Theoretical projections: cinematic experience and political thinking

ABSTRACT Film matters to political theory, Davide Panagia has argued, because its unique properties as a medium create the possibility of experiencing ideas about politics in a way that the arguments of textual political theory cannot convey. This paper disputes this account by drawing on work on both the nature of political theory and on the concept of visual argument. It uses the work of Gilles Deleuze to argue that even if the filmic image cannot be understood on the analogy of language, insofar as film seeks to convey political ideas, these are always at least implicitly linguistic. Using examples drawn from classic and contemporary political films, the paper provides a classification of political films by genre according to the same criteria as written works of political theory. It concludes that although Deleuze’s argument that film can present political images and signs in a way that has no linguistic equivalent may be correct, Panagia’s further claim that there are political ideas that are uniquely suited to, or can only be conveyed in, a visual medium has no warrant.