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1981

The Documentary Disposition

image of The Documentary Disposition

We live in a moment of epistemic crisis. Truth claims made by pubic officials and cultural producers alike seem more and more to require our sustained critique. This chapter interrogates the status of the documentary film to think about the very idea of truth-telling through media forms. It aims to discover something of the complex character of nonfiction film and media by way of the notion of “disposition,” a word that entered the English language in the 12 century and carries with it a multiplicity of meanings that encompass historical, formal, philosophical and ideological nuances.

Keywords: Disposition ; epistemology ; phenomenology ; rhetoric ; truth-telling

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References

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References

  1. Aristotle (1926), The Art of Rhetoric (ed. J. H. Freese), London: William Heinemann Ltd.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bazin, André (1960), ‘The ontology of the photographic image’ (trans. H. Gray), Film Quarterly, 13:4 (Summer), pp. 4–9.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bruner, Jerome (1996), The Culture of Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Carroll, Noel (1996), ‘Nonfiction film and postmodern skepticism’, in D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 283–306.60
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Eitzen, Dirk (1995), ‘When is a documentary: Documentary as a mode of reception’, Cinema Journal, 35:1, pp. 85–86.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Hawthorne, Mary (2011), ‘The exchange: Frederick Wiseman’, The New Yorker, 16 January, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-exchange-frederick-wiseman. Accessed 18 December 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Nichols, Bill (1991), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Nichols, Bill (2017), Introduction to Documentary, 3rd ed., Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Renov, Michael (1986), ‘Re-thinking documentary: Toward a taxonomy of mediation’, Wide Angle, 8:3–4, pp. 71–77.
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  10. Renov, Michael (1993), ‘Introduction: The truth about non-fiction’, in M. Renov (ed.), Theorizing Documentary, New York: Routledge, pp. 9–10.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Renov, Michael (2004), ‘Charged vision: The place of desire in documentary film theory’, in M. Renov (ed.), The Subject of Documentary, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 93–103.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Renov, Michael (2012), ‘Teaching the documentary film’, in L. Fischer and P. Petro (eds), Teaching Film, New York: The Modern Language Association of America, pp. 242–52.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Steyerl, Hito (2011), ‘Documentary uncertainty’, Re-visiones, 1, English trans., http://re-visiones.net/anteriores/spip.php%3Farticle37.html. Accessed 18 December 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Sobchack, Vivian (1999), ‘Toward a phenomenology of nonfiction film experience’, in J. Gaines and M. Renov (eds), Collecting Visible Evidence, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 241–54.
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  15. Williams, Raymond (1976), Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Flamingo.
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