Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate a number of U.S. avant-garde films using Deleuzian film-philosophy in order to describe their thought. I develop the taxonomy of cinematic images created by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze by introducing a new type of image. The notion of the sobjective image I conceptualize points to the immanent semiosis that characterizes certain films. The sobjective image describes the individual images and the entire films that objectify subjectivity and create idiosyncratic mental film-worlds. These films shape individual realities according to a single subjective mode. I also introduce the conceptual cartography of film-worlds, an analytical tool intended to help define the ontology of various filmic wholes in order to highlight their distinctness. The cartography aids in explaining how films dominated by different Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian image types differ in their film-worlds, ontology, and metaphysics. Furthermore, I coin the concept of the metaphysics of technique and subsequently argue that various cinematic techniques do not only serve to create the physics of a given film-world, but define the metaphysics of that reality. I then proceed to close-read fourteen avant-garde films by describing their sobjective principles and by bringing out their bearings on a number of important philosophical problems. These films cluster around four philosophical themes, which are shaped into four chapters focusing on childhood, selfhood, sexuality, and ritual and art.