Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind

DAVID LAROCCA is the author, editor, or coeditor of a dozen books. He edited The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema, a commemorative issue of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, Inheriting Stanley Cavell, and Stanley Cavell’s Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes. He has taught philosophy and cinema and held visiting research and teaching positions at Binghamton, Cornell, Cortland, Harvard, Ithaca College, the School of Visual Arts, and Vanderbilt. www.DavidLaRocca.org

• ForewordThe Importance of Stanley Cavell for the Study of FilmSandra LaugierIntroduction The Seriousness of Film SustainedDavid LaRocca I. The Companionship of Film and Philosophy1. Love and Class in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven AllowsRobert B. Pippin 2. Lévinas, Cavell, and the Films of the Dardenne BrothersWilliam Rothman 3. The Specter of the Electronic Screen: Bruno Varela’s Reception of CavellByron Davies II. Recollecting and Remembering 4. The Pertinence of the Stars: Achieving Mortality in Little Did I Know and Only Angels Have WingsSteven G. Affeldt 5. In Praise of Cinema: Cavell, Arnaud Desplechin, and Telling What Counts in Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesseJoseph Mai III. Rethinking Remarriage 6. Morality and Recognition: A Cavellian Reading of Elaine May’s A New LeafPaul Schofield 7. Remarriage Comedy, the Next Generation: The Bold Pursuit of HappinessK. L. EvansIV. The Female Voice Heard Anew 8. Passionate Utterances: Cavell, Film, and the Female VoiceCatherine Wheatley9. Cavell, Altman, Cassavetes: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman in A Woman Under the Influence and NashvilleCharles Warren V. Contending with Conditions, Human and Otherwise10. Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Cavell: Cinematic Syntax, Avoidance, and AcknowledgmentDavid Mikics 11. The Use and Abuse of Documentary Confessionals: Cavell, Žižek, and the Possibility of Justice in The Unknown Known and The Act of KillingAmir Khan 12. Pursuits of Happiness in the Time of War: On Borhane Alaouié’s Beirut: The EncounterDaniele Rugo VI. Visibility, Audibility, and Intelligibility 13. Chantal Akerman and Stanley Cavell: Viewing in La Captive and Reviewing in Moral PerfectionismKate Rennebohm 14. Contemplating the Sounds of Contemplative Cinema: Stanley Cavell and Kelly ReichardtDavid LaRoccaAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex

This volume pushes Cavellian scholarship forward, showing that the value of Cavell’s work lies not simply in understanding it but in applying it. By extending the philosopher’s methods to an exciting range of international and contemporary films, the chapters compose a timely consideration on what it is to read a film, and to read a film generously.