ABSTRACT
In the conclusion of On the History of a Film Aesthetic Concept: Découpage, I reflect upon epistemological and methodological questions concerning the historiography of film culture. Historical semantics can benefit from integrating other approaches dedicated to the history of ideas, such as the approach of the Cambridge School (Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock) or the discourse archaeology of Michel Foucault. These approaches become particularly fruitful when turning to film cultures that do not have an equivalent term for découpage. In that case, instead of writing a conceptual history, it is more productive to analyze the variety of different concepts that refer to the practice of breaking a scene down into a series of shots.
