ABSTRACT
It is not easy to decide upon the exact limits of so-called Screen Theory. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Screen Theory has developed into a large discipline covering the theory of literature, philosophical aesthetics, art theory, film studies, the theory of architecture, and many more. As Annette Kuhn poignantly remarked:
We are now in less uncertain (and somewhat less exciting) times, and the idea of a unitary discipline grounded in an all-embracing screen theory no longer fits the case, if indeed it ever did. On the contrary – and perhaps in reaction to the excesses of the era of militant theory – screen studies seems increasingly to comprise a concatenation of subdisciplines in which a focus on the historical, the local and the specific flourishes and any ambitions to create a totalizing theory are eschewed. 2 To a considerable extent, this retreat from Grand Theory has entailed a wholesale distaste for the essential activity of conceptualization of theorizing. The gerund is used advisedly: the idea of theorizing suggests process, an activity that is open and continuing rather than closed off and static. Today we may more appropriately imagine not a hypostatized “Screen Theory,” but an open and interactive process of screen theorizing. 3
