Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:02:15.803Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Woodgrain of the Chessboard: A Response to Roy Germano

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2014

Henry Farrell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Roy Germano argues for an “analytic filmmaking,” which would use film as a means to elucidate social scientific laws and generalizations. Yet film, even when it seeks simply to document the truth, is a form of narrative. To strip these ambiguities away in the name of a crude empiricism would rob these narratives of just that kind of information that makes them most valuable—the subtleties and nuances that they can capture and that simple transcripts cannot. Better models for understanding film can be found either in the direct acknowledgment and exploration of these ambiguities, or, alternatively, in the “analytic narratives” approach. Unlike Germano’s analytic film making, which prizes the abstract over the particular, analytic narratives gather their energy from the continuing tension between the particular and the abstraction.

Type
Reflections Symposium
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 686 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bates, Robert, Greif, Avner, Levi, Margaret, Rosenthal, Jean-Pierre and Weingast, Barry. 1998. Analytic Narratives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Calvino, Italo. 1978. Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt and Brace.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In Theorizing Culture: Selected Essays, ed. Geertz, Clifford. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Irwin, Robert. 1983. The Arabian Nightmare. London: Dedalus.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 2002. “Modeling Complex Historical Processes with Analytic Narratives.” In Akteure, Mechanismen, Modelle. Zur Theoriefähigkeit makro-sozialer Analysen, ed. Mayntz, Renate. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag: .Google Scholar
Spufford, Francis. June 11 2012. “Red Plenty Seminar: Response,” Crooked Timber. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/06/11/response-part-i/ (accessed June 15, 2014).Google Scholar