Selected topics in the study of film.

Triangulation is a major trope of 20th century critical theory: in Freudian psychoanalysis, subjectivity is formed in a triangular relation to the Mother and the Father; just as in Lacan, the structuring triangle consists of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The theories of kinship in structural anthropology posit exogamy as a principle of sociality; in French existentialism, the third takes the form of the gaze that interrupts the encounter between self and other. More abstractly, in other Hegelian-derived theory, triangulation takes the form of dialectics: the production of a third from two opposing terms. The idea of triangulation informs philosophy of science (Serres’s “parasite”) and social science (Girard on the mimetic and mediated nature of desire) as well as deconstruction (Derrida’s “supplement”), and it is crucial to media theory, inherent in the very idea of “mediation.” But this is to make triangulation sound very straight, whereas in fact is anything but that. In her taking up of Girard, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in Between Men and other texts showed how the triangle is a queer shape indeed. In this seminar, we will explore, then, a queer theory of triangulation, passing through psychoanalysis, French philosophy, and media theory. But insofar as triangulation is bound up in desire; it is also crucial to the production of narrative form. Following the tradition of Sedgwick and other writers of queer theory, we will anchor our theoretical investigation in analyses of creative texts (in this case, films). We will watch and discuss films that stage dramas of triangulation — such as Jules et Jim, Plein Soleil, Diabolique, Beau Travail, La Noire de… and works of melodrama by Douglas Sirk, Todd Haynes, Fassbinder, and others — in order to examine how triangulation structures narratives of desire, and how these films generate their own, queer relational theories. There will be a strong focus on students’ research, producing papers that bring theoretical approaches to the close reading of films.

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