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Critics deployed enunciation, for example, as a body.” Germany was not understood as an University Press, 1995. criterion to distinguish films that seem to occlude integrated society until National Socialism - a time or to foreground discours. Semioticians of that most Germans wish had never happened - By Bart Testa discourse analysis described classes of indicators and any new nationalism under reunification must (“shifters,” for instance) that articulated the self- continue to repudiate the Nazi past (188). Francesco Casetti’s Inside the Gaze is the reference operations of enunciation and Both Verdery and Hogle have engaged translation of the author’s Dentro lo sguardo: il differentiated such utterance as discours. Film with a subject that is largely ignored and in some film e il suo spettore, published in 1986. Its core critics mingled this analysis with the modernist ways, almost taboo in large parts of Western (and chapter appeared in 1983 as “Looking for the concept of self-reflexivity (or self-reference) and Westernized) society: dead bodies. Using this Spectator” in Iris 2. In 1989, Dentro lo sguardo with ideological critique. Especially at Cahiers du lesser known pathway, both writers have asked was rendered in French as D’un regard l’autre: Le Cinéma, critics proposed to make ideological about the place of the dead in specific film et son spectateur. That edition included a differentiations between “classical” and communities and the meanings assigned to them. collegial introduction by Christian Metz, in the “progressive” [film] texts (Comolli and Narboni While this path diverges into different locations English edition, “Crossing over the Alps and the 1969) on the basis of whether films revealed their for the dead in these communities, Verdery and Pyrenees… .” Metz does not allude to the strong discursive properties. The criterion served in Hogle have described and analyzed these locations criticism directed toward his Italian colleague in distinguishing mainstream narrative cinema, with skill and in depth. Neither author has been his final book L’Enonciation impersonnelle (1995), which supposedly erases enunciative marks and stopped by disciplinary boundaries around the conclusion of a dialogue Metz conducted with poses as histoire (unmarked “story”), and therefore political science (Verdery) nor anthropology Italian semioticians running since the middle of positions the spectator passively in receiving a film, (Hogle), making both works accessible to diverse the 1960s. No full translation of L’Enonciation from “avant-garde” (or “modernist” or constituencies. Verdery’s work covers wider impersonnelle has appeared. However, Warren “progressive”) film texts that foreground discours ground, emphasizing the role of the dead in Buckland’s anthology, The Film Spectator: From and hence activate a more politically critical providing insight into major world political Sign to Mind includes its eponymous first chapter spectator (Silverman 1983: 3-52; 194-236). events. While Hogle’s focus is somewhat and it is set beside “Face to Face,”1 an essay It is notable, given the ideological role narrower, it is nonetheless rich in its historical compressing Casetti’s theory of enunciation. This that enunciation therefore played in film theory and current analysis of the cultural place of dead anthology of translations, The Film Spectator, is and criticism, that Muscio and Zemignan lately bodies in Germany. Nadia Seremetakis (1991: 14) now partnered with Buckland’s expository credit Casetti’s work on enunciation because “he has commented that the institutions of death, account, The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, which has continued certain trends and brought into (either burial and reburial or organ donation includes a chapter on the Metz-Casetti exchange. play an innovative thrust.” (1991: 23) Their procedures and practices) “function as a critical I started by scanning the publishing praise is astonishing in its ideological neutrality. vantage point from which to view society.” history behind the books under review in order It leaves us to ask whether Casetti does assume Verdery and Hogle have, in their respective ways to indicate two points developed in the first part the “technical “ attitude toward enunciation they and towards their own ends, used this vantage of this review. First, there has been a delay of attribute to him and, if so, whether it is creditable. point well. more than a decade between initial publication Another question Muscio and Zemignan leave of these texts and their translation, and us to ask is if Casetti successfully continues, Rachel Ariss received her S.J.D. from University Buckland’s expository book. Second, despite its revisits, or recasts a topic in a manner that of Toronto in 2001. She currently teaches in seemingly restricted, even technical role, as a transforms its storied reputation in cinema studies. Women’s Studies at Lakehead University. semiotic model of cinematic narration, Whether and how a viewer participates in a film’s enunciation has a storied career in film semiotics. “text productivity” or acts as peripheral bystander References In the 1970s enunciation provided focus to a spectacle – and this is the base line of for both “text semiotics” in cinema and what today alternatives at which Casetti sets the problem — Duden, Barbara (1993) Disembodying Women: is termed “film spectatorship.” From the start, can never, hypothetically, cease to be an Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. which is to say in the later 1960s, when film interesting question. However, the methods Cambridge: Harvard University Press. semioticians took over Emile Benveniste’s Anglophone film scholars have used to configure seminal formulation (1971: 205-215), the issue have, for a decade now, disconnected Seremetakis, C. Nadia (1991) The Last Word: enunciation presented myriad challenges to film the question from enunciation. Its currency in Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani. theory. Benveniste’s original model dealt with film theory has run down to the point where Chicago: University of Chicago Press. natural language, specifically with parole/discours. Bordwell frankly calls for abandoning it He sited the process of producing discours in the altogether. speech situation involving persons using verb The original dates of publication of these tenses and he analysed special signs – personal books under review run mainly through the pronouns, and adverbs — that function as indices 1980s. Film semiotics as a whole, and not just of place and time. These specifications are doubly enunciation, was then in eclipse in Anglophone rooted: in natural language and the real-time/ cinema studies. The translations and commentary place of persons who meet and talk. Film Buckland offers are a slender bridge over a semioticians adopted enunciation to cinema’s yawning generational silence about semiotics of highly flexible audio-visual representations of time cinema.