Of Bodies, Changed to Different Bodies, Changed to Other Forms

Abstract

This Afterword performs a close reading of the contributions of the special issue on ‘Cinematic Bodies’ in relation to their shared rethinking of a co-implicated relationship of embodiment to the cinematic, focusing on interpretive and methodological similarities and differences between the pieces. From a reading of Spinoza and Deleuze on the equivalent questions of what a body is and what a body can do, the Afterword considers how each of the contributions ultimately poses the problem of aesthetic form—issues of scale, texture, framing, montage—as essential to their rethinking of what cinematic bodies are and might be and also what they can do. A simultaneous exploration notes the legacy of phenomenologies of spectatorship in the contributions, ultimately concluding that, amidst its reconsideration of its two titular terms, the special issue is also participating in debates about methods of reading and the speculative promise of different interpretive approaches to film.