Like a Film

In this stimulating collection of theoretical writings on film, photography, and art, Timothy Murray examines relations between artistic practice, sexual and racial politics, theory and cultural studies. Like a Film investigates how the cinematic apparatus has invaded the theory of culture, as a way of weaving together the disparate psycho-political' fabrics of cultural production, psychoanalysis and politically-marked subject positions. Murray analyses the impact of cinematic perceptions and productions on a wide array of cultural practices: experimental art, from the film-making of Yvonne Rainer and Derek Jarman to Laurence Olivier's Othello ; social and political narratives of feminism, homosexuality, race and ecology; the representational and visual theory of Lyotard, Torok, Barthes, Ropars-Wuilleumier, Zizek, Silverman and Laplanche; articulations of history from the Renaissance visions of Shakespeare and Caravaggio to modern sexual and political fantasy. Murray suggests that the many destabilising traumas of culture remain accessible to us because they are structured so much like a film. In direct response to multicultural debates over the value of theory and the aim of artistic practice. Murray addresses questions of cultural identity, the role of Continental psychoanalysis and philosophy and the ideological importance of artistic form.