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A theory is exactly like a box of tools. It has nothing to do with the signifier.
It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself. If no one uses it, beginning with the theoretician himself (who then ceases to be a theoretician), then the theory is worthless or the moment is inappropriate. We don't revise a theory, but construct new ones; we have no choice but to make others. It is strange that it was Proust, an author thought to be a pure intellectual, who said it so clearly: treat my book as a pair of glasses directed to the outside; if they don't suit you find another pair; I leave it to you to find your own instrument, which is necessarily an instrument for combat.
-Gilles Deleuze1
Visuality A Site/Sight for Converging Histories
As a scholar working both within and between the fields of film studies, women's studies, and postcolonial studies-three "disciplines" that are all rigorously interdisciplinary in their concerns and methodologies -I am no stranger to the theoretical toolbox. With its emphasis on the local over the universal and the pragmatic over the programmatic, Deleuze's description of that box resonates with the experience of producing criticism at sites where multiple bodies of knowledge intersect and new methodological approaches are needed, for such experiences demand that the critic be, above all else, resourceful. Yet transgressing disciplinary boundaries begs the question of whether theory can travel. In other words, one of the greatest challenges posed by interdisciplinary work is that of translation. Which theoretical frameworks, explanatory concepts, and research practices are applicable and, moreover, useful in contexts other than those out of which they developed? What ideological assumptions inform a given theoretical practice and thus determine its political effects and analytical efficacy? How do various intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses complement, supplement, revise and challenge one another? In short, what tools does the box contain and how do they work independently and in conjunction with one another?
Feminist film theory has, for the most part, taken shape around the notion of the male gaze, and while early formulations of this concept facilitated a sustained engagement with questions regarding the impact of gender on one's relationship to the act of looking, they often...