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Preamble In her essay "Refining Feminist Theory: Lessons from Aesthetics," Hilde Hein argues that conventional male-oriented aesthetic theory, because it is "invincibly pluralistic and dynamic" can "serve as a model for feminist theory" (Hein 1993, 3). She suggests that feminist theorists "struggling with similar dilemmas of diversity and singularity" (5) should turn to conventional aesthetic theory. She believes this aesthetic theory can serve, not as an ally of feminism, but as a model for feminist theory. This is because "even the most ponderously unifying of aesthetic theories ... nevertheless resort ... to metaphors of organic dynamism, holistic interactivity, and innovation---to generative myths of order-in-variety and unity-in-diversity" (4). As I read this essay, despite my commitment to both feminist theory and aesthetic theory, warning bells sounded. It is dangerous to regard any type of theory as "invincibly" pluralistic, for then we need not take care to ensure pluralism is given its due. More seriously, the fact that conventional aesthetic theories resort to metaphors of unity in diversity, is simply not good enough reason to regard them as models for feminist theories. Feminists are struggling to avoid the dangers of essentialism, whereby women are taken to have a common essence, as are men.1 Such essentialism covers over differences amongst women, including differences of power, and it erects barriers between men and women who may share a progressive agenda.2 As a result, feminist theories work towards understanding how we can construct both theories and communities that acknowledge and respect the differences and similarities amongst feminists.3 Metaphors of unity and diversity may please us, but they do nothing to point us in the direction such research must take. It is important to note that Hein does devote four pages of her essay to a discussion of reasons why conventional aesthetic theory is not "adaptable wholesale to a feminist theoretical strategy" (9), due, for example, to its mind-body dualism and fear of the body. Despite this useful discussion, Hein's essay echoes certain problematic claims made by an aesthetic theorist she would certainly consider to be male-oriented: Theodor W. Adorno. According to both Hein and Adorno, aesthetic theory is a privileged mode of thinking through particularity. Hein claims that aesthetic theory can serve as a model for feminist theory. Adorno claims that aesthetic theory is particularly suited to oppose totalizing political systems. Like Hein, he believes that reflection on art can provide us with a model of a form of community which does not require its members to minimize their differences from one another (Adorno 1982, 271-731). They therefore both share a belief that aesthetic theory is an important resource for liberatory political thought and political action. I choose to discuss Adorno as a test case for Hein's claim that conventional (nonfeminist or male-oriented) art theory can serve as a model for feminist theory for the following four reasons: (1) Hein praises conventional art theory for its images of unity in diversity and Adorno's writings are full of such images; (2) like Hein, Adorno believes that art and art theory are politically significant; (3) nevertheless, Adorno condemns art that is self-consciously political. He has been an important influence as a result in contemporary dismissals of feminist artmaking;4 and (4) ironically, it is precisely the features of artmaking that Adorno condemns and that feminist artists engage in, that have important lessons for feminist thinkers and practitioners outside of the arts. Feminist artmaking practice has more to teach us about forms of community that do not require their members to minimize their differences from one another, than do the images of unity in diversity presented by conventional aesthetic theory. I will therefore argue, against the grain of both Hein and Adorno, that feminist artmaking practices, not conventional aesthetic theory, can serve as a model for feminist theory more generally. …

Both Friedrich Nietzsche (1841900) and Walt Whitman (1819 -1892) were profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson ( 1803-1882), and both freely expressed their debts to his thought. Other than their connection to Emer son,1 however, no direct link has been found between the two. Although Nietzsche did own a book by Karl Knortz entitled Walt Whitman: Vortrag, we have no evidence that either Nietzsche or Whitman ever read the other's work, and while both mention Emerson in their published and unpublished writing, neither Whitman nor Nietzsche mention one another. This is not to be, however, an essay comparing the influence of Emerson on Whitman and Nietzsche. Instead, the odd effect of reading Nietzsche and Whitman together is the subject of discussion.2 This odd effect results from confronting their many similarities with their radical differences. In particular, both have a shared understanding of the nature of the self, but their social and political visions could hardly be more dissimilar. I will discuss their similarities, their differences, and the challenge that Whitman represents for Nietzsche's determination to affirm life.3 Whitman represents a challenge to Nietzsche because it is precisely insofar as they differ that Whitman is a closer approximation to one of Nietzsche's ideals than is Nietzsche himself. The ideal in question is Nietzsche's "expression of his wish and his dearest thought."4 Nietzsche writes that someday he hopes: to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be as one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati:5 let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.6 Nietzsche's wish is all the more poignant because he could never sustain this hope. The aphorism quoted above introduced the fourth book of The Gay Science. Nietzsche in general is certainly known as more of a nay-sayer and critic than otherwise, and even the rest of the fourth book of The Gay Science oscillates between occasional references to elevated moods of affirmation and many harsh criticisms of all that Nietzsche abhors. Whitman and Nietzsche: Similarities As we shall see, Whitman comes much closer than Nietzsche to approximating the latter's determination to see as beautiful what is necessary in things. However, despite this difference, there are many similarities between the two. Both long to influence their readers, but do not wish for disciples or followers. Here, ironically, they come closest to following Emerson, who wrote: "This is my boast that I have no school and no follower."' The desire to avoid being taken as an example is similarly a common theme in Nietzsche. In one such passage he claims: "I do not want to have people imitate my example; I wish that everybody would fashion his own example, as I do."' In a passage many would mistake for Nietzsche, Whitman writes that: "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."9 However, many of the similarities between Whitman and Nietzsche represent either a rejection or radicalization of Emerson, and cannot be attributed to his direct influence. Both, for instance, are far harsher critics of traditional Christianity than Emerson. Both were strongly attracted to war and the warlike, to risk and dangerous living. Nietzsche, for instance, welcomes signs that his had become a more warlike age10 and Whitman speaks of the "warlike flag" of his great idea.11 Many have argued that Whitman found it easier to sing the praises of war than to accept peace.12 These, however, are not the most striking similarities between the two thinkers. The features that mark their commonalities most dramatically are instead: (I) Their celebration of what is natural, and scorn for those who slander or cannot accept the natural;13 (2) their understanding of the soul as a modification of the body; (3 ) their willingness to accept the necessity for evil as well as good in the life of an individual and in the destiny of a community; and (4) their shared view of the self as multiple. …

The credits roll; the lights go on; the spectators rise to their feet and file out of the cinema. Film endings are an important part of the spectator's experience, but the phenomenology of film endings is rarely discussed in film theory. Roland Barthes' brief essay "Upon Leaving the Movie Theater" is a rare exception.(1) In the following essay I undertake an examination of some features of the spectator's experience of film endings. Psychoanalytic film theory supposes that film spectators passively identify with the point of view of the camera. This identification is said to provide a false but comforting illusion of having a secure and integrated experience. If we assume that, despite its overly universalized claims, psychoanalytic film theory has captured something important about the filmgoers experience, we are left with a puzzle. What happens to the spectator when the film ends? In beginning to answer this question, I examine parallels between Martin Heidegger's concept of inauthenticity, and the psychoanalytic account of the spectator's passive identification with the camera. Heidegger's account of achieving authentic unity provides a model for one way a study of film endings may proceed. Ultimately, however, both psychoanalytically influenced film theory and Heidegger will be criticized for eliding issues about the spectator's social location and network of relationships. The Look, The Mirror-Stage, Suture: Psychoanalytic Film Theory After Metz and Baudry, it is a commonplace of film theory to regard the spectator's identification with the camera, or "the look", as the primary cinematic identification, that which is presupposed by any further identification with characters, objects in the film, or actors. The allure of "the look" is said to lie in the spectator's identification with a more complete and capable self(2) or with a "unified and coherent ego."(3) What is the source of this appeal? Why should identification with a camera provide a sense of coherence and completeness? Christian Metz writes that the spectator's identification with the camera is simultaneously an identification with "himself" as a "pure act of perception . . . as the possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental subject which comes before everything there is."(4) Just as the Kantian transcendental subject is the condition for the possibility of experience (and is itself not found within experience), the camera is the condition for the possibility of experience for the duration of the film. Like the transcendental subject, the camera is that which accompanies and makes possible every particular experience, without appearing within that experience. Jean-Louis Baudry will also liken the identification with the camera to an identification with the transcendental self.(5) In seeking to explain the appeal of this identification, Baudry and Metz liken the identification with the camera to Lacan's analysis of the mirror-stage. According to Lacan (who offers three different analyses of this stage) at some point between six and eighteen months of age the infant enters into the mirror-stage. The child is still relatively physically immobile but perceptually advanced. It first obtains a sense of itself as a separate entity by recognizing another person in the act of recognizing (an image of) the child. Typically this is presented as occurring when the child is in the arms of its mother. The infant looks in the mirror and sees the mother looking at the child. In Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, the following account is offered: The mirror stage introduces a sense of identity and of separateness from the maternal body and the world of others. It provides a border or boundary defined by the child's skin. But the identity and unity offered by the mirror stage and Imaginary identifications (in which the self is defined through its identifications with the image of others) are precarious: the identity of the subject is always modeled on an other with whom it confuses itself, the ego being set up as an alter ego. …