INCISIONAL CINEMA: SURGICAL FILM AESTHETICS AND RADICAL ALTERITY

This dissertation develops the concept of surgical film aesthetics to explore how cinema can enact and visualize forms of radical alterity. Rather than focusing solely on representations of medical or surgical procedures, surgical film aesthetics refers to the ways in which cinema itself operates surgically—through framing, editing, and visual segmentation—to isolate and dissect the bodies on the screen. For example, a close-up of an actor’s face visually severs the head from the rest of the body, evoking a surgical gesture through cinematic means. Building on Jacques Derrida’s philosophy, particularly his notion of radical alterity, I argue that surgical film aesthetics renders visible a body that is simultaneously accessible and inaccessible, present and absent. For Derrida, the “other” is not simply another being within the realm of presence; rather, the other is irreducible to phenomenality, never fully available to perception or comprehension. Surgical film aesthetics aligns with this thinking by foregrounding partial visuality: it shows parts of a body while withholding the whole, producing a visual experience marked by absence, fragmentation, and discontinuity. Through close analysis of select films that exemplify these techniques, this dissertation demonstrates how surgical film aesthetics produces a visual grammar of estrangement and dismemberment that parallels Derridean alterity. The cinematic frame, in this context, does not merely record but actively intervenes, cuts, and separates, staging an encounter with the other that resists totalization. In doing so, surgical film aesthetics challenges conventional notions of bodily integrity, presence, and narrative coherence, offering a powerful theoretical lens for understanding the ethics and politics of visual representation. Ultimately, this study situates surgical film aesthetics as a distinctive mode of visuality that opens new avenues for thinking about the body, subjectivity, and difference in film. By articulating the formal and philosophical implications of this mode, the dissertation contributes to broader debates in film theory, phenomenology, and deconstruction