Toward a Model of Distributed Affectivity for Cinematic Ethics
Ethical Experience, Trauma, and History
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Abstract
Many contemporary applications of theories of affect to cinematic ethical experience focus on its consequences for empathy and moral allegiance. Such approaches have made advances in bridging phenomenological and cognitivist approaches to film-philosophy, but miss the importance of complex affects that problematize empathy and moral judgment. For example, the rendering of trauma in Aimless Bullet (Hyun-mok Yu, 1961) involves aesthetic shifts that reframe its depiction of postwar experience and build a complex emotional picture of sociopolitical conditions that affect individual and community life. In this article, I argue that to understand the ethical significance of complex cinematic emotion we can develop an account of how affective-aesthetic affordances establish distributed spaces for dynamic affective engagement. To do this, I draw upon theories of scaffolded mind, classical Indian rasa aesthetics, and phenomenological aesthetics. This hybrid account will allow us to articulate the ways that film can help us comprehend the ethical significance of complex affective situations.
Contributor Notes
Philip Martin is a PhD Candidate at Macquarie University, Sydney. His research focuses on philosophical aesthetics and cross-cultural philosophy, and he has published on film-philosophy and Japanese aesthetics. His dissertation project aims to develop new approaches to critical aesthetics through a cross-cultural dialogue between the Kyo¯to School, Immanuel Kant, Abhinavagupta, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. Email: philip.martin@hdr.mq.edu.au