Out of time
Subtitle: the ethics of atemporal cinema
By: Todd McGowan
Publisher: University of Minnesota
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9780816669950; 9780816669967
Description: "In Out of Time, Todd McGowan takes as his starting point the emergence of a temporal aesthetic in cinema that arose in response to the digital era. Linking developments in cinema to current debates within philosophy, McGowan claims that films that change the viewer's relation to time constitute a new cinematic mode: atemporal cinema.

In atemporal cinema, formal distortions of time introduce spectators to an alternative way of experiencing existence in time - or, more exactly, a way of experiencing existence out of time. McGowan draws on contemporary psychoanalysis, particularly Jacques Lacan, to argue that atemporal cinema unfolds according to the logic of the psychoanalytic notion of the drive rather than that of desire, which has conventionally been the guiding concept of psychoanalytic film studies.

Despite their thematic diversity, these films distort chronological time with a shared motivation: to reveal the logic of repetition. Like psychoanalysis, McGowan contends, the atemporal mode locates enjoyment in the embrace of repetition rather than in the search for the new and different."--Pub. desc.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : the origins of the atemporal film; title: Temporality after the end of time in Pulp fiction; title: Not the worst of all possible worlds : sacrificing the object in Butterfly effect; title: Eternity without sunshine: Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and the hopelessness of love; title: The path to politics in The constant gardener; title: "Something is lost" : the ethics of absolute negativity in 21 grams; title: Timeless in space : placing eternity in 2046; title: Affirmation of the lost object : Peppermint candy and the end of progress; title: The temporal flight from trauma : Irréversible and the critique of experience; title: conclusion : an infinite Memento.