Technē/Technology the Key Debates
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Technē/Technology The Key Debates Mutations and Appropriations in European Film Studies Series Editors Ian Christie, Dominique Chateau, Annie van den Oever Academic Advisory Board Francesco Casetti Laurent Creton Jane Gaines Frank Kessler András Bálint Kovács Eric de Kuyper Laura Mulvey Roger Odin Patricia Pisters Emile Poppe Pert Salabert Heide Schlupmann Vivian Sobchack Janet Staiger Technē/Technology Researching Cinema and Media Technologies – Their Development, Use, and Impact Edited by Annie van den Oever Amsterdam University Press The publication of this book is made possible by grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This book is published in print and online through the online OAPEN library (www.oapen.org) OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initia- tive to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggre- gating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. Cover illustration: Photo by Johan Stadtman. Courtesy of the Film Archive, Uni- versity of Groningen Cover design: Neon, design and communications | Sabine Mannel Lay-out: japes, Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 571 5 e-isbn 978 90 4851 990 3 (pdf) e-isbn 978 90 4851 991 0 (ePub) nur 670 Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) c A.M.A. van den Oever / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2014 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, me- chanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise). Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustra- tions reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Contents Editorial 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction: Researching Cinema and Media Technologies 15 Annie van den Oever PART I Philosophy of Technology: Reassessing Key Questions The Philosophy of Technology in the Frame of Film Theory: Walter Benjamin’s Contribution 29 Dominique Chateau Toward an Archaeology of the Cinema/Technology Relation: From Mechanization to “Digital Cinema” 50 Benoît Turquety Technē and Poiēsis: On Heidegger and Film Theory 65 Robert Sinnerbrink Stiegler’s Post-Phenomenological Account of Mediated Experience 81 Patrick Crogan What Are Media? 93 Lambert Wiesing PART II Cinema and Media Technologies: Hardware, Software, Wetware The “History of Vision”-Debate Revisited 105 Annemone Ligensa Will the 3D Revolution Happen? A Brief Perspective on the Long History of Stereoscopy (with special thanks to Eisenstein and Bazin) 115 Ian Christie 5 Television’s Many Technologies: Domesticity, Governmentality, Genealogy 136 Markus Stauff Postmodern Hi-fi vs. Post-Cool Lo-fi: An Epistemological War 154 Laurent Jullier PART III Cinema and Media Technologies: A Historical Context Marey’s Gun: Apparatuses of Capture and the Operational Image 169 Pasi Väliaho Re-editing as Psychotechnique: Montage and Mediality in Early Soviet Cinema 177 Malte Hagener Technophobia and Italian Film Theory in the Interwar Period 185 Francesco Pitassio Jean-Luc Godard’s HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA: Cogito Ergo Video 196 Céline Scemama Performativity/Expressivity: The Mobile Micro Screen and Its Subject 207 Nanna Verhoeff and Heidi Rae Cooley PART IV Discussions: Revisiting the Past Rethinking the Materiality of Technical Media: Friedrich Kittler, Enfant Terrible with a Rejuvenating Effect on Parental Discipline – A Dialogue 219 Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Annie van den Oever Revisiting Christian Metz’s “Apparatus Theory”–A Dialogue 240 Martin Lefebvre and Annie van den Oever PART V Envisioning the Future The Future History of a Vanishing Medium 261 André Gaudreault Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New Directions 272 Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever 6 contents Notes 279 General Bibliography 333 Notes on Contributors 361 Index of Names 367 Index of Film Titles 374 Index of Subjects 376 contents 7 Editorial Thinking and theorizing about film is almost as old as the medium itself. Within a few years of the earliest film shows in the 1890s, manifestos and reflections began to appear which sought to analyze the seemingly vast potential of film. Writers in France, Russia and Britain were among the first to enter this field, and their texts have become cornerstones of the literature of cinema. Few na- tions, however, failed to produce their own statements and dialogues about the nature of cinema, often interacting with proponents of Modernism in the tradi- tional arts and crafts. Film thus found itself embedded in the discourses of mo- dernity, especially in Europe and Soviet Russia. “Film theory,” as it became known in the 1970s, has always had a historical dimension, acknowledging its debts to the pioneers of analyzing film texts and film experience, even while pressing these into service in the present. But as scholarship in the history of film theory develops, there is an urgent need to revisit many long-standing assumptions and clarify lines of transmission and interpretation. The Key Debates is a series of books from Amsterdam University Press which focuses on the central issues that continue to animate thinking about film and audiovisual media as the “century of celluloid” gives way to a field of interrelated digital media. Initiated by Annie van den Oever (the Netherlands), the direction of the series has been elaborated by an international group of film scholars, including Domin- ique Chateau (France), Ian Christie (UK), Laurent Creton (France), Laura Mulvey (UK), Roger Odin (France), Eric de Kuyper (Belgium), and Emile Poppe (Bel- gium). The intention is to draw on the widest possible range of expertise to pro- vide authoritative accounts of how debates around film originated, and to trace how concepts that are commonly used today have been modified in the process of appropriation. The book series may contribute to both the invention as well as the abduction of concepts. Ian Christie, Dominique Chateau, Annie van den Oever London/Paris/Amsterdam 9 Acknowledgments Technē/Technology is not a book organized around a single thesis – except the as- sertion that technique is a major concern for film and media scholars, whether we approach this in terms of philosophy, techno-aesthetics, semiotics, apparatus theory, (new) film history, media archaeology, the industry or sensory/cognitive experience. It deliberately includes contributions by scholars working in very dif- ferent ways on a wide range of technology-related issues; but it does so in the spirit of the series, The Key Debates, in which Technē/Technology marks the start of a second phase of unique transnational co-operation, centrally between the Neth- erlands, France and the UK. The series has already supported a number of stimu- lating symposia and workshops in all three countries, and produced three collec- tions: Ostrannenie (2010), Subjectivity (2011), and Audiences (2012). The series, like this particular book, owes much to Ian Christie, who never fails to generously add precision, critical insight and overview to a discussion, and to our loyal third series editor, Dominique Chateau, who, in one of our Paris meetings, was the first to stress that a book on technology was paramount in our series, not only because the topic is debated so often and so eagerly in our field of studies, but also because philosophies of technologies tend to reflect recent and past techno- logical transitions and in turn have transformed film theory and some of its key concepts. One of the real challenges of this project was to bring an international group of scholars together from a variety of countries, speaking different languages, and coming from different disciplines and academic traditions. The real plea- sure was to see all the different inputs come together, challenge and contradict each other, to form a coherent whole. The ongoing dialogues with all the authors from which the book grew were in themselves inspirational. Therefore I wish to express my sincere gratitude to both the contributors to this book as well as to the members of the Editorial Board and some other colleagues for their enthusiastic and unrelenting support and extremely generous intellectual contributions to our book series in every phase of its becoming, and to this book in particular. For their contributions to this book, I sincerely thank Geof- frey Winthrop-Young, Martin Lefebvre, Robert Sinnerbrink, Annemone Ligensa, Benoît Turquety, Patrick Crogan, Markus Stauff, Céline Scemama, Pasi Väliaho, Laurent Jullier, Nanna Verhoeff, Heidi Rae Cooley, Malte Hagener, Karel Dib- 11 bets, Francesco Pitassio, Ed Tan, Andreas Fickers, and André Gaudreault. Some of the Editorial Board members were already present at the very first meeting which helped to shape the series and they still help us to move ahead. I once again like to thank Laura Mulvey, Roger Odin, Francesco Casetti, Laurent Cre- ton, Jane Gaines, Frank Kessler, András Bálint Kovács, Eric de Kuyper, Patricia Pisters, Emile Poppe, Pere Salabert, Heide Schlüpmann and Vivian Sobchack. I also like to thank Janet