Cinema as Thought Experiment: On Movement and Movements

Abstract

This paper is the first part of a two-part attempt to distinguish that repetition that founds a behaviorist notion of habit from another, obscure mechanism of repetition. The argument moves from the discussion of an eleventh-century thought experiment, devised by the Muslim mystic Avicenna, to the piety movement that has in recent decades implanted itself in global capitals of Muslim nations. This improbable trajectory finds its compass in Abbas Kiarostami’s feminist film, Ten.