D N Rodowick: 4 books

Rhetorically charged debates over theory have divided scholars of the humanities for decades. In Elegy for Theory, D. N. Rodowick steps back from well-rehearsed arguments pro and con to assess why theory has become such a deeply contested concept. Far from lobbying for a return to the "high theory"...

In recent decades, contemporary art has displayed an ever increasing and complicated fascination with the cinema—or, perhaps more accurately, as D. N. Rodowick shows, a certain memory of cinema. Contemporary works of film, video, and moving image installation mine a vast and virtual archive of cultural...

Theory—an embattled discourse for decades—faces a new challenge from those who want to model the methods of all scholarly disciplines on the sciences. What is urgently needed, says D. N. Rodowick, is a revitalized concept of theory that can assess the limits of scientific explanation and defend the unique character of humanistic understanding.

This book argues that serious misreadings of Freud and Lacan on sexual difference have characterized prevailing models of psychoanalytic film criticism. In critiquing theories of identification and female spectatorship, the author maintains that early film theorists and feminist critics are equally...