Article:

Wahrnehmung, Motorik, Affekt. Zum Problem des Körpers in der phänomenologischen und analytischen Filmphilosophie

When theorizing about moving images, it is imperative to ask how the human body is part of both the images’ reception and also their production. Film philosophy has articulated two almost opposing answers to this question. In Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenology the lived body is ubiquitous. Sobchack not only ascribes an enormous value to bodily perception but, in an analogy to the human body, she also develops an extremely problematic concept of a film’s body. In contrast, the analytical philosopher Noël Carroll shows above all how bodily perception and motility are not involved in the reception of moving images, or, if they are involved, it is in a very different way from typi-cal everyday situations. Moreover, also in contrast to Sobchack he empha-sizes the importance of bodily affects. Therefore, it is the article’s aim, on the one hand, to demonstrate these two positions, and on the other hand, to dia-lectically bring them in a fruitful dialogue in order to uncover their shortcom-ings, especially with respect to the central areas of the underlying concepts as lived body vs. body and multimodality.