Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions

In Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place:


How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry?
How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena? And,
How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems?

He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts, and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination; it also teaches students how to write theory, by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments.

The book consists of nine chapters that closely examine a series of canonical film books and essays in great detail, by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, Thomas Elsaesser, Stephen Heath, and Slavoj Žižek, among others.

Warren Buckland is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is a prolific author with several books to his name. He is also the editor of the quarterly journal the New Review of Film and Television Studies (Routledge).

Introduction 1: An Improbable Alliance 2: Visual Stylometry 3: Between Shakespeare and Sirk 4: From Iconicity to Semiotic Articulation 5: Film as a Specific Signifying Practice 6: Against Theories of Reflection 7: Early Cinema Spectatorship 8: Another Lacan 9: The Death of the Camera Conclusion: Teaching Theory