The Ghost is the Machine: Media-Philosophy and Materialism

When Labor and Migration Dis‐Place Film: Sketch of an Idea

“…Yet this true act which, in the contexts of this essay and special edition of WUSA , is an artistic and cultural act cannot exist unless its precondition of existence is acknowledged beforehand. That is, art and culture cannot exist without the mediation of technology and science or, as argued in relation to modern print and film, “Media are the hardware of our culture” (Littau , 156). It follows that if it is important to acknowledge the centrality of scientific and technological mediation to art and culture, the following question must also emerge: how is an Idea of science to be mobilized in a search for the real, in a quest for what is real?…”

“…Film is technology, immortality, and perceptual manipulation. Film makes the ephemeral (e.g., human life) permanent through images that linger on long after a person's death: it “gives life to dead matter,” and affects our experience of the world (Littau , 161, 163). Taking cue from Littau, I would add that the film text is a ghost‐filled time machine that experiences multiple material transformations that, in turn, may make it resist categories such as “national” cinema: this is why I perceive film as a combination of a belief in “the centrality of time and space” (Miller , 143, 139) with ethnography.…”