BETWEEN GAZES

Here is my latest academic contribution to the project of enlightenment in the form of outpouring of textbooks.

BETWEEN GAZES: FEMINIST, QUEER AND OTHER FILMS is a text book in which I introduce key terms in feminist, queer, and postcolonial/diaspora film. My point of departure is in the question “what do you want from me?” Although I don’t engage Lacan’s psychoanalysis in any major depth – he never really addressed anything else in his writings – he snicks in through the back door. Which is good. However, the book analyzes 14 films from different film theory angles in 10 chapters, going tangentially also from the Lacanian theory of the gaze to engaging with emotion and the arts à la Stanley Cavell and Noëll Carroll. The analyses reframe questions of subjectivity and representation in what I hope is an entertaining entanglement of visual with textual poetics in film.

For those in need of details, I can disclose that the word ‘fuck’ occurs 7 times in the introduction alone. So, there’s hope for academic writing.

The critics said: “ Intriguing, well written in voluptuous/penetrating style!!!” Robert Gibbons

CONTENTS

BETWEEN GAZES
Introduction / 9

HOT OR NOT
Some Like it Hot & Down With Love / 21

CUSTOM COLOR
The Color Purple / 49

FRYING FRANCHISE
Fried Green Tomatoes / 69

CARPE DIEM IN BLACK AND WHITE
Broken Flowers / 89

SAVING SOLANAS
I Shot Andy Warhol / 103

ORLANDO’S STAKE
Orlando / 117

MELLOW MÉLANGE
A Streetcar Named Desire & A Streetcar Named Marge / 135

SHAKE IT SHAKESPEARE
Titus Andronicus & The Merchant of Venice / 149

LAUGHING STOCK
Death in Venice & Boys Don’t Cry / 183

GORGEOUS GEOGRAPHY
East is East / 203

BEYOND GAZES
Epilogue / 219

CALYPTIC

The Nietzsche Circle people have done it again. The supremely aesthetically, beautifully, and intelligently conceived Hyperion, a journal on art, philosophy, and literature presents us with its new contents. The December issue has just went public and as I have two contributions in it, I, can’t help but make the announcement. Even if you don’t want to read anything, just check the design for the whole issue. It’s a true feast for the eye. Mark Daniel Cohen has outdone himself, again – as every time, both in content and in form. Congrats, my friend.

However, if you do want to read something, you may want to glance at my review essay on prophets seducing philosophers: Ex-silentio Eloquence: Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle of It.

Or else read my poem dedicated to Zarathustra, and marvel at Cohen’s cover design.

Indeed, art does make us feel better about our lot. It pulls our minds out of entropy and throws it into synergy. Experiencing such metaphysical unlikelihood is as good as solving impossible tasks.

As with Nietzsche, we can all speak by way of retro-diction, de-calyption, and proleptic benediction.

Salve.

Writing Fever – Framing Thoughts

As our good old friend Gertrude Stein used to say: “the smartest ones publish themselves.” So we do indeed, by all means and good intentions. It’s the rule of the extravagant. I’ll post here snippets of academic reviews for academic journals. Fragments and quotes on fragments and quotes.

Gertrude Stein forever