Ex-centric Cinema: Giorgio Agamben and Film Archaeology

272 Pages·2016·2.46 MB·English

by  Janet Harbord

Ex-centric Cinema
Thinking Cinema
Series Editors
David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow, UK
Sarah Cooper, King’s College, University of London, UK
Volume 10
Ex-centric Cinema
Giorgio Agamben and Film Archaeology
Janet Harbord
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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First published 2016
© Janet Harbord, 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harbord, Janet, author.
Title: Ex-centric cinema : Giorgio Agamben and film archaeology / Janet Harbord.
Other titles: Excentric cinema
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury
Publishing, Inc., 2016. | Series: Thinking cinema |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009710 (print) | LCCN 2016021676 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781628922424 (hardback) | ISBN 9781628922417 (pb) |
ISBN 9781628922387 (epdf) | ISBN 9781628922400 (epub) |
ISBN 9781628922387 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781628922400 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Moral and ethical aspects. | Agamben,
Giorgio, 1942–Criticism and interpretation. | Motion pictures–Philosophy. |
Motion pictures–Aesthetics. | BISAC: PERFORMING ARTS /
Film & Video / History & Criticism. | PHILOSOPHY / General.
Classification: LCC PN1995.5 .H365 2016 (print) |
LCC PN1995.5 (ebook) | DDC 791.4301–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009710
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2242-4
PB: 978-1-6289-2241-7
ePDF: 978-1-6289-2238-7
ePub: 978-1-6289-2240-0
Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
For Tara

Contents
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Girls and Other Incomplete Things: On Archaeological Method 21
Archaeology at the end of the world 21
Incomplete film 27
A fragment of a ruin 30
‘The Six Most Beautiful Minutes in the History of Cinema’ 32
Philosophical archaeology 35
Typographic man 41
The incomplete girl 44
On the (im)possibility of (in)completion 45
The incomplete girl (ii) 48
Notes 52
2 Gesture: Cinema Muto Mutato 57
Testing 57
Test results: Inner life 58
Running man 60
Engram: Encryptions and transmissions 67
Cinema gives itself up to psychology 71
Seeing inside: Cinematic X-ray machines 77
Biopolitics versus the donkey that craps gold coins 80
Gesture as potentiality 84
Transmitting cinema 88
Notes 94
3 Dim Stockings and Pornography: Community, Spectacle
and the Example 101
What is disappearing? 101
Community to come 103
Barely discernable: Dim Stockings 106
viii Contents
The spectacle and the mass ornament 109
Pornography 113
Making an example of Chloë des Lysses 118
The example of Soad Hosny 122
Notes 126
4 Cinema as Laboratory: On Insects and the Anthropological
Machine 131
Flight 131
Types of machine I: The lottery machine 133
Interval 135
Mon Maître Marey 137
Mon Maître La Grosse Mouche Bleue 138
Types of machine II: The animal machine 139
Insect temporality 141
Divine insects 143
Air 145
Accident 147
Carriers of significance 148
Stones 150
Muteness 152
Incubators 155
Teleporting the interval 157
Types of machine III: The anthropological machine 158
Animal. Mineral. 160
Worlds 163
The concealedness of cinema 164
Notes 165
5 When the Assistants Profane Cinema 169
Do it yourself: Instruction or description? 169
Lively matter 171
Assistants assisting 174
Amateur practices: Birt Acres makes
the Birtac in conditions of dissent 180
Parody: A literary digression 186
St Anthony patron of lost things 190
Contents ix
Play and profanation 194
When this becomes that 196
Notes 200
6 Ex-centric Cinema 205
Towards X 205
Assembling the cinematic machine: Three scenes from
the separation of life 206
Selective exclusions 211
The machine at work: Producing centric cinema 214
A nameless science 217
Ex-centric cinema as transmission 219
Ex-centric cinema as aggregate 222
Ex-centric cinema as impotentiality 225
Are films dead letters? 229
Playout 231
Notes 232
Bibliography 235
Index 245