What is the French philosophy of cinema? An introduction

Abstract

This paper introduces the French philosophy of cinema, a recent movement wherein French philosophers, philosophers of art and of history have begun to direct their work specifically toward re-conceptualizing the relationship between cinema, the twentieth century and the modern condition. Focusing specifically on Gilles Deleuze, Jean Louis Schefer, Jacques Rancière and Jean-Luc Nancy, this introduction attempts to provide a sense of continuity between these writers according to three steps of intellectual history: (1) positing a dialectic relationship between Anglo-American cognitive theory and a more metaphysical approach in French thought; (2) situating the French philosophy of cinema at the end of a century in which French philosophy has been particularly concerned with image studies; (3) situating the French philosophers’ concerns for cinema also within a French cinéphilic tradition of thinking through the image, dating back to early arguments of ‘pure cinema’ made by avant-garde French filmmakers. Beyond this, I attempt to draw an outline of similar lines of arguments, methodology and discourse presented by these recent authors.