Marx, Freud, Nietzsche--in vastly different ways all three employed the metaphor of the camera obscura in their work. In this classic book--at last available in an English translation--the distinguished French philosopher Sarah Kofman offers an extended reflection on this metaphor. She contrasts the mechanical function of the camera obscura as a kind of copy machine, rendering a mirror-image of the work, with its use in the writings of master thinkers. In her opening chapter on Marx, Kofman provides a reading of inversion as necessary to the ideological process. She then explores the metaphor of the camera obscura in Freud's description of the unconscious. For Nietzsche the camera obscura is a "metaphor for forgetting." Kofman asks here whether the "magical apparatus" of the camera obscura, rather than bringing about clarity, serves some thinkers as fetish. Camera Obscura is a powerful discussion of a metaphor that dominates contemporary theory from philosophy to film.
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Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence:
In The German Ideology, Marx has recourse to an analogy which he declares is perfect for describing both the process of inversion which is part of any ideology and the necessity of this process: 'If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life process.' Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The German Ideology New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In The German Ideology, Marx has recourse to an analogy which he declares is perfect for describing both the process of inversion which is part of any ideology and the necessity of this process: 'If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life process.' Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The German Ideology New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 19
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12
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- Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud on 4 pages
- Nietzsche and Metaphor by Sarah Kofman in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Margins of Philosophy by Jacques Derrida in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Genealogy of Morals (Dover Thrift Editions) by Friedrich Nietzsche in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by Friedrich Nietzsche in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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- The Enchantments of Technology by Lee Worth Bailey on page 72, and Back Matter
- Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture by Gen Doy in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War by Shirley Samuels in Back Matter
- Mimesis (The New Critical Idiom) by Matthew Potolsky in Back Matter
- Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers by Alan D. Schrift in Back Matter
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