Film, Perception and Philosophy: Intersections?

<strong>Centre for Philosophy School of Social Sciences</strong> a Talk on <strong>Film, Perception and Philosophy: Intersections?</strong> By <strong>Prof. Kanchana Mahadevan</strong> Date: <strong>October 15, 2015</strong> <strong>Abstract</strong> : "…if philosophy is in harmony with the cinema, if thought and technical effort are heading in the same direction, it is because the philosopher and the moviemaker share a certain way of being, a certain view of the world which belongs to a generation." (Merleau-Ponty) The past three decades or so are marked by academic philosophy's systematic interest in film. The insights of Bergson, Benjamin and Merleau Ponty reveal that a philosophical engagement with film is as old as film. However, the interventions of Badiou, Carroll, Cavell, Deleuze and Žižek (among many others) have been more sustained. This paper endeavors to examine the affinities between film viewing practices and those of philosophy through the mode of perception peculiar to film. It begins by discussing how film is reflected in philosophy and philosophy in film to distinguish this domain from film studies. It moves on to consider the problem of perception with reference to film—does film offer a new way of perceiving the world that overcomes the standard dualisms, as phenomenologists claim? Or does this phenomenological account of film perception have a pre-existing subject that cannot engage with the specific ontology and corporeality of film, as Deleuze argues? In the light of this discussion, the conclusion ponders over the extent to which film and philosophy overlap: Are film-viewing practices and those of reading philosophy similar