Out of the Past

Ben Tyrer teaches Film Studies at King's College London, UK. His research interests include film theory, film-philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He is co-editor of the collection, Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable: from Culture to the Clinic (Routledge, 2016), and has published work in Studies in French Cinema and Film-Philosophy, as well as several edited collections on psychoanalysis, culture and society. He is also co-coordinator of the Psychoanalysis in Our Time research network, supported by the Nordic Summer University.

• Introduction: Into the Past/Out of the Past.- PART I: SYMBOLIC.- Chapter 1. Film Noir as Point de Capiton: Retroactive Temporality and Symbolic Structure.- PART II: REAL.- Chapter 2. Film Noir Doesn't Exist: Impossibility, Definition and the Point of Failure.- PART III: IMAGINARY.- Chapter 3. The Boundaries and Meaning of Noir: Suture, Metaphor and the Historical Imaginary.- PART IV: BORROMEAN KNOT.- Chapter 4. The Idea of Noir: Fiction, Signifier, Genre.

“Tyrer’s study is nonetheless one that seeks to break new ground with pioneering arguments. The result is a collection that is simultaneously regressive and progressive, at once looking backward and forward.” (Daniel Clarke, Film-Philosophy, Vol. 24, 2020)