Metz on the Intellectual Position

From Imaginary Signifier:

To be a theoretician of the cinema, one should ideally no longer love the cinema and yet still love it.... Not have forgotten what the cinephile one used to be was like, in all the details of his affective inflections, in the three dimensions of his living being, and yet no longer be invaded by him: not have lost sight of him, but be keeping an eye on him... This balance may seem somewhat an acrobatic one. It is and it is not. Of course no one can be sure to attain it perfectly, everyone is in danger of slipping off on one side or the other. (15).

Forgive the gender non-neutral language here (is the cinephile coded male?). I cite the passage because it captures much of my own scholarly desire and sensibility - I'm not sure if Metz is even responsible for it and didn't even notice this imperative until rereading IS this week.  And like he describes, I find my acrobatic act a little tricky and teetering from one side to the other.... lately I've had to embrace/enjoyed embracing the cinephilic since I've been teaching in a production department, one defined against mainstream industrial practice, and am responsible for generalist courses. 

Ongoing I am trying to wrap my head around the newish reading formations of film theory - I do think them distinct - and suspect one difference I have with some of these readings is that they purposefully and/or unconsciously collapse the affective and experiential dimensions of the films they discuss with the study of those texts.

Of course, this is a discussion with a parallel in the social sciences: the opposition between objectivist scholarship and subjectivist.