ABSTRACT
When Eisenstein began to theorize what was ‘cinematic’ about film, he developed the notion of montage, which remains a crucial element in any understanding of what is at stake in cinema apart from the narratives which films address to particular cultures at specific conjunctures. In Film Form (1929), Eisenstein related ‘conflict as the fundamental principle for the existence of every art-work and every art-form’ to the philosophy of dialectical materialism in Marx and Engels. He was then in a position to argue, specifically against Pudovkin, that the dialectical conflict which was at the root of montage was precisely what made film into a cinematic art, and an art in the service of the ineluctable and progressive dynamic of History. In a piece written in 1978, Défense populaire et luttes écologiques, Virilio indicated that Clausewitz saw war in similar dialectical terms, as a phenomenon which was steadily progressing towards the realization of its pure essence:
Au bout de l’inventaire des techniques, en se contentant de signaler que la guerre réelle se répand, qu’elle est un pbénomène en marche vers la realisation de son essence absolue, il montre qu’il y a bien dans l’Histoire la coherence d’une avance dialectique, celle qui d’abord s'établit entre attaque et defense, au travers de la succession des engagements militaires et de leur preparation par les grands Etats antagonistes, lancés a la poursuite de l’essence absolue de la guerre.1
