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The Eye of the Cinematograph
Lévinas and Realisms of the Body
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Book Presentation:
Explores the encounter between Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical thought and aesthetic realisms of the body
• Presents an interdisciplinary approach that brings together film studies, philosophies of ethics, cultural studies and critical theory to contribute to the fields of film-philosophy and cinematic thinking
• Expands the existing enquiries into the consequences of Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy for aesthetics and draws out a new encounter between his ethical thought and film
• Makes a case for the hospitality of the cinematic image by investigating its unique visual being as a gift and proposes an affirmative account of the ethics of the cinematograph through discussions of cinematic realism
The Eye of the Cinematograph investigates the ethical and aesthetic implications of the automatic formation of the body’s image by the camera. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’ thought, Manafi asks what happens when the other makes their body available to the gaze of the camera to be automatically recorded, and this giving of the body is preserved within the image, juxtaposed with other images to allude to a story that might otherwise remain untold.
To locate the ethical at this intersection of the body and the aesthetic, this book articulates an ethical account of a diverse range of film theories to demonstrate alternative encounters with the other that realisms of the body offer. Manafi discusses works by Chantal Akerman, Bruno Dumont, Pedro Costa, Gus Van Sant, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Abbas Kiarostami, Amir Naderi, Jafar Panahi, Carlos Reygadas and Andy Warhol to make a case for the ethics and aesthetics of incompleteness and performative failure.
About the Author:
Keyvan Manafi completed his PhD in film and philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he currently works as an Arts academic programs advisor.
Press Reviews:
Manafi’s monograph is a commendable example of a graduate dissertation manifesting into a monograph [...] Through Manafi’s attempts to render Levinas’ ethics through the lens of cinema (a bold gesture against the grain of the philosopher’s own general dissociation from the arts), he helps to showcase new encounters with the cinematic image, in an effort to bring further understanding to the often ineffable cinematic image that keeps us returning with renewed inquiry and openness.– M. Sellers Johnson, Senses of Cinema
Manafi’s monograph is a commendable example of a graduate dissertation manifesting into a monograph. [...] Through Manafi’s attempts to render Levinas’ ethics through the lens of cinema (a bold gesture against the grain of the philosopher’s own general dissociation from the arts), he helps to showcase new encounters with the cinematic image, in an effort to bring further understanding to the often ineffable cinematic image that keeps us returning with renewed inquiry and openness.
– M. Sellers Johnson, Senses Of Cinema
The Eye of the Cinematograph demonstrates beautifully what Levinas can bring to film-philosophy – a cinematic ethics evoking the alterity of the Other. Bringing Levinas and Bazin together, Manafi explores the ethical potential of spectatorship, the realisms of the body, and the ethical epiphany possible through film. An eloquent, impressive work.
– Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University
Proposing a novel marriage between Bazinian realism and Levinasian philosophy, Keyvan Manafi’s The Eye of the Cinematograph compellingly asks us to look closely at the filmed body in all its promises and indeterminacies. This is an elegantly written book that sheds new light on the confluences between film ethics, nonprofessional acting and durational cinema.
– Tiago de Luca, University of Warwick
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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Improving Passions (2017)
Sentimental Aesthetics and American Film
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