Cinematic judgment and universal communicability
on Benjamin and Kant with Metz
pp. 202-218
in: Silke Panse, Dennis Rothermel (eds), A critique of judgment in film and television, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
What does Christian Metz mean when he writes, in The Imaginary Signifier, that "the spectator identifies with himself, with himself as a pure act of perception (as wakefulness, alertness): as the condition of possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental subject, which comes before every there is" (1982, 49)? What does Metz mean, first of all, by declaring that the spectator identities with himself? What is a "pure act of perception"? What, furthermore, is a "condition of possibility" that opens up or grounds ("comes before") this perception? What is a "transcendental subject," and why or how does such a subject come before every "there is"? There is a great deal contained in this sentence that comes as a culmination of a number of observations Metz makes in his famous essay.
