Brian Price

Labor thought theory: on Frampton and Beller

In this paper the author considers the return of ‘Grand Theory’ in light of two recent books, Daniel Framptons Filmosophy (2006) and Jonathan Bellers The Cinematic Mode of Production (2006). Both books disregard the chastening imperatives of recent film theory and the now decades‐long retreat into historicism – a return predicated on calls to modesty and piecemeal research. In its place, Beller and Frampton return, in each their own ways, to consider the possibility of cinema as a form of thinking and labor. Where Frampton idealizes cinema as a thinking machine, Beller views cinema as an extension of capital, looking as a form of labor. Seen together, these books raise serious questions, once again, about cinema and the autonomy of art.

The steady unsteadiness of theory: on D.N. Rodowick's Elegy for Theory

The following is a review of D.N. Rodowicks Elegy for Theory, one that attempts to understand Rodowicks genealogical approach to the significantly varied relations that have pertained between philosophy, theory, and science since the eighteenth century with respect to the critique of rational first principles that one finds in the work of philosophers like Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell. Following a close reading of Elegy for Theory, which is performed as an explication of its method, I turn to a discussion of the potential relevance of Rodowicks discussion for the larger institutional and disciplinary questions about the increasingly vexed relation of film theory and film philosophy in the discipline of film studies.

The end of transcendence, the mourning of crime: Bresson's hands

Abstract This article examines hand imagery in the films of Robert Bresson. Specifically, it is argued that close-ups of the hand in Bressons films serve, amongst other things, an intertextual function. By looking at the hand in close-up, we are able to see a movement from the celebration of crime as an act of social liberation to the failure of this criminal, and anti-social dexterity. This failure, it is argued, is an indication of the emergence of a repressive social formation rather than the submission to the will of God, as has been so often supposed. In this sense, this essay stands as revision of the transcendental tradition of Bresson criticism, which has often understood his work as preoccupied with questions of grace and predestination. By contrast, this essay is an attempt to understand Bresson as a social critic.

A Theory of Regret

In A Theory of Regret Brian Price contends that regret is better understood as an important political emotion than as a form of weakness. Price shows how regret allows us to see that our convictions are more often the products of our perceptual habits than the authentic signs of moral courage that we more regularly take them to be. Regret teaches us to give up our expectations of what we think should or might occur in the future, and also the idea that what we think we should do will always be the right thing to do. Understood instead as a mode of thoughtfulness, regret helps us to clarify our will in relation to the decisions we make within institutional forms of existence. Considering regret in relation to emancipatory theories of thinking, Price shows how the unconditionally transformative nature of this emotion helps us become more sensitive to contingency and allows us, in turn, to recognize the steps we can take toward changing the institutions that shape our lives.