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Sam Rohdie died at his home in Florida on 3 April 2015 from the effects of a severe stroke suffered a few weeks earlier. He had received the proofs of this, his last book, but was not able to correct them – a task that then fell to Des O’Rawe, his former colleague at Queen’s University Belfast, and to myself.
The book is structured as a series of alphabetical entries, from Allegory to Writing. But it is not systematic, nor exhaustive, nor does it offer a single all-embracing definition of its subject. It also contains examples of what appear at first sight to be repetitions, both of argument and, in some cases, phraseology.
As far as the seeming repetitions are concerned, they turn out on closer examination almost always to have a purpose, functioning as a form of insistence reminding the reader how often in films things are not what they seem. The points on which Rohdie most wants to insist concern moments in certain films when the spectator is put in a position of uncertainty as to the solidity and coherence of the world portrayed by the film. ‘Look again,’ he seems to be saying. Look again at how in this film too, and in a different context, the film undermines our confidence in a stable world and the equally stable forms by which this original stability is represented. Look again, and see how the filmmaker has opened up possibilities of perception that break with habitual modes of viewing, possibly in discomfiting ways. The point being made is rhetorical, certainly, but also theoretical – though not in the context of a systematic theory.
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