Politics seems bound up with questions of the ordinary and everyday as opposed to the extraordinary. This may be a Cavellian way of articulating the problem of political praxis, i.e., the point at which theory “becomes” action, but notice, at least in Cavell-speak, which way the trajectory flows. The Wittgensteinian charge to bring language bac…[Read more]

In this short essay on “La Loi du marché” (“The Measure of a Man”, 2015), I argue that the film builds an accurate representation of the economic and social relations in capitalism, aggravated by the neoliberal offensive.

Entry on Senagelese filmmaker and writer Ousmane Sembène.

Music videos, like many other art works, are the result of a creative process of image creation that sometimes does not start from scratch. At times this process relies on visual material previously produced that is reused and recombined. The use and combination of pre-existing film footage is an example of this, an appropriation with the purpose…[Read more]

Taking “Heroes” (2006-10), the popular drama series about a group of ordinary human beings with superhuman abilities, as a case study allows us to expand on these ideas. This chapter aims at contributing to a stylistic analysis of the series without attempting to examine every major stylistic feature of the series in detail. Instead, the scope of…[Read more]

The fourth issue of “Cinema” addresses the topic of philosophy of religion and its connections with cinematic art. Film and religion have been fruitful research topics taken in conjunction. Researchers in this specific field have focused on particular periods (like the censorship era in the USA), on representations of religious traditions and pra…[Read more]

The fourth issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, which explores Cavell’s philosophic interest in literature, an oft-repeated and rehashed thematic prism and vantage point from which to address Cavell’s work. However, it is our feeling that, at times anyhow, Cavell’s interest in Wittgenstein and film dwarfs slightly his liter…[Read more]

For the inaugural issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, we solicited papers discussing Stanley’s autobiographical writings. To mirror types of conversations, we asked for both short and long (though we received mostly the latter).

The idea of a sci-fi ghetto that “Battlestar Galactica” tried to escape from suggests a fruitful way of analysing the show. Genres, especially those that are popular simultaneously in television and film, are defined and definable through a repertoire of elements: characters, plot, setting, iconography, and style. Since the focus of this cha…[Read more]

If Guy Maddin were a scientist, he would be a mad scientist. Perhaps, then, he is a mad artist, effusively mixing images that appear to come from the silent era and sounds that seem to come from the first talkies. The metaphor is apt—and not just because of the weird, frenzied scientist father in “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). It is apt becau…[Read more]

This analysis of the HBO television series ‘Carnivàle’ focuses on its overarching style as well as on its abrupt ending after two seasons.

This essay focuses on moments that stress the significance of inhabitation (of living in a space and finding a place in it) and duration (of experiencing time and valuing it) in classical American sitcoms. “Sitcom” is short for situation comedy and it is usually defined as a type of series in which an established set of characters are involved in…[Read more]

The encounter in the 1960s and 70s between Marxism and film studies, as an institutionally recognised academic field, was a radically incomplete and perhaps even a rather superficial and unsatisfactory affair. The work of cross-fertilisation between Marxism and film and their critical sifting of concepts and perspectives had hardly begun when for…[Read more]

This talk presents work from Richard Elliott’s recent book about the late singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone. It focuses on Simone’s reaction to what she saw as the failure of the civil rights movement and how that reaction was played out in her work from the end of the 1960s onwards, blending into a personal but…[Read more]

Although most often remembered as an icon of the civil rights era, Nina Simone enjoyed (and occasionally endured) a long career during which the bulk of the songs she performed dealt with the politics, pains and precariousness of the self. Her work—always suffused with longing, sensuality and the passion of being—took on, in her later career, wha…[Read more]

Whether temporally or spatially focussed, nostalgia results from a division between what is longed for and the moment of longing. This article examines this “nostalgia gap” alongside the analogous gap found in representation. The relationship is highlighted via an analysis of “holiday records”, a genre of recordings that became prevalent in the…[Read more]

Taylor Swift’s songs invite listeners to connect art and life in the tradition, if not always the style, of the ‘confessional’ singer-songwriter. From an early age, Swift has written and sung about ‘big topics’ like time and experience with a remarkable sense of self awareness. Her songs hymn youthful experience to great effect through reference…[Read more]

On the face of it, the legacy of the 1798 rebellion in the northeastern Irish counties of Antrim and Down seems to be a paradigmatic case of “collective amnesia.” Over the course of the long nineteenth century, growing identification of the Protestants of the area with unionism, loyalism and Orangeism, fortified through opposition to the rise of…[Read more]

The popularity of social media, networks and the overall use of technology has rapidly expanded over the last decade. The use of these platforms scope from personal use to business use. As the use social media grows, more people are creating new data every day. By using these sites, users are surrendering their personal information. The government…[Read more]

The debate about how to govern personal data has intensified in recent years. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into effect in 2018, relies on transparency mechanisms codified through obligations for organizations and citizen rights. While some of these rights have existed for decades, their effectiveness is r…[Read more]