Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity

Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity tackles the burning questions of globalisation. While critiquing the dated, European, even French nature of Deleuzian philosophy, David Martin-Jones brings out its contemporary relevance in a global context. !The strength of the analyses, and the work as a whole lies in its avoidance of triumphalism, whether national or transnational. Applied to such highly political questions, the notions of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation emerge in all their complexity and power. (original quote in French) An impressive feat, and a model for future scholarship in this vein. Martin-Jones makes Deleuze 'matter' in that his historical perspective stresses that the Deleuzian distinction between time- and movement-images is not merely formal, but deeply political. Screen David Martin-Jones' Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity is one of the standout books of the year. Martin-Jones provides a profound and original reassessment of Gilles Deleuze's own concepts of style and history in modern cinema. At the same time, the book goes beyond Deleuze, indeed displaces his thought on to new territories. With his engaging and deeply thoughtful analyses of mixtures of movement and time in contemporary world cinema, Martin-Jones takes us beyond movement and time-images towards something like a new genre-hybrid global cinemas where questions of national identity are deterritorialised within and across borders and cultures. This is a remarkable book. -- Professor David Rodowick, Harvard University Martin-Jones combines theoretical insights with a profound knowledge of various national cinemas and sharp analytical observations. His reading of a challengingly wide selection of contemporary films as Deleuzian time-images 'caught in the act' of becoming movement-images in relation to national identity offers a convincing and important contribution to film studies and to Deleuzian scholarship. -- Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity is a study of national cinema as archaeology, lucidly and accessibly examining recent international cinema through Deleuze's cinematic philosophy. Drawing attention to the sometimes neglected but analytically productive categories of the movement-image, David Martin-Jones demonstrates that movement-image and time-image cinema, far from being discrete categories, de- and re-territorialize one another in a single film. At a moment when temporal discontinuity is fashionable in both independent and industrial cinema, Martin-Jones usefully distinguishes between films whose indeterminacy is ultimately only apparent, and those that creatively exploit the disunity of identity over time. In turn he shows how these works tend to either reinforce triumphalist national - and transnational - myths, or to 'critique the pedagogical time of the nation'. -- Laura Marks, Simon Fraser University Martin-Jones is able to argue for the manifestation of the relationship between history and memory via a particular film's focus on narrative time, and thus re-engage his textual analysis with the particular national cinema's political or historical context. Given that such a project gestures to the potential of film analysis for constructive political critique and cultural analysis, this volume posits an intervention in film studies' discursive formation. -- Sharon Lin Tay Screening the Past Martin-Jones' book contains suggestive lines of inquiry for the analysis of the question of national identity in cinema. He manages to construct a theoretical model able to think through multiple perspectives when discussing national identity, narrative and nationality as interconnected dimensions. Secuencias: Revista de Historia del Cine Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity tackles the burning questions of globalisation. While critiquing the dated, European, even French nature of Deleuzian philosophy, David Martin-Jones brings out its contemporary relevance in a global context. !The strength of the analyses, and the work as a whole lies in its avoidance of triumphalism, whether national or transnational. Applied to such highly political questions, the notions of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation emerge in all their complexity and power. (original quote in French) An impressive feat, and a model for future scholarship in this vein. Martin-Jones makes Deleuze 'matter' in that his historical perspective stresses that the Deleuzian distinction between time- and movement-images is not merely formal, but deeply political. David Martin-Jones' Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity is one of the standout books of the year. Martin-Jones provides a profound and original reassessment of Gilles Deleuze's own concepts of style and history in modern cinema. At the same time, the book goes beyond Deleuze, indeed displaces his thought on to new territories. With his engaging and deeply thoughtful analyses of mixtures of movement and time in contemporary world cinema, Martin-Jones takes us beyond movement and time-images towards something like a new genre-hybrid global cinemas where questions of national identity are deterritorialised within and across borders and cultures. This is a remarkable book. Martin-Jones combines theoretical insights with a profound knowledge of various national cinemas and sharp analytical observations. His reading of a challengingly wide selection of contemporary films as Deleuzian time-images 'caught in the act' of becoming movement-images in relation to national identity offers a convincing and important contribution to film studies and to Deleuzian scholarship. Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity is a study of national cinema as archaeology, lucidly and accessibly examining recent international cinema through Deleuze's cinematic philosophy. Drawing attention to the sometimes neglected but analytically productive categories of the movement-image, David Martin-Jones demonstrates that movement-image and time-image cinema, far from being discrete categories, de- and re-territorialize one another in a single film. At a moment when temporal discontinuity is fashionable in both independent and industrial cinema, Martin-Jones usefully distinguishes between films whose indeterminacy is ultimately only apparent, and those that creatively exploit the disunity of identity over time. In turn he shows how these works tend to either reinforce triumphalist national - and transnational - myths, or to 'critique the pedagogical time of the nation'. Martin-Jones is able to argue for the manifestation of the relationship between history and memory via a particular film's focus on narrative time, and thus re-engage his textual analysis with the particular national cinema's political or historical context. Given that such a project gestures to the potential of film analysis for constructive political critique and cultural analysis, this volume posits an intervention in film studies' discursive formation. Martin-Jones' book contains suggestive lines of inquiry for the analysis of the question of national identity in cinema. He manages to construct a theoretical model able to think through multiple perspectives when discussing national identity, narrative and nationality as interconnected dimensions.