Arguments against Wittgensteinian family resemblance as applied to genre?

In fields like film studies and literary criticism, Wittgenstein's concept of the family resemblance is often used when thinking about artistic/literary/cinematic genres. The idea is that, like Wittgenstein's original example of games, there is no one element that make something a drama or a film noir, etc., but that we label it as such because it has certain smaller resemblances to other works in that genre. That if we were to, for instance, visualize a cinematic genre it would be something like a complex series of overlapping Venn diagrams.

Is there any interesting work in aesthetics, philosophy of film, etc. that pushed back against this by arguing that we can find some core element that makes something fall under the category of _____________ genre?

Posted Oct 10, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

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