An “Other” THING

Linda Williams has pertinently described the curious affinity between monster and woman, the two 'Others' to normative male sexuality and desire, in classic and modern horror film in "When the Woman Looks," Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams (eds.), Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (Frederick: University Publications/American Film Institute, 1983), 83-99.


In this paper, I shall attempt to illustrate, through the evolution of the violent manifestations of the Thing organism, from its original conception through adaptation and readaptation, and its historical contextualisation, the power of the creative processes as a perception of the present as history.

Click here to join animationjournal

Click to join animationjournal

Repetition of Image

Image is not something inert, static or unchanging, on the contrary, it implies some type of temporal process in its production, reception, and circulation. A temporal categorisation of repetition is therefore not as irregular as at first it might seem. Much contemporary theory, it seems, leads into and evolves from philosophicalthoughts on repetition. There appears to be as Samuel Weber states; "a genealogy of questioning that can be traced back at least to Kierkegaard, which is to say, to the immediate aftermath of Hegel, following the culmination of philosophical idealism. You can follow this question of repetition at work for example in Nietzsche's thought of the Eternal Return, in Freud's speculations on the repetition compulsion and the Death Drive, in Heidegger, in Derrida's idea of iterability, and in Deleuze's Repetition and Difference. The question of repetition imposes itself once the idealistic system of thought exhausts its resources, finds itself "blocked". In the wake of such a blockage, repetition can no longer be taken for granted as a mechanical, self-evident and subsidiary phenomenon. in Nietzsche's thought of the Eternal Return, in Freud's speculations on the repetition compulsion and the Death Drive, in Heidegger, in Derrida's idea of iterability, and in Deleuze's Repetition and Difference. The question of repetition imposes itself once the idealistic system of thought exhausts its resources, finds itself "blocked". In the wake of such a blockage, repetition can no longer be taken for granted as a mechanical, self-evident and subsidiary phenomenon."

Tonight, tonight

Music Video for Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins