gaines - what happened to the philosophy of film history (2013)

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Film History Volume 25 Issue 1ndash2 pp 70ndash80 2013 Copyright copy 2013 rustees of Indiana University

JANE M GAINES

What Happened to the Philosophy of Film History

ABSTRACT ldquoWhat Happened to the Philosophy of Film Historyrdquo is a trick-question

title Te article reviews the special issues dedicated to the question of historical narrative

historical methodologies and the nature of history over past decades including theFilm

History issue edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai on ldquoTe Philosophy of Film Historyrdquo I wonder

if we are at the stage where we can begin to look at the implications of the ldquohistorical

turnrdquo for the field

KEYWORDS film theory philosophy philosophy of film history silent cinema cinema

of attractions cinema kine-attractography historical turn

Te point of asking ldquoWhat happened to the philosophy of film historyrdquo is to get

Film History readers to scratch their heads Some may ask themselves if they

missed something was there a short-lived philosophy of film history Others

will rack their brains and conclude that this is a trick question Still others may

think (to themselves) that it is about time we took up this topic while won-

dering if this is exactly the right terminology Regular readers of Film History

however will recall the journalrsquos eclectic 1994 special issue ldquoTe Philosophy of

Film Historyrdquo983089 Tere in the introduction editor Paolo Cherchi Usai says that

he found among his contributors neither methodological agreement nor defi-nitional consistency Ten to support his point that the definition of history

is always shifting and itself historically shaped he cites the 1900 edition of the

Encyclopedia Britannica ldquoTe word [history ] is used in two senses It may

mean either the record of events or events themselves It is unfortunate that

such a double meaning of the word should have grown up for it is productive of

not a little confusion of thoughtrdquo983090 But ldquounfortunaterdquo is the encyclopediarsquos term

not ours and here I take Cherchi Usairsquos citation as further evidence of some-

thing elsemdashnot as support for variance in approach but as confirmation of thedouble meaning of the term as found in both English and Frenchmdashhistoryhis-

toire For there is something here that the literal-minded encyclopedia cannot



71

JA NE M GAINES | WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF FILM HISTORY

grasp What an encyclopedia surely cannot fathom is the political function of

the ambiguous usage as I will show

Te ambiguity of historyhistoire is also one of the starting points of what

is sometimes called the new philosophy of history and both Jacques Ranciegravereand Hayden White have begun books on the subject with this observation as a way of signaling the difficulties ahead983091 At least one scholar however has madetheoretical use of the ambiguity Where some see double meaning anthropologistMichel-Rolf rouillot sees a pairmdashldquowhat happenedrdquo and ldquothat which is said tohave happenedrdquo983092 And rouillot differs from others in another key way Where he

wants to see an ldquooverlaprdquo between historical events and the narrative of themmany theorists of history see a gap983093 For rouillot the overlap is a political neces-sitymdasha counter to the way that history effected the European political denial of

the successful slave revolt that was the 1791ndash1804 Haitian Revolution For us itis not so different although a little trickier because wersquore dealing with intellectualevents983094 Te question as to whether there once was never was always has beenor can be a philosophy of film history depends on what we now want to see ashaving happened or not having happened in our field Perhaps the argument willsucceed if we see an overlap between rouillotrsquos historicity of that which is saidto have happened and his historicity of what happened rather than saying that

we now need a philosophy of film history983095

So first where have we before seen interest in such questions in the fielden years before the Film History issue Iris put out ldquoPour un theacuteorie de lrsquohistoiredu cinemaTeory of Cinema Historyrdquo dedicated to Michel Foucault in DavidRodowickrsquos introduction Te issue contains Dana Polanrsquos productive review ofHayden Whitersquos Metahistory as well as Rick Altmanrsquos early work on representa-tional technologies and Pierre Sorlinrsquos discussion of the way the concerns of thetheorist and the historian diverge983096 Giuliana Brunorsquos contribution on historicalnarrativization references the ldquophilologicalrdquo phenomenon that renders history

histoire ambiguous983097In 2004 twenty years after the Iris issue Sumiko Higashi edited a recon-sideration of the ldquohistorical turnrdquo for Cinema Journal in which Charles Musser

wonders if we should continue to do ldquomedia-specificrdquo histories (ie film history) Janet Staiger concurs and Don Crafton argues that ldquoeveryone must acknowledgethat there is no boundary between history and theoryrdquo983089983088 And yet the specialissue has been interpreted as somewhat defensive about ldquothe historical turnrdquo983089983089I would argue that the articles by no means plant the authors on one side or theother of the imaginary divide between history and theory that Annette Kuhnand Jackie Stacey have seen as a ldquofalserdquo division if nevertheless part of the ldquoin-tellectual historyrdquo of the discipline983089983090 Robert Sklar the very scholar who over adecade earlier criticized the field for mistaking Althusserrsquos concept of history for



72

FILM HISORY | VOLUME 25 19912512

the established discipline wonders here if film history didnrsquot need a crisis andsuggests that what is needed is the kind of ldquoreorientationrdquo that a ldquometahistorical

perspectiverdquo could provide983089983091

Metahistorical Yes this is the approach associated with Hayden White whose academic following is strategically outside the traditional discipline of his-tory where his work still meets resistance983089983092 Although Whitersquos ldquometahistoryrdquo maynot be exactly what Sklar meant there is more than one way of achieving distanceon what the historian does and besides those in this camp do not always agreeon what to call the ldquometardquo approach either For some it is ldquopostmodern historyrdquofor others ldquotheory of historyrdquo and even ldquohistory-as-critiquerdquo983089983093 Still others useldquophilosophy of historyrdquo while distancing themselves from the earlier Hegeliantradition For film studies scholars reading this work is both strange and familiar

strange because we may not be able to identify the traditionalists attacked famil-iar because we share an intellectual legacy Since the ldquocritique of realismrdquo is heirto the ldquocrisis of historicismrdquo that 1970s film theory kept alive it could be arguedthat we have been inoculated against the belief in objectivity and thus for us thecontemporary philosophy of history only preaches to the converted Vivian Sob-chack appears to think that we are the converted when she argues that Whitersquosmost important point is already ldquocommon knowledgerdquo983089983094 Tat is we already knowthat the work of narrative history is a literary construction And yet are there

not ways in which the ldquonew film historyrdquo adheres to the traditional discipline983089983095But wait you may say work after the ldquohistorical turnrdquo may take narrative formand still be theoretically informed If this is the case then is the new film historycloser to Whitersquos ldquometahistoryrdquo or no different from the historianrsquos disciplinarymainstream described by Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow as ldquoempiricism plusconceptsrdquo983089983096 Ten again the question may be moot if all narrative histories areseen as ldquometahistoriesrdquo983089983097

If Sobchack is right and we know this critique then we do not need to be

cautioned against the correspondence theory of truth or reminded that there isno way around ldquofictioningrdquo accounts of past events whose existence we do nottake to be ldquofictitiousrdquo Tinking about film form has given us a leg up affordingextra insight into the uses of historical narrative written or technologically en-coded Elizabeth Cowie for example can easily make the point that the critiqueof narrative we apply to documentary film and video theory applies as well tohistorical writing where assuming that ldquoafterrdquo is the consequence of ldquobeforerdquoeffectively ldquodispel[s]rdquo the discontinuity of events983090983088 Neither do we need to be

reminded that following Roland Barthes a historical statement of fact has onlya linguistic existence983090983089 We have refused ldquothe history of cinemardquo as a master nar-rative and continued to challenge the enshrinement of a single ldquobirthrdquo date983090983090 Butletrsquos do a test Let us say that we read the following ldquoTe cinema of attractions was



73


dominant between 1895 and 190607rdquo Do we or do we not mean this linguisticstatement as somehow corresponding to spectatorial events that took place inthis time period983090983091 Yet how can we take such a statement as approximating a

historical phenomenon knowing what we know of the difficulties of empirical re-search For while titles attributed to Georges Meacuteliegraves for instance may be empiri-cally located their original spectators cannot be While we agree that the ldquocinemaof attractionsrdquo is a conception do we agree that the term itself beginning around1985 ldquoconceptualizedrdquo the phenomenon into being Tat is a contemporary

term brought a historical phenomenon into relief if not into existenceQuestioning factual statements birth dates narrative acts and empirical

methodologies however gives little indication of the scope of the new philosophy of history Yet apropos of ldquowhat happenedrdquo we can raise at least one basic

philosophy of history question We can begin by asking whether the past existsonly ldquobefore nowrdquo or whether it also persists into the present983090983092 Ten to take upthe epistemological companion issue one could ask can we know the past as it was Hayden White has maintained that traditional historians are not concerned

with these questions but rather start with the assumption that there is such athing as a knowable historical past and proceed from there Further he arguesthat it is not exactly the occurrence of entities in the past their proven ldquopastnessrdquothat makes them historical Rather it is our own discourse that makes them

historical983090983093 Here the contemporary philosophy of history tugs hard at the rugunder the empirical research project Keith Jenkins who has taken White at his

word even argues that we do not need histories not even those linked to radical politics983090983094 As Jenkins would say ldquothe past and history float free of each other theyare ages and miles apartrdquo and since the past has no form (narrative or otherwise)other than that given to it by historians our only access to the ldquobefore nowrdquo isthrough historical writing983090983095 First the historian (through research and writing)constitutes what happened in the historical past using theoretical approaches

then once that constituted object of study is established it becomes historyldquoHistoryrdquo the object of study is effectively ldquobrought backrdquo into a form of ldquoimaginedre-existencerdquo so that scholars can work on that history using the same theoriesthat brought it into its newly confirmed existence983090983096 Tis is the existence that thehistorical phenomenon no longer has (as it was) and cannot now have (again)except by means of our reimagination of it Tus the only existence history cannow have is textual ldquoOnly texts matter historicallyrdquo says Jenkins which wouldmean that they now count more than ldquowhat actually happenedrdquo983090983097 Tis would bean idea of history kept alive by our written publications and bibliographic refer-ences to one another or rouillotrsquos historicity of what is said to have happened

with no necessary overlap with the historicity of what happened Following Jen-kins then what we call the ldquocinema of attractionsrdquo from the early part of the last



74


century would have no existence other than that given to it by scholars who nowresearch and write about the phenomenon Following this reasoning the movingldquoattractionsrdquo to which we refer in the realm of what we name ldquofilm historyrdquo could

not exactly be found in the extant ldquofilms themselvesrdquo without historiansrsquo havingimagined films and their historical spectators in this way But do we admit to agap or argue for overlap

Tinking about the gap between ldquowhat happenedrdquo and ldquowhat was saidto have happenedrdquo we are reminded of early moving pictures that purportedto reveal what happened to tell all by showing allmdashalthough without really

showing much after all983091983088 Consider here the comedy subgenre of the early periodthat foregrounds the assumption of ldquoshowallabilityrdquo the ldquoWhat Happenedrdquo jokeof which there were so many to name only a few What Happened When a Hot

Picture Was aken (American Mutoscope amp Biograph Co 1898) What Happened

to a Fresh Johnnie (American Mutoscope amp Biograph Co 1900) What Happened

on wenty-Tird Street New York City (camera Edwin S Porter Edison Mfg Co1901) What Happened to the Inquisitive Janitor (Patheacute Fregraveres 1902) What Hap-

pened to the Milkman (Lubin Co 1903) and What Happened to a Camera Fiend (Paley and Steiner 1904)

One of the great successes of early cinema history writers has been inconvincing their readers that significant evidence exists of what happened in

the first decade of moving image entertainment Tus even while we may beskeptical of narrativized history there are ways it slips in the back door becauseof the way in which we make claims Tink in this regard of the classic What

Happened in the unnel (1903) One wonders how different the new film historyapproach is from this short filmrsquos attempt to convince viewers that although theyare not shown and that they therefore did not see what happened in the tunnelsomething actually did happen Although the viewer never sees what happenedthe events narrated establish the interracial kiss as having actually happened

( fig 1) Knowing what we know about illusionism we are well aware of what thehistorical film writer can do with evidence to create for readers the impressionthat we too can know what happened in the historical past

Te historical ldquoWhat Happenedrdquo film subgenre illustrates evidentiary

power in two tenses It both references past events (or the ldquowhat already happenedrdquo in its title) and shows in its present ldquowhat happenedrdquo as it is happening again But here I neglect the difference between written and image-based expres-sion Where the ldquoWhat Happenedrdquo film offers visually verifiable evidence of whathappened (even when it makes a joke by withholding the what) the historianrsquosempirically based writing on early moving image devices does not Does that writ-ing however make reference to past film objects and spectatorial events Yes Isthe written description of events the events themselves Of course not although



75


Fig 1 What Happened in the Tunnel Camera Edwin S Porter Edison Mfg Co 1903

isnrsquot it accepted practice for writers to try to achieve and readers to assume atleast some correspondence

Te other lesson we can take from What Happened in the unnel is in howthe famous black screen works I would argue that the film title is coyly mislead-ing because although it announces that it will show the viewer what happenedin the tunnel the viewer must surmise what happened since what happened

is never shown Te blackness-in-the-tunnel momentmdashlike the gap betweenthe historicity of what happened and the historicity of what was said to havehappenedmdashgives us direct evidence of nothing at all We must infer the missingevent from given or available evidence of events before and after Still the vast past is much more than the sum of the missing or found pieces of it Te great gapbetween the two historicities also means that historical excision and eclipse is thenorm More precisely nonexistence as black as a tunnel is the norm Considertoo in this regard the ascendant and descendent stories of technological devel-opment in and around the cinema century While the sound-on-film narrative

was ascendant the earlier Gaumont Chronophone sound-on-disc did not exist just as the actualitieacute did not exist as a consequence of the first historiansrsquo focuson the fiction film983091983089 Or to give another example my own research shows that



76


although legally dubious print duplication later called ldquopiracyrdquo was widely prac-ticed in the first decade the practice was not referenced in the earliest examplesof the historicity of what was said to have happened983091983090 Since historians never

wrote about its having happened it effectively didnrsquot What if we were to ask this same question about the earlier nonexistence(in the historicity of what was said to have happened) of the ldquocinema of attrac-tionsrdquo Where was that phenomenon before 1985 the year in which scholars

began to formulate the new concept of early exhibition events983091983091 And since theldquocinema of attractionsrdquo evolved from the question of its spectator where now arethose viewers from the first decade om Gunning has recently reiterated thatthe ldquocinema of attractionsrdquo is after all a ldquoconceptrdquo ldquoAttractionsrdquo as he explainsldquocaptured the potential energy of cinemarsquos address to the spectatorrdquo Te concept

may have been inspired by the gag in the chase film and yes derived from termsfound in key Eisenstein essays published in the 1920s but most importantly it isa ldquotool for critical analysisrdquo983091983092

Andreacute Gaudreault now picks up the reconsideration from another anglemdashhow to line up the ldquocinemardquo in ldquocinema of attractionsrdquo if the historical momentof ldquoattractionsrdquo came some years before the appearance of the institution namedldquocinemardquo983091983093 Yet in his inquiry he gives us something else to contemplate Hefinds in the 1925 Histoire du cineacutematographe reference to the statement that

around 1907ndash8 the Paris boulevards were the main place to find ldquocineacutematog-raphie-attractionrdquo ranslating ldquocineacutematographie-attractionrdquo into English as

ldquokine-attractographyrdquo Gaudreault has a solution to his problem of anachronismHe now argues that thirty years before Eisenstein the term attractions had ldquobeenon everyonersquos lipsrdquo in Paris But here is my issue Gaudreaultrsquos readers may comeaway from this discussion impressed by this discovery perhaps thinking thatthe author has confirmed a phenomenon when what he has actually done isgiven us something ontologically different (although no less astounding) He has

excavated a provocative term As he says ldquokine-attractographyrdquo is an expressionthat is capable of ldquoproblematizingrdquo the ldquoobject of studyrdquo since it ldquocorrespondsto the ideardquo that we have come to have of the years in question983091983094 But the issueshe has raised do not go away Later in dialogue with editors of the journal 1895 Gaudreault responds to a question that echoes my concerns Asking about boththe term kine-attractography and the historical phenomenon it references theeditors want to know about the ldquobreakrdquo between ldquokine-attractographyrdquo and cin-emarsquos institutional phases Yes Gaudreault replies one might object that in theldquoempirical and lsquohistoricalrsquo worldrdquo there is ldquono clean breakrdquo between phases Hegoes on but to our surprise says ldquothis is true but the break I argue belongs tothe world of historical understanding and not to the world of historical phenom-ena themselvesrdquo983091983095 Te ldquoworld of historical understandingrdquo Tis would give us



77


two worlds one of which imagines the othermdashworlds perhaps overlapping but perhaps not

Now to return to the point from which I began with the question of what

happened to the philosophy of film history We might conclude that in the UnitedStates there has been sporadic interest since the special issues cited appeared in1984 1994 and 2004 respectively My skepticism should not imply that in takingthe ldquohistorical turnrdquo we took the wrong turn but rather that we didnrsquot ask enoughquestions about where we were going Tomas Elsaesser has intimated that theidea of history on which we have relied needs revision offering such a project asa strategy for questioning the ldquodeath of cinemardquo prognosis with the companiondoomsdayism of its devolution into ldquothe digitalrdquo983091983096 I would add that our ability to produce paradigms powerful enough to conceptualize the technological present

and future depends on the concept of history we deploy ranslate this into thedegree to which we understand that we make the ldquoworld of historical under-standingrdquo and therefore our world of early ldquoattractionsrdquo and we have empoweredourselves as theorists and historical archaeologists

If we follow Gaudreaultrsquos lead and welcome the ldquohistorical-theoreticalrdquoapproach that early cinema has opened up are we then ldquocontinuingrdquo or ldquoreturn-ingrdquo to a ldquophilosophy of film historyrdquo or doing something else983091983097 In some respectsldquowhat happened to the philosophy of film historyrdquo is a trick question It is neither

that such a philosophy was nor that it has continued to be although we couldcertainly try to argue this if we wanted Here then is the trick By providing thehistorical evidence of what happened in 1984 1994 and 2004 to support a casethat we need more theory or a ldquophilosophyrdquo of what we do I call upon the au-thority of history (as we are wont to do) Ten I suggest that we think criticallyabout all appeals to history even our own appeal to what we think of as ldquoourhistoryrdquo because to insist on ldquowhat happened beforerdquo may be to always risk slip-

ping into the historicism of the Leopold von Ranke school that Walter Benjamin

once railed against In conversation with Ernst Bloch on the Arcades ProjectBenjamin says of his historical excavation that it is ldquocomparable in method tothe process of splitting the atomrdquo It effectively ldquoliberates the enormous energiesof history that are bound up in the lsquoonce upon a timersquo of classical historiographyTe history that showed things lsquoas they really werersquo was the strongest narcotic ofthe centuryrdquo983092983088 Tis is then not to argue that there ldquowasrdquo or ldquohas beenrdquo a philos-ophy of film history that may have gone by another name in an attempt to justifytheoretical approaches Nor is it to urge that we abandon historical research Itis only to illustrate the kinds of philosophical dilemmas that arise when we try torepresent ldquowhat happenedrdquo and even when we do nothing more than ask ldquoWhathappened to itrdquo



78


Notes

Tanks to Charles Musser Andreacute Gaudreault and Vivian Sobchack for early responses to

this essay

1 Standouts in Film History 6 no 1 (1994) are Heide Schluumlpmann ldquoRe-reading Nietzschethrough Kracauer owards a Feminist Perspective on Film Historyrdquo 80ndash93 Eric de

Kuyper ldquoAnyone for an Aesthetic of Film Historyrdquo 100ndash109 on unidentified archival

fragments and David Bordwell ldquoTe Power of a Research radition Prospects for

Progress in the Study of Film Stylerdquo 59ndash79 which includes an incisive critique of the

tradition established by Maurice Bardegraveche and Robert Brasillach Histoire du cinema

(Paris Denoeumll and Steele 1935)

2 As cited in Paolo Cherchi Usai ldquoTe Philosophy of Film Historyrdquo Film History 6 no 1 (1994) 3

3 Jacques Ranciegravere Te Names of History On the Poetics of Knowledge trans Hassan Melehy

(Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 1994) 1ndash3 and Hayden White Figural

Realism Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1999)1 On the ldquonewrdquo philosophy of history see Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner eds A

New Philosophy of History (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1995)

4 Michel-Rolf rouillot Silencing the Past Power and the Production of History (Boston Beacon

Press 1995) 2 Still he says about the doubleness that ldquoambiguous and contingent as

it is the boundary between what happened and that which is said to have happened

is necessaryrdquo (13)

5 Ibid 22ndash23

6 Some would say that this is a question for intellectual history but rouillotrsquos scheme refuses

the separation

7 Ibid 29

8 Dana Polan ldquoLa Poetique de lrsquoHistoire Metahistory de Hayden Whiterdquo Iris 2 no 2 (1984)

31ndash40 Pierre Sorlin ldquoPromenades dans Romerdquo Iris 2 no 2 (1984) 5ndash16

9 Giuliana Bruno ldquoowards a Teorization of Film Historyrdquo Iris 2 no 2 (1984) 54

10 Sumiko Higashi ldquoIn-Focus Film History or a Baedeker Guide to the Historical urnrdquo Charles

Musser ldquoHistoriographic Method and the Study of Early Cinemardquo 104 Janet Staiger

ldquoTe Future of the Pastrdquo 127 and Don Crafton ldquoCollaborative Research Docrdquo 140 All

in Cinema Journal 44 no 1 (2004)

11 Roger Odin ldquoEarly Cinema and Film Teoryrdquo in A Companion to Early Cinema ed Andreacute

Gaudreault Nicolas Dulac and Santiago Hidalgo (Malden MA Wiley-Blackwell 2012)

224ndash42

12 Annette Kuhn and Jackie Stacey ldquoScreen Histories An Introductionrdquo in Screen Histories A

Screen Reader ed Annette Kuhn and Jackie Stacey (Oxford Clarendon Press 1998) 2

13 Robert Sklar ldquoOh Althusser Historiography and the Rise of Cinemardquo in Resisting Images

Essays on Cinema and History ed Charles Musser and Robert Sklar (Philadelphia

emple University Press 1990) 12ndash35 Robert Sklar ldquoDoes Film History Need a Crisisrdquo

Cinema Journal 44 no 1 (2004) 136

14 On the resistance to White see Elizabeth Deeds Earmarth ldquoTe Closed Space of Choice AManifesto on the Future of Historyrdquo in Manifestos for History ed Keith Jenkins Sue

Morgan and Alun Munslow (New York Routledge 2007) 53



79


15 Keith Jenkinsrsquos preferred term is ldquopostmodern historyrdquo See Joan W Scott ldquoHistory-writing as

Critiquerdquo in Manifestos for History 23ndash26 For another term see David Carr ldquoOn the

Metaphilosophy of Historyrdquo in Re-Figuring Hayden White ed Frank Ankersmit Ewa

Domańska and Hans Kellner (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 2009) 15ndash33

16 Vivian Sobchack ldquoIntroduction History Happensrdquo in Te Persistence of History Cinemaelevision and the Modern Event ed Vivian Sobchack (New York Routledge 1996) 4

17 For the early definitions of ldquoNew Film Historyrdquo see Tomas Elsaesser ldquoTe New Film Historyrdquo

Sight and Sound 55 no 4 (1986) 246ndash51 and Alison Butler ldquoNew Film Histories and

the Politics of Locationrdquo Screen 33 no 4 (1992) 413ndash26 Te terrain is expanded in

Tomas Elsaesser ldquoTe New Film History as Media ArchaeologyrdquoCineacutemas 14 nos 2ndash3

(2004) 75ndash117 Tere he argues following Foucault that we need to take an archaeo-

logical ldquoturnrdquo (104) See also Tomas Elsaesser ldquoIs Nothing New urn-of-the-Century

Epistemes in Film Historyrdquo in A Companion to Early Cinema ed Gaudreault et al

where he associates ldquonew film historyrdquo in the 1980s with the development in which it

is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history

rdquo that is now undertaken (601) I take from

this something other than his concern in the article which is that with the ldquonew film

history as cinema historyrdquo approach that is no longer only the history of films we are

better situated to think about the question of the digital

18 Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Te Nature of History Reader ed Keith

Jenkins and Alun Munslow (New York Routledge 2004) 10

19 On approaching Hayden White see Keith Jenkins On ldquoWhat is Historyrdquo (New York Rout-

ledge 1995) chap 5

20 Elizabeth Cowie Recording Reality Desiring the Real (Minneapolis University of Minnesota

Press 2011) 38

21 Roland Barthes ldquoTe Discourse of Historyrdquo in Te Rustle of Language trans Richard Howard

(New York Hill and Wang 1986) 138

22 For a discussion of the problem of a single ldquoinauguralrdquo event see Andreacute Gaudreault and om

Gunning ldquoIntroduction American Cinema Emerges (1890ndash1909)rdquo in American Cinema

1890ndash1909 Temes and Variations ed Andreacute Gaudreault (New Brunswick NJ Rutgers

University Press 2009) 2ndash7

23 It is well known that while Charles Musser has argued for seeing an 1895ndash1897 ldquonovelty

periodrdquo of attractions om Gunning has held that the time frame is 1895ndash190607 See

Charles Musser ldquoRethinking Early Cinema Cinema of Attractions and Narrativityrdquo Yale

Journal of Criticism 7 no 2 (1994) 216ndash17 and om Gunning ldquoTe Cinema of Attrac-tion[s] Early Film Its Spectator and the Avant-Garderdquo in Early Cinema SpaceFrame

Narrative ed Tomas Elsaesser (London British Film Institute 1990) 57 Te existence

of these two positions which Elsaesser characterizes in ldquoIs Nothing Newrdquo as a ldquodebate

over narrativerdquo (602) supports my point about the difficulties of correspondence

24 Keith Jenkins Refiguring History (New York Routledge 2003) introduces the phrase and

continues to use it in his work (5)

25 White Figural Realism 2ndash3

26 Keith Jenkins At the Limits of History Essays on Teory and Practice (New York Routledge

2009) 1527 Keith Jenkins Re-Tinking History (New York Routledge 1991) 7

28 Ibid 7



80


29 Jenkins Refiguring History 42

30 See om Gunning D W Griffith and the Origins of the American Narrative Film (Urbana

University of Illinois Press 1991) 16ndash18 for the best discussion of the distinction

between telling and showing

31 On sound see Alison McMahan ldquoBeginningsrdquo in European Cinema ed Elizabeth Ezra (Ox-

ford Oxford University Press 2004) 32ndash34 on the actualitieacute see om Gunning ldquoBefore

Documentary Early Nonfiction Films and the lsquoViewrsquo Aestheticrdquo in Uncharted erritory

Essays on Early Nonfiction Film ed Daan Hertogs and Nico De Klerk (Amsterdam

Netherlands Filmmuseum 1997) 9ndash24

32 Jane M Gaines ldquoEarly Cinemarsquos Heyday of Copying Te oo Many Copies of LrsquoArroseur arroseacute rdquo

Cultural Studies 20 nos 2ndash3 (2006) 227ndash44 See also Peter Decherney Hollywoodrsquos

Copyright Wars From Edison to the Internet (New York Columbia University Press

2012) chap 1

33 See om Gunning ldquoAttractions How Tey Came into the Worldrdquo in Te Cinema of Attractions

Reloaded ed Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press 2006) 31ndash39

34 Ibid 32ndash33 38 Sergei M Eisenstein ldquoTe Montage of Attractions [1923]rdquo and ldquoTe Montage

of Film Attractions [1924]rdquo in Selected Works vol 1 of Writings 1922ndash34 ed and trans

Richard aylor (London British Film Institute 1988) 33ndash58

35 See Edgar Morin Cinema or the Imaginary Man trans Lorraine Mortimer (1956 Minneap-

olis University of Minnesota Press 2005) chap 3 for one of the earliest attempts to

separate the invention from the institution

36 Andreacute Gaudreault Film and Attraction From Kinematography to Cinema trans imothy

Barnard (Urbana University of Illinois Press 2011) 46ndash48

37 Ibid 111

38 Elsaesser ldquoIs Nothing Newrdquo 605

39 Gaudreault Film and Attraction 13 Odin also thinks study of early film brought about

ldquocollaboration between theory and historyrdquo but thinks more nuance is needed given

that the relationship is fraught (ldquoEarly Cinema and Film Teoryrdquo 237) Gaudreault also

argues that the discovery of early cinema has coincided with a ldquoveritable revolution

in the ways we write film historyrdquo (Film and Attraction 12) Yet if there has been a

ldquorevolutionrdquo in our writing wouldnrsquot there be as many writing about that as there are

writing about the newly conceptualized historical objects (themselves)

40 Walter Benjamin Te Arcades Project trans Howard Eiland and Kefin McLaughlin (Cam-

bridge MA Harvard University Press 1999) 463 See also ldquoTeses on the Philosophy

of Historyrdquo in Walter Benjamin Illuminations ed Hannah Arendt trans Harry Zohn

(New York FontanaCollins 1970) 255



C o p y r i g h t o f F i l m H i s t o r y i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s a n d i t s c o n t e n t m a y n o t

b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r s

e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n H o w e v e r u s e r s m a y p r i n t d o w n l o a d o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r

i n d i v i d u a l u s e



71


grasp What an encyclopedia surely cannot fathom is the political function of

the ambiguous usage as I will show

Te ambiguity of historyhistoire is also one of the starting points of what

is sometimes called the new philosophy of history and both Jacques Ranciegravereand Hayden White have begun books on the subject with this observation as a way of signaling the difficulties ahead983091 At least one scholar however has madetheoretical use of the ambiguity Where some see double meaning anthropologistMichel-Rolf rouillot sees a pairmdashldquowhat happenedrdquo and ldquothat which is said tohave happenedrdquo983092 And rouillot differs from others in another key way Where he

wants to see an ldquooverlaprdquo between historical events and the narrative of themmany theorists of history see a gap983093 For rouillot the overlap is a political neces-sitymdasha counter to the way that history effected the European political denial of

the successful slave revolt that was the 1791ndash1804 Haitian Revolution For us itis not so different although a little trickier because wersquore dealing with intellectualevents983094 Te question as to whether there once was never was always has beenor can be a philosophy of film history depends on what we now want to see ashaving happened or not having happened in our field Perhaps the argument willsucceed if we see an overlap between rouillotrsquos historicity of that which is saidto have happened and his historicity of what happened rather than saying that

we now need a philosophy of film history983095

So first where have we before seen interest in such questions in the fielden years before the Film History issue Iris put out ldquoPour un theacuteorie de lrsquohistoiredu cinemaTeory of Cinema Historyrdquo dedicated to Michel Foucault in DavidRodowickrsquos introduction Te issue contains Dana Polanrsquos productive review ofHayden Whitersquos Metahistory as well as Rick Altmanrsquos early work on representa-tional technologies and Pierre Sorlinrsquos discussion of the way the concerns of thetheorist and the historian diverge983096 Giuliana Brunorsquos contribution on historicalnarrativization references the ldquophilologicalrdquo phenomenon that renders history

histoire ambiguous983097In 2004 twenty years after the Iris issue Sumiko Higashi edited a recon-sideration of the ldquohistorical turnrdquo for Cinema Journal in which Charles Musser

wonders if we should continue to do ldquomedia-specificrdquo histories (ie film history) Janet Staiger concurs and Don Crafton argues that ldquoeveryone must acknowledgethat there is no boundary between history and theoryrdquo983089983088 And yet the specialissue has been interpreted as somewhat defensive about ldquothe historical turnrdquo983089983089I would argue that the articles by no means plant the authors on one side or theother of the imaginary divide between history and theory that Annette Kuhnand Jackie Stacey have seen as a ldquofalserdquo division if nevertheless part of the ldquoin-tellectual historyrdquo of the discipline983089983090 Robert Sklar the very scholar who over adecade earlier criticized the field for mistaking Althusserrsquos concept of history for



72












73














74


















75









76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















72












73














74


















75









76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















73














74


















75









76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















74


















75









76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















75









76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















76












77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















77












78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















78


Notes


this essay
















5 Ibid 22ndash23


the separation

7 Ibid 29










224ndash42











79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















79















is ldquono

longer film history

butcinema history








ledge 1995) chap 5


Press 2011) 38



















28 Ibid 7



80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111





















80














2012) chap 1











37 Ibid 111



















gaines - what happened to the philosophy of film history (2013)

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