The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience

353 Pages·1991·11.1 MB·English

by  Vivian Sobchack

The Address of the Eye
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF
FILM EXPERIENCE
Vivian Sobchack
P R I N C E T ON U N I V E R S I TY P R E SS
P R I N C E T O N, N EW J E R S EY
Copyright © 1992 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
Sobchack, Vivian Carol.
The address of the eye : a phenomenology of
film experience / Vivian Sobchack.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-03195-9 : $35.00
1. Motion pictures—Philosophy. I. Title.
PN 1995. S54 1992
791.43'01—dc20 91-21402 CIP
This book has been composed in Linotron Palatino
Princeton University Press books are
printed on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Committee
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of the Council on Library Resources
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 10
(Pbk.)
TO RICHARD L. LANIGAN
FOR TEACHING ME WHAT I ALWAYS
ALREADY KNEW

As soon as we see other seers . . . henceforth,
through other eyes we are for ourselves fully visi­
ble. . . . For the first time, the seeing that I am is for
me really visible; for the first time I appear to myself
completely turned inside out under my own eyes.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
The Visible and the Invisible
A being which is not the object of another being . . .
presupposes that no objective being exists. ... To be
sensuous, i.e., to be real, is to be an object of sense,
a sensuous object, and thus to have sensuous objects
outside oneself, objects of one's sense perceptions.
KARL MARX
Early Writings

Contents
List of Figures xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
CHAPTER ONE
Phenomenology and the Film Experience 3
The Embodied and Enworlded Eye: Perception and Expression 8
Film Theory and the Objectification of Embodied Vision 14
Phenomenology and Film Theory 26
CHAPTER TWO
The Act of Being with One's Own Eyes 51
Intentionality, Embodiment, and Movement 57
The Viewing Subject 97
Film and/as Viewing Subject 128
Whose Body? A Brief Meditation on Sexual Difference and Other
Bodily Discriminations 143
CHAPTER THREE
Film's Body 164
Technology and Instrumentality 169
The Film Embodied 203
Film's Body: A Brief Intentional History 248
CHAPTER FOUR
The Address of the Eye 260
Thesis and Antithesis: The Paranoia of Split Vision 262
Synthesis: The Dialectics of Double Vision 270
The Eye's Address 285
Toward the "Incorporation" of Subjective Experience in
Film Theory 290
Becoming and Concluding: The End Is In-Sight 300
Selected Bibliography 311
Index 323
IX