The Neuro-Image A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture [Hardcover]

Arguing that today's viewers move through a character's brain instead of looking through his or her eyes or mental landscape, this book approaches twenty-first-century globalized cinema through the concept of the neuro-image. Pisters explains why this concept has emerged now, and she elaborates its threefold nature through research from three domainsDeleuzian (schizoanalytic) philosophy, digital networked screen culture, and neuroscientific research. These domains return in the book's tripartite structure. Part One, on the brain as neuroscreen, suggests rich connections between film theory, mental illness, and cognitive neuroscience. Part Two explores neuro-images from a philosophical perspective, paying close attention to their ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic dimensions. Political and ethical aspects of the neuro-image are discussed in Part Three. Topics covered along the way include the omnipresence of surveillance, the blurring of the false and the real and the affective powers of the neo-baroque, and the use of neuro-images in politics, historical memory, and war.

[A] magisterial work . . . Like all books worth reading, Pisters's work on the neuro-image raises more questions than it answers. This outstanding work of scholarship makes a major contribution to the field of film studies and to the understanding of the work of Gilles Deleuze.The Neuro-Imageextends Deleuze's questions and concerns by thinking through recent developments in film and moving-images culture and succeeds magnificently in mobilizing Deleuze's ideas in order to discover something new. Patricia Pisters is Professor of Media Culture and Film Studies and Chair of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her publications includeThe Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory(Stanford, 2003). Drawing on recent research in neurobiology and cognitive psychology as well as her own thinking about currently prevalent topics in cinema studilãq