ANGEL AK I

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 17 number 1 March 2012

I n a note in The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant

distinguishes between an instance (beispiel)
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012

and an example (exempel). An instance, he

explains, is a particular contained under a
universal; an example, on the other hand, is a
particular case of a practical rule (593 n.). Kant’s
point is that a practical rule does not contain the
actions that exemplify it; as a practical rule, a
moral law is not a universal composed of
particulars, and an exemplary moral action
merely proves the possibility of acting in agustin zarzosa
conformity with duty.
This distinction alerts us to at least two
different ways in which a particular may relate THE CASE AND ITS
to a concept: the concept may unify various
particulars by expressing their common proper- MODES
ties or it may prove its force by acting upon
particulars. I take this distinction as a starting
instance, allusion,
point to address the role of concepts in film example, illustration, and
criticism. Understandably, the use of concepts
makes film critics uneasy. On the one hand, exception
without concepts we would simply not be able to
write about films. On the other, through the
process of speaking or writing about film, words, there is no such thing as a pre-conceptual
concepts necessarily betray the film we attempt experience of films.
to explain, expressing it in terms that often do not Rather than adopting this approach, I propose
resemble our experience of the film. a more extensive classification of the ways in
A common strategy to address this uneasiness which films and concepts relate to one another.
consists in condemning concepts applied to films The principle of this classification is the spatial
from extraneous disciplines (such as semiotics, relation between films and concepts, that is, the
psychoanalysis and Marxism) and embracing extent to which films and concepts are external or
proper cinematic concepts, those generated internal to one another.2 Accordingly, I distin-
from the direct examination of the films guish six relations that films may entertain with
themselves. This solution, proposed by theorists concepts: in an instance, a concept contains a
as dissimilar as Noël Carroll and Gilles Deleuze, film; in an allusion, a film includes a concept; in
seems to privilege instances over examples, an example, a concept traverses a film; in an
disavowing the fact that we already experience illustration, film and concept are completely
films along with conceptual frameworks, regard- external to one another, holding a relationship
less of the origin of these concepts.1 In other of figuration; in an exception, film and concept

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/12/010041^15 ! 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2012.671659

41
 the case and its modes
are inseparable, occupying the same space;
finally, in a case, film and concept hold relations
of proximity rather than of inclusion or exclu-
sion. In distinguishing these functions, I attempt
to outline what films and concepts do for one
another. My argument is not that these are
absolutely discrete functions but rather that we
may distinguish these relations even if they occur
in the same text or in the same rhetorical move. I
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
discuss each of these relations below, ultimately
arguing that the first five functions are deficient
modes of the sixth one, the case.
I instance
Following Kant, we can define an instance as any
particular film contained under a concept; an
instance shows the character or quality of the
universal. We refer to this kind of concept as a
class, insofar as it collects a set of films that share
the same quality. Traditional genre criticism
usually relies on instances to show the character
of the genre. This conception of the particular is
fundamentally Aristotelian. It involves an induc-
tive process, ‘‘neither from part to whole nor
from whole to part but from part to part, like to
like, when two things fall under the same genus
but one is better known than the other’’ (Aristotle
44; 1357b). This approach to genre, which Rick
Altman refers to as syntactic, usually stresses a
list of common components such as settings,
objects, characters, dramatic situations, lighting,
and/or shots (‘‘A Semantic/Syntactic Approach’’
9). Mark Vernet’s eclectic characterization of the
Western offers an instance of this approach; he
characterizes the genre by noting its general
atmosphere, stock characters, and technical
elements (111–12). Mathijs and Mendik’s study
of the cult film considers aspects of these films
that fall outside the texts themselves; however,
because these aspects (anatomy, consumption,
political economy, and cultural status) are
essential components of the phenomenon of cult
cinema, their definition operates within the logic
of the instance (1–11). We can simply say that the
objects of study are no longer the films as isolated
texts but rather the films and the culture
surrounding them.
Of course, the logic of the instance functions in
areas other than genre criticism. Consider, for
instance, Bazin’s and Bordwell’s respective con-
ceptions of the classical film. In ‘‘The Evolution
of the Language of Cinema,’’ Bazin cites Jezebel
(William Wyler, 1938), Stagecoach (John Ford,
1939) and Le Jour se Lève (Marcel Carné, 1939)
as instances of cinema as a classical art. Bazin
explains that these three films include ‘‘well-
defined styles of photography and editing
perfectly adapted to their subject matter; a
complete harmony of image and sound’’ (29).
The generic differences between these films are
inessential in regards to the concept of film as a
classical art. The concept contains these films in
their essence as classical.
Bordwell’s conception of classical Hollywood
as an excessively obvious cinema that relies on a
set of different levels of norms and paradigms
also treats Hollywood films as instances of the
concept. The way in which the concept contains
films, however, differs to a certain extent. The
films themselves constitute instances of classical
Hollywood not necessarily because they exhibit a
certain number of determinate elements but
rather because they make apparent that film-
makers have made choices within the norms and
paradigms offered by the system (‘‘The Classical
Hollywood Style’’ 4–6). Because these norms and
paradigms may be instantiated in different ways,
the way in which these films exhibit their classic
status is more mediated than in Bazin’s model.
Despite this difference, we may say that a film
falls under the concept of the classical cinema
when it works within the norms and paradigms
outlined by Bordwell.
Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson’s classical
study also highlights another characteristic of the
instance; it must be ordinary, that is, replaceable
and iterative.3 They foreground the replaceability
of their instances by taking as their central source
of evidence a random sample of one hundred
films from 1915 to 1960. Their implicit conten-
tion is that any one hundred films from this
universe would exhibit the same norms and
paradigms that characterize the concept (386–96).
An instance manifests the rules governing its
kind precisely because of its typicality; adopting a
Deleuzian terminology, we could refer to the
42

instance as an any-film-whatever. The function of
the instance is precisely to stand in for any of the
films that it represents almost fortuitously.
In a similar manner that the instance is not
restricted to genre criticism, genre criticism may
also move away from the instance. In fact, one of
the main questions of genre criticism is precisely
whether and how a genre contains genre films.
Perhaps the main problem of genre criticism has
been how to extrapolate the classification of
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
natural effects to works of art. Classification in
nature presupposes a necessity behind the
distinction of natural effects. It presupposes,
more specifically, two principles: the principle of
homogeneity, which postulates identity under the
genus, and the principle of specification, which
postulates variety in species despite their agree-
ment under the genus (Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason 596–98). In classifying works of art such
as film, we face the insurmountable challenge that
the concept we infer does not determine in
advance the films it contains. Although a genre
seems to contain the films that include the
necessary and sufficient elements that the genre
demands, this form of containment is tenuous to
the extent that the appearance of any given
element results from convention and not from
necessity.
Searching for an alternative to this classical
classification model, some critics have resorted to
Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances, a
notion that proposes as a principle of unity not
the invariable presence of a common property but
rather the interplay between a set of criteria
combined in unforeseeable ways. Ben Singer’s
study of melodrama exemplifies this alternative.
He defines melodrama as a genre that ‘‘contains
works constructed out of many different combi-
nations of a set of primary features: pathos,
emotionalism, moral polarization, nonclassical
narrative form and graphic sensationalism’’ (58).
The melodramas he studies potentially combine
all five elements but minimally contain two of
them. Although this alternative certainly compli-
cates the way in which we establish a film’s
belonging to a certain class, we remain within the
logic of the instance to the extent that family
resemblances still propose a way of subsuming
elements under a concept.
43
zarzosa
Other attempts of thinking genre beyond the
logic of the instance take a different route. For
instance, Rick Altman distinguishes between a
film genre and a genre film; whereas the former
consists in the set of characteristics that films
might share, the latter consists in films that
foreground their generic characteristics and,
therefore, ‘‘the notion of genre takes on a more
active role in the production and consumption
process’’ (‘‘Cinema and Genre’’ 277). Genre
films, then, include genres themselves. Stanley
Cavell proposes that genre films do not merely
share a certain set of features but that genre films
themselves constitute studies of these features.
Accordingly, genre films ‘‘are what they are in
view of one another’’ (29). Both of these ways of
thinking about genre films reverse the relation-
ship between the particular and the universal, and
point toward another function, the allusion.
II allusion
The allusion reverses the relationship between
particular and universal that characterizes the
instance: it is not the universal that contains
the particular but the particular that includes the
universal. The particular behaves like a set,
turning the concept into a member of a set
organized around no definite principle. This
reversal is not entirely unqualified since the
instance is contained by the concept in a different
way than the allusion includes it. This difference
is what the terms containment and inclusion are
intended to convey. In the instance, a universal
contains only what each of the particulars it
contains share, that is, their essence; it does not
contain, then, whatever in the film exceeds this
essence. The universal is nothing other than this
shared property; therefore, saying that the
universal contains particulars is another way of
saying that a set of particulars include the same
concept.
However, once we view containment as a
reversed form of inclusion, we realize that films
include an indefinite number of concepts, and
that this inclusion is not organized under any
essence or in any logical manner. The number of
allusions is necessarily indefinite because allu-
sions are not necessarily overt. Therefore, even if
 the case and its modes
an allusion takes place inside the body of the film
(unlike all other functions, which take place in
the critical text), an allusion depends, to a certain
extent, on an interpretative act. This dependence
is especially obvious when the allusion is oblique
rather than overt.
Noël Carroll, who was one of the first critics to
theorize the phenomenon of allusion, understands
it in broader terms than the mere inclusion of
concepts. Allusion, for him, is ‘‘an umbrella term
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
covering a mixed lot of practices including
quotations, the memorialization of past genres,
the reworking of past genres, homages, and the
recreation of ‘classic’ scenes, shots, plot motifs,
lines of dialogue, themes, gestures, and so forth
from film history’’ (‘‘Future of Allusion’’ 241).
Along with these allusions to film history, Carroll
notes a kind of complicity between filmmakers
and the academy, as filmmakers put back in their
films the doxa they learn at university, ‘‘making
it easy for the academically-trained critics to
extract them hermeneutically’’ (Privett and
Kreul).
Thomas Elsaesser refers to the same phenom-
enon as knowingness, and he considers it the
distinguishing characteristic of post-classical
Hollywood cinema. Like Carroll, Elsaesser con-
siders references to both film history and critical
tropes as part of the same phenomenon. Post-
classical films, Elsaesser argues, not only show a
playful knowingness of the classical tradition but
also anticipate how the academic community will
interpret them. As Elsaesser writes, ‘‘our own
theory or methodology suddenly turns up in the
film itself, looking us in the face; either gravely
nodding assent, or winking’’ (‘‘Classical/Post
Classical’’ 66). For instance, Back to the Future
forestalls both a Freudian and a Lacanian
interpretation by dramatizing aspects of the
Oedipal complex and the mirror stage (‘‘Oedipal
Narratives’’ 226–36). In a similar manner,
because of its awareness about race, gender, and
class issues, ‘‘Die Hard looks as if its makers had
read all the relevant cultural studies literature’’
(Elsaesser, ‘‘Classical/Post Classical’’ 70).
In The Way Hollywood Tells It, David
Bordwell counters Elsaesser’s argument by
noting, first, that many classical films already
deploy this knowingness and, second, that
although some filmmakers might have read film
theory, most ‘‘couldn’t care less about postmo-
dern subjectivity, the crisis of masculinity, or
other seminar gambits’’ (8). Bordwell’s larger
point is that a claim about knowingness is not
properly about the constitution of films but about
their meaning. Ultimately, these films appear to
anticipate their own interpretation because of the
chains of associations that Elsaesser deftly
elaborates (9).
Elsaesser’s suggestion about how film critics
should approach these knowing films does not
address the question about knowingness satisfac-
torily. When the film seems to anticipate our
method, he recommends that we apply a different
theory or method (presumably, one of which the
film appears unaware) (‘‘Classical/Post Classical’’
66). For instance, he applies Žižek’s symptomatic
analysis to Back to the Future, and Foucauldian
and Deleuzian concepts to Silence of the Lambs.
The problem with this solution is that one could
always wonder whether the film has already
anticipated this apparently more symptomatic
approach. An allusion, then, is the obverse of the
instance: we simply learn to view the concept’s
act of containing a film as the film’s own act of
including the concept. In the last section of the
essay I propose a different way of understanding
this mutual implication between film and
concept.
We could rephrase Elsaesser’s argument
slightly by saying that we can only make the
distinction between classical and post-classical
Hollywood by presupposing this knowingness;
that is, that the creation of the concept post-
classical requires that we presuppose its inclusion
in the films analyzed. As he himself puts it, the
argument relies on shifting the focus from
perceiving the difference ‘‘in here’’ (interpreta-
tion) to perceiving it ‘‘out there’’ (analysis)
(‘‘Classical/Post Classical’’ 27). Jacques Derrida
makes a similar point in regard to genre (and, for
our purposes, in regard to the instance). He
observes that any text belonging to a genre
already signals or mentions this belonging (229).
Elsaesser simply extends this argument to what I
refer to as the example; these post-classical films
signal or mention their pliability to certain
theories and methodologies.
44

III example
In this section, I extrapolate Kant’s notion of
moral example to explain what constitutes an
example in the realm of film studies. As I
explained above, for Kant, moral examples are
not elements of a set; they simply prove the
possibility of acting in conformity with duty. In
an analogous manner, examples in film analysis
prove the possibility of applying a concept – or,
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
more precisely, a conceptual field – to films; in
other words, examples prove the relevance of a
conceptual field in the context of film.
What foremost distinguishes instances from
examples is the kind of relationship they hold
with concepts. Whereas a concept contains an
instance, an example exists at the intersection
between film and concept. More precisely, a
conceptual field traverses the film; therefore,
their relationship is best described in terms of the
action of the concept and the pliability of the
film. In this sense, concept and film hold a
dynamic relationship more than a spatial one: the
conceptual field must demonstrate its capacity to
act on the film, that is, to render the film
intelligible. The film, on the other hand, must
show its pliability, that is, its capacity to yield to
the conceptual field. The conceptual field
behaves like a rule, governing the ways in
which films are comprehended. Giorgio
Agamben refers to what I call an example as a
paradigm, which transforms ‘‘every singular case
into an exemplar of a general rule that can never
be stated a priori’’ (Signature of All Things 22).
However, he assigns the paradigm the paradoxical
quality of exclusion/belonging that I reserve for
the exception.4
Instances and examples also differ in regards
to how they relate to other films. Instances relate
to other films as members of the same or different
classes, that is, in terms of similarities and
differences. Examples do not necessarily share
any similarities with other films; what makes a
film exemplary is the way in which it reacts to the
action exerted by the conceptual field. An
example does not determine in advance the
extension of the conceptual field, that is, an
example does not anticipate which other films the
conceptual field might comprehend or what
45
zarzosa
meaning the action of the conceptual field
might exert from another film. Therefore, strictly
speaking, what is exemplary is not the film itself
but rather the analysis of the film. The analysis is
exemplary in the sense that the Renaissance
imprinted on the term. During the Renaissance,
the main function of examples was to provide
‘‘specific models of conduct for imitation’’ (Lyons
13). Examples were aimed primarily at behavioral
modification. For the purposes of our discussion,
the example provides guidelines to conduct film
analysis. It is in this sense that we can say that the
conceptual field makes an example out of a film.
The logic of examples dominates what
Francesco Casetti has called methodological
theories of cinema. As Casetti explains, metho-
dological theories consist of disciplinary fields –
for instance, semiology or psychoanalysis – that
attempt to demonstrate the possibility of com-
prehending cinema within their sphere (11–12).
As an application of la grande syntagmatique,
Christian Metz’s analysis of Jacques Rozier’s
Adieu Philippine (1962) instantiates the use of
examples. In outlining the autonomous segments
in the film, Metz certainly characterizes the film’s
narrative structure; however, Metz ultimately
aims to demonstrate the possibility of applying
la grande syntagmatique, and semiotics in
general, to cinema. Rather than anticipating the
meaning of other films analyzed under the lens of
semiotics, the analysis shows the applicability of
the conceptual field to any film; significantly,
Metz states in a note that he selected the film
mainly because he ‘‘happened to like the film
very much’’ (177 n.). Although the kind, order,
and number of syntagmas would have varied had
Metz selected another film, the analysis remains
exemplary to the extent that it proves the
applicability of the model to films in general.
Consequently, applying the conceptual field of a
discipline does not, strictly speaking, give us any
knowledge about the film itself; it simply makes
the film intelligible within the parameters of the
conceptual field. An example ultimately demon-
strates the conceptual field’s power of compre-
hension, not the film’s constitution.
We should note that, in an analogous manner
that the conception of the class is at stake in every
member that belongs to it, a conceptual field is
 the case and its modes
also at stake in every analysis. Here, however, the
matter is not how specific films align to the
sufficient and necessary conditions that the class
establishes but rather how efficiently the concept
comprehends the film at hand. In his analysis of
Adieu Philippine, Metz notes the resistance that
the film offers to his model, and he indicates how
the model might be reconsidered to account for
syntagmas that do not fully fit la grande
syntagmatique (164).
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
Metz’s essay also shows how a film may
function both as an example and as an instance
in the same text. Once Metz establishes the
frequencies, scarcities, and absences of syntagmas
in Adieu Philippine, he points out that the style
of the film is typical of what he calls cinéma
nouveau, a cinema characterized by apparent
formal freedom and narrative transparency,
distaste for obviously rhetorical devices, and
emphasis on the verbal element (181). Metz
observes that the film’s reliance on the scene
syntagma instantiates how this cinéma nouveau
conveys a sense of global realism. At this point in
the essay, Adieu Philippine demonstrates not its
pliability to the conceptual field but the possibi-
lity of extending the results of the analysis to a
predetermined universe of films. The film has
ceased to be an example that demonstrates the
power of a conceptual field to become an instance
that determines the characteristics of a universe.
IV illustration
Perhaps no other function has been as maligned
as the illustration. Most probably, the complete
externality between concept and film gives the
illustration its bad reputation. Whereas an
instance is, as it were, taken out of the conceptual
whole, the illustration’s relation to the concept is
analogical; an illustration works by way of
resemblance and comparison, not by way of
synecdoche. As Alexander Gelley explains, an
illustration acts ‘‘by way of a different substance,
an image or simulated enactment that is
analogically related to a proposition or general
truth’’ (3). In relation to an illustration, a concept
behaves like an abstraction that lacks any shape
or light of its own. Neither the concept nor the
film ceases to be what it is by entering this
relation: the concept does not determine the film,
and the film does not offer a figurative instance of
the concept. Film and concept do not belong to
one another in any way.
The illustration’s bad name might also be due
to the film’s structural subordination to the
concept, since the film performs a service for the
concept it illustrates. An illustration seems to
disregard the film, assigning its materiality the
task of assisting the abstract ruminations of the
mind. An illustration throws light on the concept
by affixing a film to it; the film is literally an
embellishment (Lyons 10). In a certain sense, the
illustration is also the obverse of the example: an
example makes the film intelligible from a certain
conceptual field; an illustration clarifies a concept
through an act of figuration.
The enlightening capacities of the illustration
reach beyond the concept because an illustration
is usually intended to enlighten an addressee. For
this reason, the purpose of an illustration is
primarily propaedeutic, a matter of communica-
tion and instruction. More precisely, by means of
an illustration, one does not quite learn about the
constitution of a concept; one apprehends this
concept through a process of visualization. An
illustration casts a shadow over the film to
illustrate both the concept and the public. We
could say, then, that an illustration sacrifices the
particular (in this case, a film) for an audience to
grasp the universal.
Instead of enumerating a series of illustrations,
this section discusses the charge against Slavoj
Žižek of merely illustrating films. In examining
this charge, I aim to distinguish the illustration
from other functions. In ‘‘Cinema and
Psychoanalysis: Parallel Histories,’’ Stephen
Heath evaluates Žižek’s contribution to film
studies and psychoanalysis. One of Heath’s
main arguments is that Žižek uses films as a
means by which psychoanalytic concepts can be
truly understood. Films become ‘‘the material
with which to explicate psychoanalysis’’ while
psychoanalysis reduces films to its own terms
(36). As Heath puts it, there are ‘‘no surprises of
cinema’’ (44).
Heath is also troubled by the unclear relation-
ship between the Žižekian–Lacanian Thing as an
unhistorical kernel that stays the same and its
46

historical figurations. He writes: ‘‘at times, the
former seems to be stated as equivalent to the
latter, at others as its particular symbolization,
and at others again as an analogical version of it
in the social field’’ (46). Moreover, Heath argues,
Žižek’s method may be applied to psychoanalysis
‘‘as a particular historicization/symbolization of
the Thing’’ (48). Finally, what gets lost in this
explication of psychoanalysis through film is the
specificity of both psychoanalysis and cinema,
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
‘‘each to and in the other’’ (49).
Without restricting her discussion to the
junction of psychoanalysis and film, Judith
Butler has proposed an almost identical argu-
ment. She notes how Žižek elevates the Hegelian
notion of ‘‘positing the presupposition’’ (a
symbolic gesture through which external condi-
tions become immanent and internal to the
Thing) into a method. This operation, according
to Butler, is a formal point that is already true
before Žižek’s exemplifications (the Jewish plot,
the killer shark in Jaws as a container for free-
floating fears, and so forth). She writes: ‘‘The
theory is articulated on its self-sufficiency, and
then shifts register only for the pedagogical
purpose of illustrating an already accomplished
truth’’ (26). In the same manner that Heath notes
Žižek’s ahistorical view of psychoanalysis, Butler
writes that this method operates ‘‘as a theoretical
fetish that disavows the conditions of its own
emergence’’ (27).
This charge of illustrating an already accom-
plished truth is, for the most part, fair. After all,
Žižek himself has acknowledged the illustrative
status of popular culture in his work. He writes:
‘‘I am convinced of my proper grasp of a
Lacanian concept only when I can translate it
successfully into the inherent imbecility of
popular culture’’ (Metastases of Enjoyment
175). The titles themselves of his book Looking
Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through
Popular Culture and of the edited collection
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about
Lacan . . . But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock
clearly betoken the aim of using popular culture
to illuminate the reader about Lacan. In the
preface to Looking Awry, Žižek qualifies this
illustrative function by saying that if he exploits
popular culture to explain Lacanian dogmatics,
47
zarzosa
he also uses Lacan as an excuse to indulge ‘‘in the
idiotic enjoyment of popular culture’’ (viii). In
other words, Lacanian dogmatics and popular
culture function as excuses that legitimize one
another. Of course, to the extent that this idiotic
enjoyment is a fundamental component of
Lacanian dogmatics, this indulgence remains a
Lacanian gesture.
Žižek illustrates the solidarity between these
two movements in Looking Awry with two
paraphrases of De Quincey’s suggestion that
indulgence in murder must be avoided because
it might lead to incivility and procrastination: in
the first paraphrase, renouncing Lacan ultimately
leads to the treatment of Stephen King as
absolute literary trash; in the second one,
renouncing Stephen King ultimately leads to
the treatment of Lacan as a phallocentrist
obscurantist (viii). These two paraphrases show
that either of the two terms (Lacanian dogmatics
and Stephen King fiction) may stand in for the
first term of De Quincey’s proposition (murder)
or for the last one (incivility and procrastination);
more generally, they make clear the mutual
support between Lacanian psychoanalysis and
popular culture, as well as the delicate balance
that Žižek’s method entails. These paraphrases
constitute an illustration of a theoretical point,
figuring through a cautionary tale how
the renunciation of either Lacanian psychoana-
lysis or popular culture involves the loss of the
other.
Pure illustrations are perhaps more common
in Žižek’s theoretical works than in his film
books, in which he does analyze (and theorize
about) the films themselves. For instance, the
second chapter of Looking Awry is dedicated to
elucidating Hitchcock’s work, laying out the main
stages in Hitchcock’s development. We do find
an almost pure illustration at the beginning of
Organs without Bodies, his book dedicated to
Deleuze. The coronation scene in Ivan the
Terrible Part I (Sergei Eisenstein, 1944), in
which Ivan’s closest friends pour golden coins
from large plates onto his head, illustrates ‘‘the
excess of the pure flow of becoming over its
corporeal cause’’ (3). The scene illustrates the
relationship between becoming and the corporeal
cause to the extent that the golden coins are not
 the case and its modes
an instance of becoming; the scene merely
renders visible a difficult theoretical point.
Let us consider one of the illustrations that
Heath mentions, the monster in Alien (Ridley
Scott, 1979) as a figuration of the Real (Žižek,
Sublime Object of Ideology 79). Heath refers to
this figuration of psychoanalytic concepts as the
Žižek-film, a new conjunction of psychoanalysis
and cinema that ‘‘realizes the unrepresentable,
pushes on screen what is more than in representa-
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
tion, gets it’’ (37). In all fairness, however, this
figuration is not exactly an illustration, an
instance, or even an exemplification of the Real.
The relationship between the unhistorical kernel
and its historicization/symbolization seems
clearer than Heath suggests. Žižek distinguishes
between a fundamental exclusion/foreclosure as
the ground of history and particular situations the
analysis of which forces us to infer this funda-
mental exclusion/foreclosure as their ground of
(im)possibility. The Real returns as different
historical figurations precisely because of this
original foreclosure. But we must distinguish
between what gets lost and the different spectral
shapes in which it returns (For They Know Not
What They Do xvii). In Žižek’s own words,
‘‘[w]hat is barred is not what is excluded’’ in a
specific situation (‘‘Class Struggle or
Postmodernism?’’ 111). This figuration does not
merely illustrate a theoretical point insofar as this
return of the Real under particular circumstances
is a central point of the theory itself.
Boaz Hagin offers an interesting solution to
Žižek’s treatment of films. He claims that we
displace our belief in the theory we propose onto
the films themselves; films interpassively believe
in the theory for us (3–16). It is a matter of
fetishistic disavowal: belief is externalized in the
films themselves. Despite the psychoanalytic
explanation borrowed from Žižek himself, Hagin
is simply elaborating on Aristotle’s point that the
use of paradeigma is rhetorical in nature, that is,
a means of persuasion. As Lyons paraphrases
Aristotle’s definition, rhetoric is ‘‘aimed at
arriving at conclusions on matters about which
there is no ‘necessary’ truth but only probabil-
ities’’ (6). By recalling the rhetorical nature of
paradeigma, we might explain why film theory
must resort to film analysis, but we leave
unanswered the question about how films relate
to concepts.
Although Žižek does not treat films in the
same manner throughout his impressive output,
we may still isolate his most characteristic use of
films. I refer to this function as the exception.
What distinguishes an exception from an instance
is the relationship both with other particulars and
with the universal: the instance may be replaced
by any other member of the set and each of them
entertains the same relationship with the uni-
versal; on the other hand, we could not replace
the exception with another particular without
changing the universal itself. The exception
consists in elevating the particular to exemplary
status, that is, in accessing the universal by means
of the particular. By means of a gesture of
universalization, the exception particularizes all
other elements of the series. Like the illustration,
the exception lies, in some sense, outside the
concept it embodies. However, as Agamben
argues, the exception is ‘‘included solely through
its exclusion’’ (Homo Sacer 18). The exception,
then, behaves in a drastically different way than
the illustration: whereas the illustration lends its
heterogeneous body to the concept, the exception
incarnates the concept.
V exception
The dialectical identity between the universal and
the particular characterizes the exception.
Because the universal and the particular coincide
in the exception, the obverse of the exception is a
series, a set that requires the action of the
exception to rise to the level of the universal. To
understand this dialectical identity, we should
distinguish two related pairs: on the one hand,
the universal and the particular and, on the other,
the matrix and the mise-en-scène. Žižek’s expla-
nations about his use of particular films appear
confusing or contradictory only if we fail to make
this distinction.5
This distinction allows us to understand that
the tension between the universal and the
particular appears on two different levels, which
differ in terms of their degree of generality: the
matrix explains how this tension works at an
abstract level; the mise-en-scène stages this
48

tension in a specific situation. At its most
abstract, the theoretical matrix consists in the
Hegelian/Lacanian insight that the universal is
constituted through its exception. As Žižek puts
it: ‘‘Hegelian dialectics and the Lacanian ‘logic of
the signifier’ are two versions of the same matrix’’
(For They Know Not What They Do xviii). The
mise-en-scène stages this logic in a determinate
universe: whenever one is confronted with a
series, one should locate the exception to the
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
series. This exception, Žižek explains, ‘‘ultimately
coincides with the founding gesture of a
universality’’ (Fright of Real Tears 27). The
universal and the particular are intertwined not
only in the matrix but also in the mise-en-scène.
We can state the relationship between matrix and
mise-en-scène in the following terms: the mise-en-
scène repeats the logic of the matrix, flattening
the difference between the elements of the series
and the absent cause by inscribing the latter as an
element among others.
The passages between the matrix and the mise-
en-scène are most apparent in the structure of
Enjoy Your Symptom! In each chapter, the first
section stages the concept in Hollywood whereas
the second one reveals the inherent content of the
concept. Žižek sees here the same distinction
between Hegel’s Phenomenology (the conceptual
mise-en-scène, or the notion as it appears to
common consciousness) and the Logic (the
conceptual matrix, or the articulation of the
notion in and for itself) (xi). The last chapter in
the book addresses the question ‘‘Why Are There
Always Two Fathers?’’ in these two registers. The
first part of the chapter – the mise-en-scène –
employs the question to distinguish the hard-
boiled hero from the classical detective. Žižek
proceeds by finding an exception in the universe
of hard-boiled detectives. Unlike most heroes in
hard-boiled fiction, Ned Beaumont in Hammet’s
The Glass Key offers no point of identification;
he is not a likable cynical romantic but a blank
introvert. According to Žižek, this blank attitude
is a reaction to an obscene father figure, who
appears along with the decline of the Law of the
Father. The betrayal of the excessive father is
essential in Žižek’s analysis to the extent that it
stabilizes reality but not without introducing the
femme fatale as a stand-in for the excessive
49
zarzosa
father. The normalized universe of hard-boiled
fiction and film noir appears through this
substitution of the femme fatale for the excessive
father (156–61).
In the second part of the chapter – the
theoretical matrix – we encounter again the
tension between the universal and its exception.
Žižek explains that a severe Master – the superego
– haunts the universal law, decentering the
subject of Enlightenment. The blank subject
continues to be the exception but not in relation
to a series composed of other ‘‘normal’’ subjects
as in the mise-en-scène; the empty subject is the
exception to the law and its excessive injunction
to enjoy. Rather than merely illustrating the
workings of the matrix, the mise-en-scène
anticipates the universal. In explaining the
difference between the Foucauldian and the
Lacanian subject, the difference between
the traditional hard-boiled detective and Ned
Beaumont reappears: like the traditional hard-
boiled hero, the Foucauldian subject represses its
constitutive split; like Ned Beaumont, the
Lacanian subject assumes the fissure – occupies
the space – that founds universality (183–84).
Žižek often emphasizes that the passage from
one level to the other occurs by means of a short
circuit. I look at this short circuit in Žižek’s
discussion of the Decalogue (Kryszytof
Kieslowski, 1989), which appears in The Fright
of Real Tears. Žižek begins his analysis by
isolating the element that sticks out in the series.
The element that sticks out is Decalogue 10, the
only satyr play among nine somber films.
Decalogue 10 refers to the first commandment
and displaces the rest of the installments.
Therefore, Decalogue 1 refers to the second
commandment, Decalogue 2 to the third com-
mandment, and so forth. Žižek argues that
Kieslowski himself follows the Hegelian practice
of staging concepts by actualizing command-
ments in exemplary situations and rendering
visible the unexpected consequences of their own
premises. In the process of staging the command-
ments, the prohibition turns into an injunction to
violate them. As the installment that sticks out,
Decalogue 10 includes a song that lists the
commandments in their inverted form (kill, rape,
steal, etc.) (111–12).
 the case and its modes
To a certain extent, Žižek’s analysis of the
Decalogue seems to confirm Heath’s and Butler’s
criticism. The concept is true prior to its staging;
the staging is not in any way necessary for the
truth of the concept. On the other hand, as in the
case of Alien, we do not simply have a figuration
of a Hegelian concept; the matrix itself of Žižek’s
method appears in its entirety in the mise-en-
scène. What is figured is not the universal but
rather the movement by which the particular
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
reflects the universal in it inverted form. The
concept becomes a concrete universal when it
introreflects the gap that separates it from each of
the particulars. Clearly, we do not have here
an instance taken out of a conceptual whole, an
example traversed by a conceptual field, or an
illustration of a different nature than the
universal. The matrix and the mise-en-scène
differ only by degree of specification: in both,
the universal short-circuits the particular.
In an essay that takes Heath’s and Butler’s
criticism to its logical conclusions, Richard
Stamp argues that Žižek does not need the
examples that the Slovene philosopher proclaims
as his symptom/sinthome. Stamp refers to Žižek’s
examples as ‘‘incidental illustrations of an already
installed machine’’ (173). I would like to make
three points about this criticism. First, while it
might be true that Žižek does not need any
specific example, he does need an any-series-
whatever in which to perform this passage from
matrix to mise-en-scène. Second, even if the
method remains identical, the matrix does not
determine in advance which element will stick
out from a given series. For instance, in his
analysis of the Decalogue series, Žižek singles out
both the first and the tenth installments as
elements that stick out: the first one includes the
intrusion of the meaningless Real and the tenth
one introduces the comic mode in a somber series
(Fright of Real Tears 120). Each of the elements
sticks out in relation to a different interpretation
of the whole. This observation leads to my final
point. Precisely because the connection between
the universal and particular in the exception is
ultimately contingent, it does matter which
particular we select as the exception. The
elevation of a particular into an exception is
ideological to the extent that it determines both
the content of the universal and the lens through
which other particulars are judged. This con-
tingency, however, is not absolute inasmuch as it
is limited to the possibility/impossibility of
constructing the universal. The case presents
this contingency under a different, more radical,
light.
VI case
These five functions discussed so far correspond
to five possible spatial relationships between the
universal and the particular: containment
(instance), inclusion (allusion), traversal
(example), externality (illustration), and coinci-
dence (exception). The case, the last function I
discuss, resorts to a different spatial metaphor –
proximity – to understand the relation between
the particular and the universal. A case involves
particular circumstances that implicate concepts
and films; it is a matter of perception, that is, of
how the concept and film appear from the
perspective of one another.
My conception of the case derives mainly from
Deleuze’s elaboration of Leibniz’s monad in The
Fold. A monad refers to the metaphysical atom of
the Leibnizian universe, an atom that has no
parts, no extension and no windows through
which something could enter or depart from it.
Despite their closure, monads express the whole
universe from their own point of view (Leibniz,
Monadology 234, section 56). Monads act as
mirrors, reflecting, unfolding or expressing
distinctly those parts of the universe that are
nearest or more extensively related to it.
However, because the world’s complications
extend to infinity, monads can only express the
whole in a confused way (235, section 61).
In this metaphysics, films and concepts only
differ by degree, that is, both are monads
expressing the world from their point of view.
As Deleuze explains, ‘‘the concept is not a simple
logical being, but a metaphysical being; it is not a
generality or a universality, but an individual’’
(The Fold 42). In this monadic world, the other
functions appear as deficient modalities of the
case, occluding the proximity between films and
concepts by expressing their spatial relationship
in a metaphorical way. Spatial relationships
50

remain metaphorical insofar as these five func-
tions conceive of films and concepts as hetero-
geneous beings. In the case, this spatial relation
ceases to be metaphorical; because films and
concepts are both monads, their relation is
expressed in terms of their capacity to unfold –
and to become unfolded by – each other.
This Leibnizian conception of the universe
underlies Deleuze’s model of cinema, even if
Deleuze draws primarily from Bergson’s Matter
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
and Memory. More specifically, Deleuze speaks
through both Leibniz and Bergson to describe a
universe ruled by two principles: the principles of
folding and unfolding. In praising Leibniz as the
philosopher who has pushed these two principles
the furthest, Deleuze writes: ‘‘These two poles
are: Everything is always the same thing, there is
only one and the same Basis; and: Everything is
distinguished by degree, everything differs by
manner’’ (58). Leibniz and Bergson are the
monads – that is, the points of view – through
which Deleuze expresses this same universe and
these unchanging principles. We could easily
express the overarching conception of the
universe of the Cinema books in Leibnizian
terms: each of the images, which perceives all
other images in the Bergsonian universe, is a
Leibnizian monad that expresses the whole
universe from its own point of view. And,
consequently, each film that Deleuze analyzes in
his study is a monad that expresses one aspect of
the universe more clearly than others. And it is in
this Leibnizian sense that the Cinema books
constitute a natural history of images: each image
already includes in a confused fashion all the
possibilities that other images express in a clearer
manner.
Although films implicate all the concepts in
the world, each film expresses some concepts in a
clear manner while it only expresses others in a
confused, obscure way. In the same manner, a
concept implicates all the films in the world,
expressing some clearly and some confusedly.
The spatial relationship between film and concept
in the case is best figured by means of a pyramid
or a cone, figuration that Deleuze uses to describe
both Leibniz’s metaphysics and the baroque (The
Fold 124). The fathomless base of the cone does
not relate to a center, but tends to a luminous
51
zarzosa
apex or summit. The case lies at the apex of the
cone, expressing clearly its privileged zone of
influence and expressing, however confusedly, its
belonging to the fathomless base.
Interestingly, Deleuze evokes the projection of
a film to illustrate how monads reflect the whole
world despite their closure (The Fold 27). If all
monads are like films, films are a particular kind
of monad. The closure of monads is quite
apparent in films since films are composed of
images cut off from the world. The circuits these
images establish seem already limited by the
finite number of images in the film. But, despite
this closure, films are for the world. To
paraphrase Deleuze, nothing goes out of the
film or comes into it, but we may draw everything
out of it (The Fold 27). In the act of criticism,
then, a film overflows its frame and enters into
different cycles with concepts. Concepts, in turn,
become ‘‘increasingly compressed, interiorized,
wrapped in an instance’’ (The Fold 125). As
concepts become folded into the monad-film,
concepts project their own series onto the film,
giving expression to a possible world. The case,
then, is not one among the other functions; it
refers, more specifically, to the possibility of
creating a zone of expression through any of the
other functions.
To better understand how a case emerges, it
might be useful to discuss what Alain Badiou has
called Deleuze’s monotonous production, that is,
the variation of the same concepts throughout the
cases that Deleuze analyzes (13–16). If Heath
faults Žižek with illustrating concepts through
films, Badiou charges Deleuze with treating films
as instances. Badiou refers to Deleuze’s philoso-
phy as abstract: the generality ultimately sub-
sumes all concrete cases. Badiou claims that,
although Deleuze analyzes particular works,
‘‘what finally comes out of this is siphoned into
the reservoir of concepts that [. . .] Deleuze has
established and linked together’’ (14). In
Leibnizian terms, we could rephrase this argu-
ment by saying that the monad-Deleuze tends to
dominate the monad-films he analyzes. And
because the monad-Deleuze privileges its own
expression over the films’ own expression, films
appear sometimes less as cases that express their
own point of view than as instances or
 the case and its modes
illustrations that embody Deleuzian concepts, or
even as examples that prove the possibility of
Deleuzian criticism. As dominated monads,
instances, illustrations and examples express
clearly the zone of influence of the monad-
Deleuze. In other words, Deleuze’s Cinema books
would express Deleuze’s metaphysics from the
point of view of cinema better than they express
the films’ own zone of influence.
Badiou is correct only to a certain extent.
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
What surges from the Cinema books is in fact not
a novel ontology but rather a perspective of
Deleuze’s ontology in terms of images. However,
although the ontology remains the same, the
encounter with cinema forces Deleuze to offer
what is arguably the most complete account of
the realm of representation in his oeuvre.
Moreover, the convergence between cinema and
the monad-Deleuze generates a novel theory of
cinema, as well as a corresponding classification
of images and signs. Deleuze’s reservoir of
concepts doesn’t contain in advance either this
theory of cinema or this classification of images.
For instance, the images that Bergson refers to as
perception, affection and action could not contain
the cinematic regimes of the perception-image,
the affection-image and the action-image (or, for
that matter, the films studied under these
regimes). More properly, the Bergsonian concepts
implicate these regimes. Although the monad-
films might appear as instances, illustrations or
examples, these monads work through these
relations of domination to unfold themselves
and to become expressive. The question about
which monad is more expressive is inconsequen-
tial to the extent that the encounter generates
unfoldings that inhere both concepts and films
without belonging exclusively to either of them.
Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976), a film
discussed in both A Thousand Plateaus and
Cinema 1, shows how Deleuze draws a case from
an instance. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze
and Guattari employ Mr. Klein as an instance of
the concept of becoming-minoritarian, specifically
instantiating how the subject of a becoming is
drawn from the majority: Mr. Klein is a gentile
who enters into a process of becoming-Jewish. The
film functions as an any-film-whatever; the
concept would have remained unchanged if
Deleuze and Guattari had only instantiated this
point with Arthur Miller’s Focus (291–92). Despite
the concept’s apparent indifference, the instantia-
tion places the film and the concept in proximity,
creating a zone of influence that Deleuze develops
further in Cinema 1. In discussing the impulse-
image, Deleuze understands the becoming-minor-
itarian in the film in terms of an extreme logic of
impulses by which the violence that dwells in
characters forces them to disappear in their milieu.
Through this analysis, the film enters the cycle of
the impulse-image, engaging in differential rela-
tionships not only with other Losey films (each of
them articulating the four coordinates of
Naturalism differently) but also with the works
of Stroheim and Buñuel (by giving a different
sense to degradation) (136–40).
Accordingly, policing the relation between
concepts and films might be an unfruitful exercise
to the extent that all of these functions place
concepts and films in proximity, creating a
possible zone of expression. The correct question
might be to what extent an encounter between
monads brings something out of them, that is, to
what extent monads become expressive. The
relationship between films and concepts is deter-
mined by a manner of expression, that is, by the
dominance of one monad over another. In this
sense, instances, allusions, examples, illustrations
and exceptions are not functions altogether
different from cases; in each of these functions,
one of the monads becomes weakened, impotent to
express its own zone of influence clearly.
Dominated monads aid in expressing the zone of
influence of more powerful monads: instances
express a concept’s capacity to contain; allusions,
the film’s knowingness of the concept; examples, a
concept’s capacity to comprehend; illustrations,
the concept’s intelligibility; and exceptions, the
concept’s power to constitute itself. To bemoan
that films become dominated by more powerful
monads – to complain that a film merely illustrates
or instantiates a concept – is to forget that a monad
must struggle for domination to unfold itself and
to express its zone of influence with clarity.
To conclude, I would like to address the
question about the possibility of Deleuzian film
criticism. To the extent that Deleuzian film
criticism is concerned with determining cinema
52

through Deleuzian concepts, with illustrating
Deleuzian concepts with films, with detecting
Deleuzian motifs in films, or with proving the
possibility of applying Deleuzian concepts to
comprehend films, it operates within the com-
bined logics of the instance, the illustration, the
allusion, and the example. Consider, for instance,
Patricia Pisters’ The Matrix of Visual Culture, an
exercise in extending Deleuzian concepts to
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
contemporary popular cinema. When Pisters
writes in the introduction that she aims to prove
the applicability of Deleuzian concepts to con-
temporary popular cinema, she is expressly
operating within the logic of the example (8). I
am not suggesting that Pisters’ application of
Deleuzian concepts is inappropriate or misguided.
I am suggesting instead that, once we shift the
focus from metaphysics to film criticism,
Deleuze’s monadic ontology only survives by
accepting the possibility that Deleuzian concepts
might not lie near a particular film’s zone of
influence and by learning instead to express
whichever concepts remain near this zone. To
situate films within Deleuze’s ontology, it is not
necessary to apply the concepts that this ontology
has produced; it does ask from us
that we enter a cycle with a film
without obscuring the film’s own
zone of influence.
notes
1 See Carroll 37^ 68 and Deleuze,Cinema 2 280.
2 For other classifications following different prin-
ciples, see Lyons 8.
3 For a discussion of iteration and instance, see
Lyons 26 ^28.
4 I thank Andre¤ Dias for drawing my attention to
this book as well as for his spirited support and
generous suggestions on this essay.
5 For a critique of Z›iz›ek’s contradictory use of
particulars, see Stamp.
bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and
Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford:
Stanford UP,1998. Print.
53
zarzosa
Agamben, Giorgio. The Signature of All Things: On
Method. Trans. Luca D’Isanto with Kevin Attell.
New York: Zone, 2009. Print.
Altman, Rick. ‘‘Cinema and Genre.’’ The
Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Geoffrey
Nowell-Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 276 ^ 85.
Print.
Altman, Rick. ‘‘A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to
Film Genre.’’ Cinema Journal 23.3 (1984): 6 ^18.
Print.
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse.
Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP,
2006. Print.
Badiou, Alain. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Trans.
Louise Burchill. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
2000. Print.
Bazin, Andre¤. ‘‘The Evolution of the Language of
Cinema.’’ What is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray.Vol. 1.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1967.
23^ 40. Print.
Bordwell, David. ‘‘The Classical Hollywood Style,
1917^1960.’’ Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1^
84. Print.
Bordwell, David. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story
and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: U of California P, 2006. Print.
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristen
Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema. New
York: Columbia UP,1985. Print.
Butler, Judith.‘‘Restaging the Universal: Hegemony
and the Limits of Formalism.’’ Butler, Laclau, and
Z›iz›ek 11^ 43. Print.
Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Z›iz›ek.
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary
Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000. Print.
Carroll, Noe«l.‘‘The Future of Allusion: Hollywood
in the Seventies (and Beyond).’’ Mathijs and Mendik
240 ^ 43. Print.
Carroll, Noe«l. ‘‘Prospects for Film Theory: A
Personal Assessment.’’ Post-Theory: Reconstructing
Film Studies. Ed. David Bordwell and Noe«l Carroll.
Madison: U of Wisconsin P,1996. 37^ 68. Print.
Casetti, Francesco. Theories of Cinema: 1945^1995.
Trans. Francesca Choistri and Elizabeth Gard
Bartolini-Salimbeni with Thomas Kelso. Austin: U
of Texas P,1999. Print.
 the case and its modes
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood
Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP,1981. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-
Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.
Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis:
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012
U of Minnesota P,1989. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque.
Trans.Tom Conley. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
1993. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Print.
Derrida, Jacques. ‘‘The Law of Genre.’’ Acts of
Literature. New York: Routledge, 1992. 221^52.
Print.
Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘‘Classical/Post Classical
Narrative (Die Hard).’’ Elsaesser and Buckland
26 ^79. Print.
Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘‘Oedipal Narratives and the
Post-Oedipal (Back to the Future).’’ Elsaesser and
Buckland 220 ^ 48. Print.
Elsaesser, Thomas, and Warren Buckland. Studying
Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie
Analysis. London: Arnold, 2002. Print.
Gelley, Alexander.‘‘Introduction.’’ Unruly Examples:
On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity. Ed. Alexander Gelley.
Stanford: Stanford UP,1995.1^24. Print.
Hagin, Boaz. ‘‘Examples in Theory: Interpassive
Illustrations and Celluloid Fetishism.’’ Cinema
Journal 48.1 (2008): 3^26. Print.
Heath, Stephen. ‘‘Cinema and Psychoanalysis:
Parallel Histories.’’ Endless Night: Cinema and
Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories. Ed. Janet
Bergstrom. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of
California P,1999. 25 ^56. Print.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul
Guyer and Allen W.Wood.Cambridge: Cambridge
UP,1998. Print.
Kant, Immanuel.The Metaphysics of Morals: Practical
Philosophy. Trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP,1996. Print.
Leibniz, Gottfried. Monadology: Routledge
Philosophy Guidebook to Leibniz and the Monadology.
By Anthony Savile. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Print.
Lyons, John. Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in
Early Modern France and Italy. Princeton: Princeton
UP,1989. Print.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Xavier Mendik, eds. The Cult
Film Reader. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008. Print.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Xavier Mendik. ‘‘Editorial
Introduction: What is a Cult Film?’’ Mathijs and
Mendik 1^11. Print.
Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of Film.
Trans. Michael Taylor. Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1991. Print.
Pisters, Patricia. The Matrix of Visual Culture:
Working with Deleuze in Film Theory. Stanford:
Stanford UP, 2003. Print.
Privett, Ray, and James Kreul. ‘‘The Strange Case
of Noe«l Carroll: A Conversation with the
Controversial Film Philosopher.’’ Senses of Cinema
10 Apr. 2001.Web.1 June 2008.
Singer, Ben. Melodrama and Modernity: Early
Sensational Cinema and its Contexts. New York:
Columbia UP, 2001. Print.
Stamp, Richard. ‘‘‘Another Exemplary Case’:
Z›iz›ek’s Logic of Examples.’’ The Truth of Z›iz›ek. Ed.
Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp. London:
Continuum, 2007.161^76. Print.
Vernet, Mark. Lectures du film. Paris: Albatros,1963.
Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. ‘‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism?
Yes, Please.’’ Butler, Laclau, and Z›iz›ek 90 ^135.
Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. Enjoy your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in
Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj, ed. Everything you Wanted to Know
about Lacan . . . But were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock.
London: Verso,1992. Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. For They Know Not What They Do:
Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso, 1991.
Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof
Kiesloswki between Theory and Post-Theory. London:
BFI, 2001. Print.
54
 zarzosa
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: Jacques Lacan through
Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT P,1991. Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. The Metastases of Enjoyment. London:
Verso,1994. Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj. Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and
Consequences. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Z›iz›ek, Slavoj.The Sublime Object of Ideology. London:
Verso,1989. Print.
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UNL] at 03:00 30 October 2012

Agustin Zarzosa
Purchase College
735 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577
USA
E-mail: agustin.zarzosa@purchase.edu