"Impurity" In Alain Badiou’s Film Theory

As a contemporary French philosopher and thinker of literary and art theory,Alain Badiou’s film theory is rooted in the French "cinephilia" cultural atmosphere in the 1960 s,and parallel to the development of Badiou’s political life and philosophy,finally matured in the establishment of his "Inaesthetic".This makes Badiou’s film theory has a continuous pedigree and a contemporary aspect,which makes his film theory with a unique philosophical aspect in the history of contemporary French film theory.This article intends to start from his ontology,which is composed of core concepts of Western philosophy,combining with the mathematical ontology of Badiou’s mature period of thought and the philosophical system of logical phenomenology,and try to discuss the "impurity" in his film theory.In addition,this paper regards "impurity" as the ontology concept in Badiou’s film theory,and differentiates it into comprehensiveness and falsity,which discuss the "impurity" by analysing them."Impurity" is the core concept in Badiou’s film theory,in which there get the narrow and broad senses.in the narrow sense,"Impurity" is more than the comprehensiveness of the film’s representation.It refers to the "plus-one" of the six arts and its materials.In the of reference,the comprehensiveness of film gets its scope outside the film,which is the superposition of elements on its image.But in its broad sense,"Impurity" refers to the dialectical operation by addition and subtraction,which is not only the concrete practice of Badiou’s film theory,but also its philosophical system and his "Inaesthetic".In the broad sense,the scope of "impurity" lies in the film ontology and its technology,history,theory and even the whole field of film criticism.Its core idea is the dialectics of the combination of addition and subtraction,that is,the additive synthesis formed by the forced intervention of the subject in every fields existing in the film representation and the image,technical and film theory.The empiricism and rationalism of traditional film have been negated by bringing them together in the traditional discourse mechanism and epoching them,the aim of this operation is trying to highlight the deconstruction of hidden exceptions.In this dialectical context of "impurity",Badiou faces to the proposition of the contemporary and popular nature of film,aiming to find the ineffable thing under the rupture from the modern discourse of "the end of art".He first proposed a new "Film Synthesis",that is,the subject should try to find the things and elements that constitute the "non-relational relationship" in the film itself and its images within the film,then the intervention and merging of subject making them become synthesis.Secondly,Badiou points out the falsity in the system of film technology,film history and film theory,that is,the movement,cultural structure and even the audience of film do not really happen,and all these are the long-term external romantic interpretation and artificial system construction in traditional system of the film theory,which is intervened and imposed in it.Finally,Badiou raises the thesis of "impurity" to discuss the relationship between film and philosophy and the category of film as a specific philosophy.He then pointed out a mode of operation of film for struggling with its own "impurity",that is,"purification".The "purification" is actually the subject’s practical approach to the completion of the new "Film Synthesis".It seeks and repairs the synthesis in the fracture,and highlights the trace by the idea’s visitation by simplifying the operation in mixing the film.Those opreraion aim at restoring the artistic purity of film and the possibility of presenting truth.It can be seen that the "impurity" of Badiou’s film theory is closely related to and interacts with the possibility of generating "film-truth" in the fracture.Badiou believes that film,as a concrete existence and philosophical situation,is necessary to reconsider its "impurity" and "movie-truth" in order to construct its unique new form of perception in the contemporary concrete historicality.