Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind

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In Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind, some of the scholars who have become essential for our understanding of Stanley Cavell’s writing on film gather to use his landmark contributions to help us read new films-from Hollywood and elsewhere-that exist beyond his immediate reach and reading. In extending the scope of Cavell’s film philosophy, we naturally find ourselves contending with it and amending it, as the case may be. Through a series of interpretive vignettes, the group effort situates, for the expert and novitiate alike, how Cavell’s writing on film can profitably enrich one’s experience of cinema generally and also inform how we might continue the practice of serious philosophical criticism of specific films mindful of his sensibility. The resulting conversations between texts, traditions, disciplines, genres, and generations creates propitious conditions for discovering what it means to watch and listen to movies with Stanley Cavell in mind. DAVID LAROCCA is the author, editor, or coeditor of a dozen books. He edited The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema, a commemorative issue of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, Inheriting Stanley Cavell, and Stanley Cavell’s Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes. He has taught philosophy and cinema and held visiting research and teaching positions at Binghamton, Cornell, Cortland, Harvard, Ithaca College, the School of Visual Arts, and Vanderbilt. www.DavidLaRocca.org

ForewordThe Importance of Stanley Cavell for the Study of Film
Sandra LaugierIntroduction The Seriousness of Film Sustained
David LaRocca I. The Companionship of Film and Philosophy1. Love and Class in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven AllowsRobert B. Pippin 2. Lévinas, Cavell, and the Films of the Dardenne Brothers
William Rothman 3. The Specter of the Electronic Screen: Bruno Varela’s Reception of Cavell
Byron Davies II. Recollecting and Remembering 4. The Pertinence of the Stars: Achieving Mortality in Little Did I Know and Only Angels Have WingsSteven G. Affeldt 5. In Praise of Cinema: Cavell, Arnaud Desplechin, and Telling What Counts in Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesseJoseph Mai III. Rethinking Remarriage 6. Morality and Recognition: A Cavellian Reading of Elaine May’s A New LeafPaul Schofield 7. Remarriage Comedy, the Next Generation: The Bold Pursuit of Happiness
K. L. EvansIV. The Female Voice Heard Anew 8. Passionate Utterances: Cavell, Film, and the Female Voice
Catherine Wheatley9. Cavell, Altman, Cassavetes: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman in A Woman Under the Influence and NashvilleCharles Warren V. Contending with Conditions, Human and Otherwise10. Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Cavell: Cinematic Syntax, Avoidance, and Acknowledgment
David Mikics 11. The Use and Abuse of Documentary Confessionals: Cavell, Žižek, and the Possibility of Justice in The Unknown Known and The Act of KillingAmir Khan 12. Pursuits of Happiness in the Time of War: On Borhane Alaouié’s Beirut: The EncounterDaniele Rugo VI. Visibility, Audibility, and Intelligibility 13. Chantal Akerman and Stanley Cavell: Viewing in La Captive and Reviewing in Moral Perfectionism
Kate Rennebohm 14. Contemplating the Sounds of Contemplative Cinema: Stanley Cavell and Kelly Reichardt
David LaRoccaAcknowledgments
Contributors
Index

“This volume pushes Cavellian scholarship forward, showing that the value of Cavell’s work lies not simply in understanding it but in applying it. By extending the philosopher’s methods to an exciting range of international and contemporary films, the chapters compose a timely consideration on what it is to read a film, and to read a film generously.” —Kyle Stevens, Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Appalachian State University, USA“Stanley Cavell is, to my mind, the best thinker for helping us account for the power of the film experience, and the fourteen chapters collected here provide ample reason for understanding the importance of Cavell for the study of film. All of the contributors to this wonderful, collective enterprise-brought together by David LaRocca-have in a similar way encountered him and his work. Whether they are revisiting films Cavell loved or taking up the invitation to explore new films, they reveal the importance of Cavell’s writing and method.” —Sandra Laugier, Professor of Philosophy, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

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