Introduction

Published in Cahiers du cinéma as the journal entered a politically radicalized phase following the events of May 1968, Jean-Louis Comolli’s series of articles “Technique and Ideology” has few equals as far as its “canonical” status within the academic discipline of film studies is concerned. There may thus be no small irony that a work that was produced under the auspices of what Comolli himself has dubbed a “new iconoclasm” –the journal found itself marginalized both politically and within the film world, was excoriated for being “unreadable,” and subjected all conventions and institutions it encountered to a bracing “ideological critique” –should be so seamlessly assimilated into the institutional behemoth of the contemporary university. But this irony is inherent to a field which itself only came to be established as such in the wake of the “Prague Spring of academia,” ¹ and which was founded precisely on the basis of the structuralist (and later post-structuralist) recasting of theoretical discourse that took place during this historical moment. A more specific matter that is of concern for film and media theorists in the present day, however, is the fact that – as will be explained in greater detail below – the English version of the text that has made its way into this canon is at a distinct remove from Comolli’s original work.