Singular but double-entry: Paul Willemen's proposals for a comparative film studies.

This essay is a critical appreciation of Paul Willemen's proposals for a comparative film studies, illustrated with examples from Indian film history. The suggestion that the universal history of capitalism is the common ground on which a comparative study could be located, and the related questions of value raised by Willemen in the chapters of a forthcoming book are considered here in relation to recent developments in Indian cinema. Willemen suggests a way to avoid the pitfalls of nationalist exceptionalism in cultural studies as well as an abstract universalism that neglects the specificity of capital's presence in different regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]