{"id":1377,"date":"2010-11-24T18:35:49","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T23:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/24\/manuscript-update\/"},"modified":"2010-11-24T18:35:49","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T23:35:49","slug":"manuscript-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/24\/manuscript-update\/","title":{"rendered":"manuscript update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m recovering from a hard drive crash that occurred late last week. The only significant part of Ecologies of the Moving Image<\/em> that I’ve completely lost are some fairly substantial recent revisions and additions to Chapter Six. I can reconstruct other pieces from earlier saves and from revisions made on hard copy print-outs. The crash will slow me down, but I still expect to complete the book by the end of December. Here’s a progress report…<\/p>\n


\nAs I’ve mentioned before, the book presents an ecophilosophy of the cinema, rooted in the process-relational philosophies of Whitehead, Peirce, and Deleuze, with nods in many other directions (Spinoza, Bergson, Bateson, Heidegger, Guattari, Sobchack, feminism, postcolonialism, cognitivism, biosemitics, et al.). Its closest relative in current film theory may be media theorist Sean Cubitt’s one-two punch of The Cinema Effect<\/a> and Ecomedia<\/a>, the first an ambitious big-picture theorization of film (drawing, to some extent, on Peircian phenomenology) and the second a more impressionistic but challenging and, in some ways, groundbreaking foray into ecocriticism. EMI<\/em>, however, is intended as a synthesis that draws together insights from a range of approaches — including those focusing on affect and cognition, narrative, spectacle, the gaze, Deleuzian becomings, Jamesonian geopolitics, the Zizekian Real, et al. — and<\/em> that, at the same time, strikes out into new (process-philosophical) terrain. It is ultimately driven by an eco-social aesthetico-political agenda that it shares with other “ecocriticisms,” but that has rarely been developed to any extent in film studies. We’ll see how successful the final result is.<\/p>\n

(Added later: If that all sounds far too eclectic, so be it. I’m less concerned with being faithful to the traditions I, avowedly, poach from than I am with making sense of the world — in this case the world in the wake of the moving image — using concepts drawn from whatever source is at hand. That, to my mind, <\/em>is<\/b> being faithful to a process-relational understanding of things.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

* * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

The chapter and topic breakdown right now reads as follows. The first four chapters are written; the last two and Epilogue are still being worked on, so expect a bit more filling in with those.<\/p>\n

1<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/p>\n

Journeys into the Zone of Cinema<\/p>\n

Two perspectives on the visual — The cinema as cosmomorphic, or world-making: geomorphic, biomorphic, and anthropomorphic — Stalker<\/em> as paradigmatic model: Tracking the cinema, stalking the psyche — The argument — Overview of the chapters<\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

ECOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY, SEMIOSIS<\/p>\n

A Process-Relational Account of the Cinema<\/p>\n

The three ecologies of images: material, social, perceptual — A process-relational account of the world — Perceptual ecologies: How we get drawn into the cinematic world — Peircean semiosis: firstness, secondness, and thirdness — Spectacle, narrativity, and signness — Film\u2019s hyper-signaletic moments<\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

TERRITORY<\/p>\n

The Geomorphology of the Visible<\/p>\n

Geomorphism in life and in image — An initial typology — Picturing \u2018nature\u2019: Landscape aesthetics as socio-natural production — Anchoring the filmic world — Staking claims and territorializing identities: Making the West — Dovzhenko\u2019s cinematic pantheism — Nature, holism, and the eco-administrative state — Industry, existential landscapes, and the firstness of things — Post-westerns, pantheism, and the ecological sublime — Kinetic landscapes, the exhilaration of movement, and the differentiation of space — Cinematic tourism, object fetishism, and the global landscape — Enframing the world, or expanding perception? — \u2018Burn but his books\u2019: Deconstructing the gaze from both ends<\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

ENCOUNTER<\/p>\n

First Contact, Utopia, and the Ethnographic Impulse<\/p>\n

The ethnographic paradigm — Nanook\/Allakariallak and the two-way gaze — King Kong<\/em> and the imperial gaze: From ethnographic to cinematic spectacle — Upriver journeys, hearts of darkness, and spaces of first contact — Green identities: Images of environmental conflict and community — New ethnographies and indigenous media — New humanities: Toward a new people and a new Earth<\/p>\n

5<\/p>\n

ANIMA MORALIA<\/p>\n

Journeys Across the Final Frontier<\/p>\n

Biomorphism, chiasmus, and the interperceptivity of the living world — Pointing, seeing, gazing, touching — Animation and the plasmatic — Horror and the uncanny — Animal ethnographies at the boundaries of the human — Ways (not) to become grizzly<\/p>\n

6<\/p>\n

TERRA, TRAUMA, & THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE REAL<\/p>\n

Recapitulation of the argument — Trauma as firstness, secondness, and thirdness — Disaster films and the post-apocalypse — Strange weather, network narratives, and the kernel of the traumatic Event — Spectacle, affect, and the eco-sublime — Visions of the pre-apocalypse: Avatar, Syriana, Children of Men, Fast Food Nation<\/em> — Returning to the Zone: Aesthetics, ethics, and ecologics of the image-event<\/p>\n

7<\/p>\n

EPILOGUE<\/p>\n

Homing In: Digital Life in a Biosemiotic World<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m recovering from a hard drive crash that occurred late last week. The only significant part of Ecologies of the Moving Image that I’ve completely lost are some fairly substantial recent revisions and additions to Chapter Six. I can reconstruct other pieces from earlier saves and from revisions made on hard copy print-outs. 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The first three chapters are complete or close to it; the last three and final epilogue are in various stages of semi-completion. Until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14491,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2026\/06\/11\/has-ecocinema-peaked-on-being-stalked-by-ai\/","url_meta":{"origin":1377,"position":1},"title":"Has ‘ecocinema’ peaked? On being stalked by AI…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 11, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Five hundred scholarly citations is not a lot in some fields (Thomas Kuhn\u2019s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has been cited at least 167,000 times). But it\u2019s exciting to learn that my 2013 book Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature passed the 500 citation mark in Google Scholar,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/06\/5e18af9888b6fc5c64b89154_5-melancholia.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/06\/5e18af9888b6fc5c64b89154_5-melancholia.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/06\/5e18af9888b6fc5c64b89154_5-melancholia.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/06\/5e18af9888b6fc5c64b89154_5-melancholia.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/06\/5e18af9888b6fc5c64b89154_5-melancholia.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7952,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/12\/29\/emis-cinematic-materialism-a-response-to-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":1377,"position":2},"title":"EMI’s cinematic materialism (a response to reviews)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest issue\u00a0of the open-access\u00a0Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, an issue devoted to \"Gilles Deleuze and Moving Images,\" includes a review by Niall Flynn of my book Ecologies of the Moving Image. 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