Lynch and non-Lynch: A cinematic engagement with process philosophies east and west
Abstract
David Lynch's films often slip through the cracks of traditional philosophizing and film-theorization. This project attempts to bring non-western intellectual paradigms and post-structuralist interventions into a productive conversation with Lynch's singular aesthetic mode. To this end, I will be rehearsing and comparing the nondual psychology and cosmology of Zen Buddhism, the psycho-semiotic register theory of Jacques Lacan, and the temporal philosophy of Gilles Deleuze; all three recapitulations will be mobilized by close readings of Mulholland Drive and the three current iterations of Twin Peaks.