Book title: Eminent Domain. B-Movie Theory and traditional culture in diaspora since the
“autumn of the middle ages”
Author: Ángel Faretta
Language: Spanish
Publisher: ASL Ediciones
Collection: Aesthetical Theory
ISBN: 978-987-87-2026-5
Buenos Aires, 2022
350 pages
Modernity, in its various manifestations, has sought to divert, when not directly cross out any
notion of transcendence. Even though it has partially complied with its objective in the
economic, social, cultural and religious spheres, a space of persistence is kept that continues
to create modes, motifs and figures to preserve and reconfigure that which seems to have
eclipsed. With it, thought and poetry find their modes of manifestation. And it is in that
terrain where Ángel Faretta displays his theoretical, aesthetical and philosophical body of
work. In previous works, such as El Concepto de Cine, La Pasión Manda and La
Traducción de la Melancolía, Faretta proved how since the “autumn of the middle ages” the
symbolic operation with traditional data has reconfigured into diverse forms of thought and
poetry until reaching its final stage: cinema. In continuity with a philosophical tradition that
takes us back to Plato and links us with Giambattista Vico and Mircea Eliade, Eminent
Domain establishes a clear demonstration of the central role cinema and its concept occupy
in said operation, especially through the mode known as “B-Movies”. In the first part of the
book, through chapters such as “Double life of the Double Life” and “Female binarity at the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution”, a genealogy is established and the phases of which
the author has denominated “Traditional culture in diaspora since the autumn of the middle
ages”. The second part is an extensive hermeneutic lecture of Jacques Tourneur film, Cat
People (1942), so in this way exercise the practice of the theoretical presuppositions above
exposed. In Eminent Domain Ángel Faretta continues with his radically controversial
posture; one that recovers the comprehension of traditional symbolism for what it is: a
philosophia perennis, which is metaphysics.
Diego Ortega
Sebastián Porrini
