An exercise for a course on deconstructive criticism, with Jacques deconstructing himself and acknowledging that he partakes of Jean-Jacques’s logocentrism.

This note criticises some equivocations and ambivalent notions in the writings of Derrida, especially ‘Limited Inc’ and ‘De la grammatologie’, as regards the notions of norm, intention, system, center, consciousness, writing, speech act and literal meaning. Derrida is shown to both have his cake and eat it, using his own text as a paradoxical…[Read more]

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]

The article offers an overview of book-length scholarly studies in the life and work of E.M. Forster published after the year 2000. Approximately 50 books have been considered, they are mostly books of which Forster, his life, and works are the primary subjects. The books are briefly presented and commented upon. They have been divided here into…[Read more]

Special E.M. Forster Issue of the Polish Journal of English Studies 3.2 / 2017

This is a brief note criticising some anti-foundationalist and anti-essentialist semiotic assumptions in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, from the standpoint of a classical structuralist perspective which (following Saussure) sees the play of differences as crucially constitutive of a system of positive terms.

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]

This paper is a reading of André Bazin’s article “Cinema and Theology”, an appraisal of “Cielo sulla palude” (“Heaven Over the Marshes”, 1949) that also reflects on the relation between film and theology. The reading takes into account Bazin’s ontology of cinema, which has been at times simplistically described as a belief in the simple transpare…[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]