System and Spectrality: Investigating David Bordwell's Manual(s) of Classical Narrative Cinema

Abstract

This paper undertakes a deconstructive reading of David Bordwell's three-tiered conception of the Hollywood "system," demonstrating that his articulation of the latter results in a spectral logic of deferral whose atemporal spacing problematizes the stability and linearity that he claims define classical narrative structure and Hollywood industrial practices. This spectral interruption of "system," moreover, is also explored as regards Bordwell's description of the conditions of possibility of his own scholarship: the monolithic presence and conventions of an institution that both constitute his professional identity and efface it through its subjection to a logic of homogeneity. The paper attempts to demonstrate that the apparently synonymous relationship between the Hollywood "system" and Bordwell's scholarly institution render the meta-narrative that he proposes untenable, not the least because it blurs the lines between (objective) history and (subjective) literature. In addition, Bordwell's cognitive project results in a tropic play that dramatizes the tension between self and system, part and whole, particular and universal.