Can a Movie be an Act of Theory?

Abstract

Recent works have insisted in the ability of images being a vehicle or even a site of thought. Different from thinking, an activity we came to expect to include different aspects, in particular the passage through sensible experience or affective experience, theorizing always meets the abstraction, the scheme, the model; it develops itself in a mental space in which there are not images and pictures. This article aims at raising the argument that it is only in a general way that a movie can be connected to theorization – only if its approach is based on some of the important values of theoretical activity: speculative force, coherence, and the value of explanation. Finally, the article proposes some of the conditions under which, without constructing theory, a movie can be assimilated to a limited theoretical act.