Mauro Carbone

Graziano Lingua

This book shows that screens don’t just distribute the visible and the invisible, but have always mediated our body's relationships with the physical and anthropological-cultural environment. By combining a series of historical-genealogical reconstructions going back to prehistoric times with the analysis of present and near-future technologies, the authors show that screens have always incorporated not only the hiding/showing functions but also the protecting/exposing ones, as the Covid-19 pandemic retaught us. The intertwining of these functions allows the authors to criticize the mainstream ideas of images as inseparable from screens, of words as opposed to images, and of what they call “Transparency 2.0” ideology, which currently dominates our socio-political life. Moreover, they show how wearable technologies don’t approximate us to a presumed disappearance of screens but seem to draw a circular pathway back to using our bodies as screens. This raises new relational, ethical, and political questions, which this book helps to illuminate.

Showing and Hiding, Exposing and Protecting

Toward an Anthropology of Screens

Draws from twentieth-century French thought on film and aesthetics to address the philosophical significance of the pervasiveness of screens in contemporary technological life as well as the mutation of philosophy that such a pervasiveness seems to require. In The Flesh of Images, Mauro Carbone analyzed Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film and modern painting as it relates to his aesthetic theory and as it illuminates our contemporary relationship to images. Philosophy-Screens broadens the work undertaken in this earlier book, looking at the ideas of other twentieth-century thinkers concerning the relationship between philosophy and film, and extending that analysis to address our experience of electronic and digital screens in the twenty-first century. In the first part of the book, Carbone examines the ways that Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard, and Deleuze grappled with the philosophical significance of cinema as a novel aesthetic medium unfolding in the twentieth century. He then considers the significance of this philosophical framework for understanding the digital revolution, in particular the extent to which we are increasingly and comprehensively connected with screens. Smartphones, tablets, and computers have become a primary referential optical apparatus for everyday life in ways that influence the experience not only of seeing but also of thinking and desiring. Carbone’s Philosophy-Screens follows Deleuze’s call for “a philosophy-cinema” that can account for these fundamental changes in perception and aesthetic production, and adapts it to twenty-first-century concerns. “Mauro Carbone is one of the very best interpreters of French philosophy in general and aesthetics in particular. This book furthers recent research he has undertaken on cinema and more specifically its significance both in twentieth-century debates in philosophy and its role in our cultural experience. This is an insightful and informative book and will be of interest to a broad spectrum of readers.” — Stephen Watson, University of Notre Dame

From Cinema to the Digital Revolution

Philosophy-Screens

Mai era successo prima che tutto il mondo vedesse in diretta realizzarsi con stupefacente perfezione una tragedia da film catastrofico. L’evento dell’11 settembre 2001 ha inaugurato tanti e tali mutamenti nella nostra vita quotidiana e nelle strutture su cui essa poggia, da aver dato la propria impronta a tutto il primo ventennio del XXI secolo. Mauro Carbone torna a riflettervi accompagnato da certe immagini indissolubilmente legate alla memoria dell’evento, nonché da brani di A. Danto, J. Derrida, J. Habermas, J.-F. Lyotard, R. Serra, K. Stockhausen e S. Žižek.

Quando iniziò il XXI secolo

L’evento dell’11 settembre 2001

Highlights Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film and connects it to his aesthetic theory. In The Flesh of Images, Mauro Carbone begins with the point that Merleau-Ponty’s often misunderstood notion of “flesh” was another way to signify what he also called “Visibility.” Considering vision as creative voyance, in the visionary sense of creating as a particular presence something which, as such, had not been present before, Carbone proposes original connections between Merleau-Ponty and Paul Gauguin, and articulates his own further development of the “new idea of light” that the French philosopher was beginning to elaborate at the time of his sudden death. Carbone connects these ideas to Merleau-Ponty’s continuous interest in cinema—an interest that has been traditionally neglected or circumscribed. Focusing on Merleau-Ponty’s later writings, including unpublished course notes and documents not yet available in English, Carbone demonstrates both that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film was sustained and philosophically crucial, and also that his thinking provides an important resource for illuminating our contemporary relationship to images, with profound implications for the future of philosophy and aesthetics. Building on his earlier work on Marcel Proust and considering ongoing developments in optical and media technologies, Carbone adds his own philosophical insight into understanding the visual today. Mauro Carbone is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon 3 and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His books include An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas (translated by Niall Keane), also published by SUNY Press. Marta Nijhuis is Lecturer in Philosophy and Theory of Images at the University of Lyon 3 and at EAC Lyon.

Merleau-Ponty between Painting and Cinema

The Flesh of Images

Richard Grusin

Maurizio Ferraris

Roberto Diodato

Alberto Abruzzese

Massimo Carboni

Antonio Somaini

Andrea Pinotti

Francesco Casetti

Antonio Costa

Piero Boitani

Giuseppe Di Giacomo

Herman Parret

Gianfranco Bettetini

Ruggero Eugeni

Valentina Valentini

Giovanni Careri

Claudia Cieri Via

Massimo De Carolis

Massimo Prampolini

Isabella Pezzini

Roberto Perpignani

Roberto De Gaetano

Alfredo Pirri

Franco Maresco

Leonardo Amoroso

Francesco Antinucci

Silvana Borutti

Romeo Bufalo

Stefano Catucci

Pina De Luca

Georges Didi

Huberman

Edoardo Ferrario

Tarcisio Lancioni

Enrica Lisciani Petrini

Giovanna Pinna

Elena Tavani

Stefano Velotti

Costanza Quatriglio

Mario Sasso

Daniele Guastini

Adriano Ardovino

I percorsi dell’immaginazione. Studi in onore di Pietro Montani è un volume che vuole rendere omaggio a uno dei maggiori studiosi italiani di estetica, di cinema, di arti e nuove tecnologie. Diviso in cinque sezioni (Filosofia, Semiotica e teoria dei linguaggi, Cinema, Teoria delle arti e Tecnica e media), che sono altrettante articolazioni di analisi e di riflessione sul presente e la contemporaneità, il libro si avvale della partecipazione di illustri studiosi italiani e internazionali: Alberto Abruzzese, Leonardo Amoroso, Francesco Antinucci, Gianfranco Bettetini, Piero Boitani, Silvana Borutti, Romeo Bufalo, Mauro Carbone, Massimo Carboni, Giovanni Careri, Francesco Casetti, Stefano Catucci, Claudia Cieri Via, Antonio Costa, Massimo De Carolis, Roberto De Gaetano, Pina De Luca, Georges Didi-Huberman, Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Roberto Diodato, Ruggero Eugeni, Edoardo Ferrario, Maurizio Ferraris, Richard Grusin, Tarcisio Lancioni, Enrica Lisciani Petrini, Herman Parret, Isabella Pezzini, Giovanna Pinna, Andrea Pinotti, Massimo Prampolini, Antonio Somaini, Elena Tavani, Valentina Valentini, Stefano Velotti. Ogni sezione è inoltre chiusa da una conversazione con un artista: Franco Maresco, Roberto Perpignani, Alfredo Pirri, Costanza Quatriglio e Mario Sasso. Il volume è curato da Daniele Guastini e Adriano Ardovino.

I percorsi dell'immaginazione. Studi in onore di Pietro Montani

Philosophical interpretation of Proust based on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze.

Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas

Unprecedented Deformation, An

Anna Caterina Dalmasso

Jacopo Bodini

Des pouvoirs des écrans

Draws from twentieth-century French thought on film and aesthetics to address the philosophical significance of the pervasiveness of screens in contemporary technological life as well as the mutation of philosophy that such a pervasiveness seems to require. In The Flesh of Images, Mauro Carbone analyzed Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film and modern painting as it relates to his aesthetic theory and as it illuminates our contemporary relationship to images. Philosophy-Screens broadens the work undertaken in this earlier book, looking at the ideas of other twentieth-century thinkers concerning the relationship between philosophy and film, and extending that analysis to address our experience of electronic and digital screens in the twenty-first century. In the first part of the book, Carbone examines the ways that Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard, and Deleuze grappled with the philosophical significance of cinema as a novel aesthetic medium unfolding in the twentieth century. He then considers the significance of this philosophical framework for understanding the digital revolution, in particular the extent to which we are increasingly and comprehensively connected with screens. Smartphones, tablets, and computers have become a primary referential optical apparatus for everyday life in ways that influence the experience not only of seeing but also of thinking and desiring. Carbone’s Philosophy-Screens follows Deleuze’s call for “a philosophy-cinema” that can account for these fundamental changes in perception and aesthetic production, and adapts it to twenty-first-century concerns. Mauro Carbone is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His books include The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty between Painting and Cinema (translated by Marta Nijhuis) and An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas (translated by Niall Keane), both also published by SUNY Press. Marta Nijhuis is Lecturer in Philosophy and Theory of Images at the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and at EAC Lyon.

La cultura umana ha da sempre interrogato il potere delle immagini. Ma che ne è dei poteri degli schermi? Sì, quelle superfici intimamente legate alle immagini in modo tanto evidente quanto misterioso, capaci di mostrare e nascondere insieme. È tempo di interrogare anche i loro poteri, perché è proprio questo nostro tempo che, incontestabilmente, ci fa vivere tra e attraverso gli schermi. Attenzione, però: questo stesso tempo ci fa indirettamente capire che i rapporti fra esseri umani e schermi non sono solamente un problema di oggi, ma un fenomeno che attraversa tutta la storia e la preistoria dell’umanità. Studiosi italiani di filosofia, cultura visuale, neuroscienze, letterature comparate, cinema e media, gli autori dei contributi qui raccolti risultano diversamente situati non solo per i loro campi di ricerca, ma anche per i Paesi in cui operano, arricchendo perciò il crescente dibattito attorno agli schermi con inediti dialoghi transistorici, transdisciplinari e transnazionali.

Contributi italiani a un dibattito internazionale

I poteri degli schermi

In this first English publication of a well-known and widely respected Italian scholar, readers will encounter the preeminent interpreter of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty engaged in a dialogue of critical concern to contemporary philosophy. In subtle and sensitive language eminently suited to the style and substance of Merleau-Ponty's own writings, Mauro Carbone fashions four essays around a central theme-the relations of the sensible and the intelligible, and of philosophy and non-philosophy-that occupied Merleau-Ponty in his later work. An original and innovative interpretation of the ontology of Merleau-Ponty--and themselves a significant contribution to the field of Continental thought--these essays constitute a sustained exploration of what Merleau-Ponty detected, and greeted, as a "mutation within the relations of man and Being," which would provide him with the basis for a new idea of philosophy or "a-philosophy." In lucid, often elegant terms, Carbone analyzes key elements of Merleau-Ponty's thought in relation to Proust's Recherche, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, the new biology of Von Uexküll, Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant, and Heidegger's conception of "letting-be." His work clearly demonstrates the vitality of Merleau-Ponty's late revolutionary philosophy by following its most salient, previously unexplored paths. This is essential reading for any scholar with an interest in Merleau-Ponty, in the questions of embodiment, temporality and Nature, or in the possibility of philosophy today.

Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy

The Thinking of the Sensible

Emmanuel de Saint Aubert

Galen A. Johnson

Merleau-Ponty has long been known as one of the most important philosophers of aesthetics, yet most discussions of his aesthetics focus on visual art. This book corrects that balance by turning to Merleau-Ponty's extensive engagement with literature. From Proust, Merleau-Ponty developed his conception of “sensible ideas,” from Claudel, his conjoining of birth and knowledge as “co-naissance,” from Valéry came “implex” or the “animal of words” and the “chiasma of two destinies.” Literature also provokes the questions of expression, metaphor, and truth and the meaning of a Merleau-Pontian poetics. The poetic of Merleau-Ponty is, the book argues, a poetic of the flesh, a poetic of mystery, and a poetic of the visible in its relation to the invisible. Ultimately, theoretical figures or “figuratives” that appear at the threshold between philosophy and literature enable the possibility of a new ontology. What is at stake is the very meaning of philosophy itself and its mode of expression.

Philosophy and Literature

Merleau-Ponty's Poetic of the World

Mauro Carbone

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