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Memory and Imagination in FilmBazin, Bresson and Scorsese: Performatives in Film

Memory and Imagination in Film: Bazin, Bresson and Scorsese: Performatives in Film [Since the late 1970s, literary studies have been fascinated by the concept of performativity. The notion of performative language (or speech acts) was launched by J. L. Austin in his 1962 book, How to Do Things with Words: here, he makes clear that performative utterances mark the link between words and actions, whether legal or practical: for example ‘Close the window’ or ‘I declare you husband and wife’. In his opinion these words have to be pronounced in real-life situations; and they are ‘hollow or void if pronounced by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in a soliloquy’.1 This rather secondary statement provoked a reaction among the defenders of literature. The dispute took on great proportions with polemics between Jacques Derrida and John Searle. The literary critic Hillis Miller, who took a lively part in these discussions for decades, defended the active role of literature. He proposed that the act of reading literature must cause some effects on human lives and minds:There must be an influx of performative power from the linguistic transactions involved in the act of reading into the realms of knowledge, politics, and history. Literature must be in some ways a cause and not merely an effect, if the study of literature is to be other than the relatively trivial study of one of the epiphenomena of society, part of the technological assimilation or assertion of mastery over all features of human life which is called the human sciences.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Memory and Imagination in FilmBazin, Bresson and Scorsese: Performatives in Film

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References (2)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014
ISBN
978-1-349-31743-1
Pages
94 –117
DOI
10.1057/9781137319432_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Since the late 1970s, literary studies have been fascinated by the concept of performativity. The notion of performative language (or speech acts) was launched by J. L. Austin in his 1962 book, How to Do Things with Words: here, he makes clear that performative utterances mark the link between words and actions, whether legal or practical: for example ‘Close the window’ or ‘I declare you husband and wife’. In his opinion these words have to be pronounced in real-life situations; and they are ‘hollow or void if pronounced by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in a soliloquy’.1 This rather secondary statement provoked a reaction among the defenders of literature. The dispute took on great proportions with polemics between Jacques Derrida and John Searle. The literary critic Hillis Miller, who took a lively part in these discussions for decades, defended the active role of literature. He proposed that the act of reading literature must cause some effects on human lives and minds:There must be an influx of performative power from the linguistic transactions involved in the act of reading into the realms of knowledge, politics, and history. Literature must be in some ways a cause and not merely an effect, if the study of literature is to be other than the relatively trivial study of one of the epiphenomena of society, part of the technological assimilation or assertion of mastery over all features of human life which is called the human sciences.2]

Published: Oct 13, 2015

Keywords: Artistic Object; Rival Gang; Greek Tragedy; Performative Utterance; Technological Assimilation

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