## Philip Rosen (2017). *Eisenstein's Marxism, Marxism's Eisenstein: Utopian Spectatorship and Aesthetic Collectivity*. : . > [!INFO] > Type:: [[&]] > Title:: Eisenstein's Marxism, Marxism's Eisenstein: Utopian Spectatorship and Aesthetic Collectivity > Author(s): [[Philip Rosen]] > Year:: 2017 > Tags:: > DOI:: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.04.009 > Citekey:: rosen_eisensteins_2017 > ZoteroURI:: [Open in Zotero: Eisenstein's Marxism, Marxism's Eisenstein: Utopian Spectatorship and Aesthetic Collectivity](zotero://select/items/@rosen_eisensteins_2017) > ReviewedDate:: [[2023-05-16]] ## Citation ```latex [@rosen_eisensteins_2017] ``` ## Related ```dataview TABLE file.aliases AS "Title" FROM [[@rosen_eisensteins_2017]] and -"Plans" and -"resources" ``` ## Summary: - 1935년 연설의 중요성, 계급없음에 문제에 대한 에이젠의 접근 - Eisenstein’s conception of spectatorship might be read as a utopian impulse generated by the dream of classlessness originating in a definitive historical moment but ending up with an ahistorical universalism. - 나는 에이젠슈타인의 관람성 개념이 최종적인 역사적 순간에서의 계급없음이라는 꿈에서 야기된 유토피아적 충동으로 읽힐 수도 있지만 종국에는 비역사적인 보편주의가 되었음을 보여주고자 했다. ## Notes - **I want to ask, then, about how some of his central concerns may be considered within Marxist concerns of his moment, with ways to read a utopian element into them.** [Rosen 2017:481](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2) - Eisenstein. Throughout his life, one of the central concerns of his theoretical work was cinematic and aesthetic form, very often in relation to the audience, the beholder, the reader, or—as we say in film theory—the spectator. To ask about form and the spectator is to understand understanding a film or art work as an address to audiences. [Rosen 2017:481](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2) - 일생에 걸쳐 그의 이론적 작업의 주요 관심사 중 하나는 대개 관객, 보는 이, 독자 혹은 영화이론에서 말하는 관람(the spectator)과 관련된 영화적이고 미적인 형식이었다. 형식이나 관람에 대해 질문한다는 것은 영화나 예술작품을 관객을 향한 말하기(address)로 이해하는 것이다. - But furthermore, he also considered montage in this sense as a work on spectators and with spectators. [Rosen 2017:481](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2) - This example implies the following difficulty for revolutionary filmmakers in the new Soviet Union: Cinema audiences are socioeconomically differentiated; however, according to Eisenstein, this class differentiation determines a differentiation in mental and emotional life. [Rosen 2017:482](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3) - This is the real substance of the supposed failure of Strike. This question of how an audience may be emotionally unified became central to Eisenstein’s subsequent theorizations of film form, film-spectator relations, and ultimately his general aesthetics. [Rosen 2017:482](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3) - *Spectatorship would be historically anticipatory.* [Rosen 2017:482](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3) - As is typical in many of his later writings, he draws on a wide range of fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, history, philosophy, and rhetoric, as well as art history and cinema. [Rosen 2017:483](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4) - Rather daringly, he retains the discredited formalist term montage, but he rethinks it by introducing new concepts of spectatorship into his theory. [Rosen 2017:483](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4) - Instead, he makes inner speech a central element in his account of the spectator and form. Like Vygotsky, his distinction between inner and external speech emphasizes syntactic principles and semantic processes. On the level of semantics, he asserts that for inner speech, words designate particularities and concrete qualities of objects rather than grouping things as abstract concepts. [Rosen 2017:483-4](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4) - But the syntax of inner speech works by means of figurative connections of the particularized, concrete qualities of the things its signs designate. Eisenstein emphasizes the classical rhetorical tropes of metaphor and synecdoche as regulating principles of this syntax of inner speech. [Rosen 2017:484](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5) - We may begin from Eisenstein’s lifelong assumption that the special kinds of affect and emotion provoked by film and art must be traced to form. If inner speech is the flow of emotions, this flow has form, as particularized signs of concrete qualities are linked according to principles such as metaphor and synecdoche. [Rosen 2017:484](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5) - 흐름과 그에 따른 폼 - "\[The\]laws for constructing inner speech are … the same laws that lie at the basis of the whole diversity of laws according to which the form and composition of works of art are constructed. And there is not one formal device \[in film or any art form\] that could fail to be a copy of one of the laws whereby inner speech (as distinct from the logic of external speech) is constructed." (SW3, p. 28.)[Rosen 2017:484](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5) - This 1935 speech was a public foundation for the development of an extremely complex aesthetic theory that Eisenstein worked on for the rest of his life. But this founding claim is relatively simple, and it serves as a new justification for his lifelong attention to aesthetic form: The “content” of the work is the motivating idea for the work. This idea is socially and historically produced. It may be understood in historically materialist terms as ideologically produced, and its presence makes the film practice. But aesthetic form invests this idea with affect and emotion, which calls spectators to participate in the dynamic construction of the work and therefore engage ideology in a participatory way. Form does this because of its deep basis in the imagistic, figurative form or syntax that constitutes the flow of emotions as revealed in the study of inner speech. The correspondence between artistic form and the forms of inner speech underlies the special emotion of the successful film or art work. It also makes it ideologically effective. [Rosen 2017:484-5](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5) ^3edfae - 이 1935년의 연설은 에이젠슈타인이 남은 생애동안 연구했던 지극히 복잡한 [[aesthetics|미학]] 이론을 전개할 수 있게끔 한 공식적인 기반이었다. 하지만 그 근간이 되는 주장은 비교적 단순하며, 그가 일생 동안 미적 형식에 관심을 기울이는 새로운 명분이 된다. 요컨대 작품의 “내용”은 그 작품에 동기를 부여하는 이념이라는 것이다. 이 이념은 사회적으로, 또 역사적으로 만들어진 것이다. 역사유물론적 관점에서 이는 이데올로기적으로 생성된 것이라 볼 수 있으며, 그에 따라 영화적 관습(film practice)이 만들어진다. 그러나 미적 형식은 이 이념에 감정과 정서를 부여하는데, 이를 통해 관객은 작품의 역동적인 구성에 가담하게 되며 따라서 참여의 방식으로 이데올로기에 관여하게 된다. 형식은 내적 발화 연구에서 드러난 바대로 정서의 흐름을 구성하는 상상적이고 비유적인 형식 및 구문에 깊숙이 준거하고 있기 때문에 이를 수행한다. 예술 형식과 내적 발화 형식의 일치는 성공적인 영화나 예술작품이 만들어내는 특별한 정서의 기저를 이루는 것이다. 이는 또한 영화나 예술작품을 이데올로기적으로 효과적이게끔 만든다. - Anthropology now repudiates them. But here we are concerned with the development of Eisenstein’s thinking. On the one hand, this may seem to be confirmation of the Marxist idea that the type of social formation determines mentality. On the other hand, it means the developed art of modern societies exists at the intersection of inner and outer, prelogical and logical, emotional and rational connections of parts and wholes. [Rosen 2017:486](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=7) - *I have tried to show that read Eisenstein’s conception of spectatorship might be read as a utopian impulse generated by the dream of classlessness originating in a definitive historical moment but ending up with an ahistorical universalism.* But does that not make spectatorship the manifestation of a utopian wish, a desire, a dream, as in Western Marxism, and is it a string that can tie Eisenstein’s later theories to Western Marxism rather than a capitulation to Stalinist aesthetics? [Rosen 2017:487](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=8) ## Annotation Extracted Annotations: 16/03/2021, 11:01:00 16/03/2021, 11:01:00 Eisenstein. Throughout his life, one of the central concerns of his theoretical work was cinematic and aesthetic form, very often in relation to the audience, the beholder, the reader, or—as we say in film theory—the spectator. To ask about form and the spectator is to understand understanding a film or art work as an address to audiences. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2 ) ���|���� [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2 ) But furthermore, he also considered montage in this sense as a work on spectators and with spectators. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2 ) I want to ask, then, about how some of his central concerns may be considered within Marxist concerns of his moment, with ways to read a utopian element into them. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=2 ) This example implies the following difficulty for revolutionary filmmakers in the new Soviet Union: Cinema audiences are socioeconomically differentiated; however, according to Eisenstein, this class differentiation determines a differentiation in mental and emotional life. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3 ) This is the real substance of the supposed failure of Strike. This question of how an audience may be emotionally unified became central to Eisenstein's subsequent theorizations of film form, film-spectator relations, and ultimately his general aesthetics. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3 ) Spectatorship would be historically anticipatory. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=3 ) As is typical in many of his later writings, he draws on a wide range of fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, history, philosophy, and rhetoric, as well as art history and cinema. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4 ) ���Į0�X [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4 ) Rather daringly, he retains the discredited formalist term montage, but he rethinks it by introducing new concepts of spectatorship into his theory. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4 ) Instead, he makes inner speech a central element in his account of the spectator and form. Like [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=4 ) Vygotsky, his distinction between inner and external speech emphasizes syntactic principles and semantic processes. On the level of semantics, he asserts that for inner speech, words designate particularities and concrete qualities of objects rather than grouping things as abstract concepts. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) But the syntax of inner speech works by means of figurative connections of the particularized, concrete qualities of the things its signs designate. Eisenstein emphasizes the classical rhetorical tropes of metaphor and synecdoche as regulating principles of this syntax of inner speech. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) We may begin from Eisenstein's lifelong assumption that the special kinds of affect and emotion provoked by film and art must be traced to form. If inner speech is the flow of emotions, this flow has form, as particularized signs of concrete qualities are linked according to principles such as metaphor and synecdoche. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) ���P���� [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) [The]laws for constructing inner speech are … the same laws that lie at the basis of the whole diversity of laws according to which the form and composition of works of art are constructed. And there is not one formal device [in film or any art form] that could fail to be a copy of one of the laws whereby inner speech (as distinct from the logic of external speech) is constructed. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) This 1935 speech was a public foundation for the development of an extremely complex aesthetic theory that Eisenstein worked on for the rest of his life. But this founding claim is relatively simple, and it serves as a new justification for his lifelong attention to aesthetic form: The “content” of the work is the motivating idea for the work. This idea is socially and historically produced. It may be understood in historically materialist [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) �� [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=5 ) terms as ideologically produced, and its presence makes the film practice. But aesthetic form invests this idea with affect and emotion, which calls spectators to participate in the dynamic construction of the work and therefore engage ideology in a participatory way. Form does this because of its deep basis in the imagistic, figurative form or syntax that constitutes the flow of emotions as revealed in the study of inner speech. The correspondence between artistic form and the forms of inner speech underlies the special emotion of the successful film or art work. It also makes it ideologically effective. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=6 ) Anthropology now repudiates them. But here we are concerned with the development of Eisenstein's thinking. On the one hand, this may seem to be confirmation of the Marxist idea that the type of social formation determines mentality. On the other hand, it means the developed art of modern societies exists at the intersection of inner and outer, prelogical and logical, emotional and rational connections of parts and wholes. [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=7 ) I have tried to show that read Eisenstein's conception of spectatorship might be read as a utopian impulse generated by the dream of classlessness originating in a definitive historical moment but ending up with an ahistorical universalism. But does that not make spectatorship the manifestation of a utopian wish, a desire, a dream, as in Western Marxism, and is it a string that can tie Eisenstein's later theories to Western Marxism rather than a capitulation to Stalinist aesthetics? [Link](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/J3MAI8DC?page=8 ) Version URL: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200510042416/http://www.davidpublisher.org/index.php/Home/Article/index?id=30209.html" data-originalurl="http://www.davidpublisher.org/index.php/Home/Article/index?id=30209.html" data-versiondate="2020-05-10T04:24:16Z">Robust Link for: http://www.davidpublisher.org/index.php/Home/Article/index?id=30209.html</a> ### Related ```dataview LIST FROM [[@rosen_eisensteins_2017]] and -"Plans" and -"resources" ```