D.w. Mckiernan, Cinema And Community

摘要

How am I going to live with my neighbours; neighbours who I might not physically meet, neighbours who might be drawing their first breath or their last, neighbours who have no reason either to like me or dislike me, neighbours who see the world quite differently from the way I see it but who are my neighbours nevertheless? (p. 4) Behind every community, as Derek McKiernan's excellent study Cinema and Community explains, lie political, social, cultural and most of all ethical questions. How 'should we live together?' Every part of this phrase is problematic. Cultural theory has rightly become suspicious of any 'we' and its presupposed phatic consensus. 'Living together', cohabitation, usually presupposes a common reality, maybe even a 'habitat', which, however, as social and cultural constructivists tell us, is strictly speaking merely a discursive and 'performative' act - it only exists in 'texts' and by virtue of the sharing of symbolic representations and values.