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J’explore de nouvelles façons d’étudier l’histoire et l’historicité de la perception, à travers un double portrait du psychologue francophone Albert Michotte, et de la collection de ses disques en papier. Leur interaction produit de nouvelles images expérimentales, éclaircissant les complexités de la perception. J’ai navigué différents archives, archives d'objets et collections d’instruments en Belgique, en France et en Allemagne. La découverte de nouvelles sources et mes ré-animations historiques m’ont permis de combiner l’histoire des sciences et l’étude des médias, touchant sur l’histoire de la philosophie et de la religion. Le portrait de Michotte dévoile une figure qui fait le pont entre différents paradigmes psychologiques, science et religion, filmologie et phénoménologie expérimentale, aussi bien qu’un diplomate des sciences traversant deux guerres, des politiques religieuses et des changements institutionnels. Etudier les paradoxes qu’il incarnait devient ainsi un outil d’historiographie. Le portrait des disques, contextualisé en termes de 'contextes d’action', montre comment ils sont liés à la pratique expérimentale, le cinéma, l’art et la culture matérielle du laboratoire. Ce double portrait montre comment Michotte et les disques créèrent ensemble des images en mouvement afin d’étudier les perceptions dynamiques, telle que la perception de la causalité. Le mouvement est essentiel à cette thèse, car il permet de comprendre comment de telles perceptions son générées et transportées. L’étude de ces perceptions permet de saisir comment la perception dépend d’un contexte, se forme à travers des inter-actions, et change – montrant son historicité. / I explore new ways to study the history and historicity of perception, through a double portrait: of the francophone psychologist Albert Michotte, and of a set of well-preserved rotating paper discs. In their interaction, new experimental images were generated, shedding light on the intricacy of perception. I have searched different archives, object-archives and instrument collections in Belgium, France and Germany. Newly discovered sources, together with my historical re-animations, allowed me to combine history of science with media studies, in close interaction with the history of philosophy and religion.The portrait of Michotte shows a bridging-figure between different psychological paradigms, science and religion, filmology and experimental phenomenology, performing science diplomacy to navigate two wars, religious politics and institutional change. Studying the paradoxes he embodied is developed into a historiographical tool. The portrait of the discs, contextualised in terms of 'action contexts', shows how they related to experimental practice, cinema, art and the material culture of the laboratory. This dynamic double portrait shows how Michotte and the discs together create moving images for the study of dynamic perceptions, such as the perception of causality. Motion is central to this thesis, not only for explaining the dynamic perception of movements, but especially for understanding how such perceptions are generated and transported. Studying these 'movement-perceptions' makes it possible to grasp how perception is context dependent, how it is shaped through inter-actions, and how it changes – giving it a history.

Negli ultimi decenni i film studies stanno spostando la propria attenzione sul livello corporeo e affettivo dell’esperienza filmica. Adottando un approccio fenomenologico e focalizzandosi sulla nozione di empatia, la tesi studia le strategie del coinvolgimento dello spettatore cinematografico nei film di successo contemporanei. Il capitolo 1 rintraccia le diverse accezioni di empatia in filosofia, estetica, psicologia e nelle neuroscienze cognitive. Il capitolo 2 traccia una genealogia dell’empatia nelle teorie psicologiche ed estetiche del film. Il capitolo 3 esplora la rilevanza della teoria dell'atto empatico di Edith Stein per la filmologia e ne propone un'applicazione allo studio dell’esperienza filmica contemporanea. Il capitolo 4 analizza un ampio corpus di film contemporanei individuando quattro “figure aree” del coinvolgimento filmico: l’acrobazia, la caduta, il volo e il movimento in assenza di gravità. Attraverso la simulazione empatica dei movimenti nel film e del film, lo spettatore esperisce inavvertitamente l’intenzionalità implicata nelle forme e negli oggetti della rappresentazione, cogliendo con la propria sensibilità il senso di un’esperienza che trascende l’immanenza del film e contribuisce al processo di attribuzione di senso al Mondo, all’Altro e al Sé. / In recent decades film studies have shifted their focus to the emotional and bodily level of film experience. By adopting a phenomenological approach, this dissertation deals with the strategies of the film spectator’s involvement in contemporary mainstream narrative films. Chapter 1 reconstructs the meanings of the notion of empathy in philosophy, aesthetics, psychology and neurocognitive research. Chapter 2 traces a genealogy of empathy in film theories, from Bergsonism to Cognitivism, and evaluates the relevance of Simulation-Theory to film studies. Chapter 3 explores the relevance of Edith Stein’s phenomenological theory of empathy to film theory and assumes it is a theoretical model to investigate the “intensified” nature of both film design style and film reception style. A film is constructed and experienced on the basis of the “circuit of empathy”, a stratified system of different species of empathetic interaction, acting at senso-motorial, perceptual, cognitive and emotional levels with the aim of generating both an aesthetic and an inter-subjective experience. Chapter 4 analyses a vast corpus of contemporary films and focuses on four “aerial figures” of involvement and their combination: acrobatics, falling, flying, and non-gravitational movements, both of the actor’s human body and of the film’s anthropomorphic body. In the Conclusions, it is argued that the spectator internally imitates these “double” movements and inadvertently experiences the intentionality implied in the figures. Contemporary film spectators empathetically “get”, with their own sensibility, the senses of an experience that transcends the immanence of the film and contributes to the process of “giving” sense to the World, the Other, and the Self.