Space, time, and bodies: the dimensions of difference in women's cinema and continental philosophy

Abstract

This dissertation examines the question of difference, and especially of sexual difference, in women’s cinema and continental philosophy. I analyze four movies by three of today’s most influential women filmmakers: Jane Campion (The Piano, New Zealand), Claire Denis (Beau Travail and Trouble Every Day, France), and Lucrecia Martel (La nina santa/The Holy Girl, Argentina), as well as philosophical texts by Luce Irigaray, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Friedrich Nietzsche. I argue that these films represent difference not only through characterization, but more essentially by emphasizing one of cinema’s core devices: space (e.g. camerawork), time (narration and editing), and bodies. Through these, the films articulate relations that go beyond hierarchies of power to portray and enact movements toward others who are acknowledged in their singularity. Each chapter is devoted to a film, and opens with a close reading of its aesthetics with a focus on space, time, or bodies. My study of the filmic elements is set in a dialogue with analyses of the corresponding concepts in the philosophical texts. In particular, I explore the relevance for cinema studies of the concept of the interval, which is a central, yet until recently often-overlooked notion in Irigaray’s work. The interval can be defined as the force of difference as it constitutes two subjects (as opposed to a subject and an object) through the distance that both separates and brings them together. It lends itself well to cinematic analysis for it concerns bodies, and it is at once spatial and temporal. The interval itself is brought to bear on other concepts: Bergson’s duration and intuition, Deleuze’s interstice, and Nietzsche’s theory of violence. Through these theoretical and filmic networks, this dissertation sketches out new perspectives for feminist film criticism.