ABSTRACT
Debates on the status of theory-especially in the humanities-over the last few decades were largely dominated by ecological and evolutionary metaphors of theory’s “life cycle.” Theory was presented as a natural, organic body-but one in “decline” or being kept artifi cially alive in the university, like a zombie (Boyd), or is an abject ghost (Cohen). Or the body called “theory” was simply dead and we are attending its wake (Bové). Theory’s demise was also expressed using mechanistic metaphors: theory had run out of steam (Latour) or, like a large and ineffi cient corporation, had been downsized (Stow), was in chaos (Kirby) or is on the scrap heap (Losee). We are therefore in an age of post-theory (Bordwell and Carroll), or after theory (Cunningham; Eagleton). David Rodowick has written an elegy for Film Theory-the most visible and privileged of all humanities theories. But Rodowick wants to liberate theory from the scientism of cognitive and
w ar
re n
bu ck
la nd
analytic approaches to fi lm, and renew the need for a philosophy of the humanities.1 Francesco Casetti entertains three reasons for fi lm theory’s apparent demise: “there is no more theory because there is no more cinema” (35); cinema “has never existed as such” (37); and “the third reason for the weakening of fi lm theory may be found in the weakening of the social need for ‘explanation’” (39)—that is, postmodernism has weakened theory by rejecting master narratives and rationality itself. The result, however, is not theory’s disappearance; instead, theory is (in Casetti’s words) merely in disguise, playing hide and seek.
