Description: Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this crucial question for the emergent field of film philosophy, American Avant-Garde Cinema's Philosophy of the In-Between argues that the films of the American avant-garde do in fact do philosophy and illuminates the ethical stakes of their aesthetic interventions. Author Rebecca A. Sheehan contends that American avant-garde cinema's characteristic self-reflexivity is an interrogation of the modes and stakes of our engagement with the world on and beyond the screen.
Review Quotes: "... Sheehan develops an original approach to avant-garde cinema that contributes to the field of film philosophy in productive ways." -- Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University, Projections
"Sheehan's film-philosophical engagement with experimental cinema promises to be relevant not only for a self-reflexive exercise of media scholarship, but also for a more ethical engagement with the world beyond cinema." -- Giulia Rho, Film-Philosophy"Highly Recommended." -- C.D. Kay, emeritus, Wofford College, CHOICE"In this exciting and essential new book, Sheehan presents a completely new reconsideration, both historical and philosophical, of North American experimental film. Sheehan's book is also an important intervention in current debates about 'film philosophy, ' as she draws out with precision and depth the philosophical interest of filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Michael Snow, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Phil Solomon, James Benning, Sharon Lockhart, David Gatten, Marie Menken, Pat O'Neill, Ray and Charles Eames, Ernie Gehr, Ken Jacobs, and Hollis Frampton. This book will appeal to scholars of experimental cinema, to that growing audience working at the intersection of philosophy and cinema, and perhaps more broadly to researchers in the philosophy of art, Continental philosophy, and art criticism." -- D. N. Rodowick, University of Chicago"American Avant-Garde Cinema's Philosophy of the In-Between is a stunning achievement, a true gift for those of us who value-and for those who need to learn to better appreciate-the aesthetic dimension of ethical experience. Sheehan's pragmatic account of American avant-garde filmmaking so beautifully situates the work in relation to the complexity of ordinary experience, where others have been content to lift the films from the lives and worlds that brought them into existence in the first place. In showing us what pragmatists and ordinary language philosophers share with the cinematic avant-garde-namely, a concern with contingent and pluralistic conceptions of self and world, none of which can be separated from the challenges of aesthetic experience-Sheehan has opened a whole new world for film philosophy." -- Brian Price, University of Toronto"Marvelous book" -- Donald Brackett, Critics At Large