Early critics of cinema often faulted it for lacking temporal differentiation and complexity, and film was often seen as condemning passive spectators to view a linear succession of images within a timeless present. Such denunciations were often either implicitly or explicitly based on comparisons with literature, which has the temporal plasticity of language at its disposal. Filmmakers have, however, developed a variety of specifically visual techniques for representing and manipulating time--what Gilles Deleuze calls "time images." In a contemporary culture arguably less and less interested in temporal difference--metaphysical, memorial and/or historical--what political-aesthetic interventions and reconstructions do the cinematic narrative categories of time, history and memory make possible?
Send abstracts (including a brief cv) or inquiries by September 15 to:
Inez Hedges, Northeastern University, Department of Modern Languages, Boston, MA 02115, Inezhedges@aol.com
OR
Brian Rourke, Department of English, New Mexico State University, MSC
3E, PO Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, mailto:brouke@ix.netcom.com