Book by Chari Larsson
Didi-Huberman and the Image, 2020
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526149268/
Philosopher and art historian Georges Did... more https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526149268/
Philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman is one of the most innovative and influential critical thinkers writing today. This book is the first English-language study of his writing on images. An image is a form of representation, but what are the philosophical frameworks supporting it? The book considers how Didi-Huberman takes up this question repeatedly over the course of his career. Placing his project in relation to major historical and intellectual contexts, it shows not only how he modifies dominant disciplinary traditions, but also how the study of images is central to a new way of thinking about poststructuralist-inspired art history.
Book Chapters by Chari Larsson
Psychosocial and Cultural Perspectives on the War in Ukraine, 2024
The photographic archive assembled by the students and academics at the Lviv Center for Urban His... more The photographic archive assembled by the students and academics at the Lviv Center for Urban History sits apart from familiar tropes of photojournalism. As a powerful record of day-to-day existence, the archive gives visual form to the disruption and dislocation experienced in the immediate wake of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. My chapter investigates the relationship between trauma, vernacular photography, and the documentation of the every day and asks how this project might yield new forms of visualising traumatic experience? Not filtered through the conventions of war photography, I argue that the images attend to a category of trauma called ‘quiet trauma’, or the trauma experienced by civilians geographically distant from direct armed conflict.
The Persistence of Melancholia in Arts and Culture, 2019
The irreconcilable gap between images and the words we use to describe them has led Michael Ann H... more The irreconcilable gap between images and the words we use to describe them has led Michael Ann Holly to identify art history as a quintessentially melancholic discipline. Severed from its historical context, something in the image remains elusive, evades our grasp, and refuses to be tamed by language. Against Holly’s proposal, this chapter will advance an anti-melancholic reading of the discipline that does not dwell on the object’s absence. I will argue that what is at stake is precisely the opposite to melancholy: the joyful affirmation of the return.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429468469
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Chari Larsson
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1057/S41282-022-00291-3
The controversy surrounding Luke Willis Thompson’s ... more https://doi.org/10.1057/S41282-022-00291-3
The controversy surrounding Luke Willis Thompson’s film autoportrait (2017) raised important questions regarding the role art events and museums such as the Turner Prize and Tate Britain play in representing traumatic images. My concern in this article is with how French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s theorisation of the symptom might help us think about representing traumatic images in museums. First, a symptomatic reading of autoportrait is apposite to representing trauma as it sidesteps a binary oscillation between mimetic and anti-mimetic curatorial approaches that have historically structured traumatic representation in the museum. Second, a symptomatic approach is sympathetic to a theorisation of the ongoing effects of racial and postcolonial trauma as it eludes the single event model that has formed a cornerstone in trauma theory since the 1990s.
M/C Journal, Jan 1, 2012
If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its h... more If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its history is an ancient one in all of its Platonic, Christian, and Judaic forms. At its most radical, iconophobia results in an act of iconoclasm, or the total destruction of the image. At the other end of the spectrum, contemporary iconophobia may be more subtle. Images are simply withdrawn from circulation with the aim of eliminating their visibility. In his book Images in Spite of All, French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman questions the tradition of suspicion and denigration governing visual representations of the Holocaust, arguing we have abdicated our ethical obligation to try to imagine. This essay will argue that disruptions to traditional modes of spectatorship shift the terms of viewing from suspicion to ethical participation. By building on Didi-Huberman’s discussion of images and the spectatorial gaze, this essay will consider Laura Waddington’s 2002 documentary film Border. Waddington spent six months hiding with asylum seekers in the area surrounding the Red Cross refugee camp at Sangatte in northern France. I will argue that Waddington proposes a model of spectatorship that implicates the viewer into the ethical content of the film. By seeking to restore the dignity and humanity of the asylum seekers rather than viewing them with suspicion, Border is an acute reminder of our moral responsibility to bear witness to that which lies beyond the boundaries of conventional representations of asylum seekers.
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/393
Journal of Art Historiography, 2020
"I" is harder to write than to read. 1 Divided into four sections, Georges Didi-Huberman's recent... more "I" is harder to write than to read. 1 Divided into four sections, Georges Didi-Huberman's recent book Aperçues consists of nearly 200 fragments organised into four themes: occasions, blessures, survivances, désires (occasions, wounds, survivals, desires). The fragments are dated, but not ordered chronologically. As a result, the text refuses to be organised into a neat linear narrative resembling diary form.
Senses of Cinema, Dec 2016
ABSTRACT: This article locates László Nemes’s Son of Saul in respect to broader European discours... more ABSTRACT: This article locates László Nemes’s Son of Saul in respect to broader European discourse concerning the ethics of Holocaust representation. The film provides an extraordinary update to a long tradition in European philosophy and filmmaking that has questioned the ethics of Holocaust representation. French directors such as Jean-Luc Godard have suggested that cinema has long neglected its moral and ethical duty to testify to the existence of Nazi death camps. Son of Saul is compared with other Holocaust representational strategies, in particular Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). In interviews, Nemes has consistently emphasised his intellectual debt to French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman. These comments are contextualised in respect to very public philosophical debates that took place in France during the 2000s. The discourse emphasising Holocaust ineffability has come increasingly under scrutiny, with younger generations of philosophers such as Didi-Huberman urging for the necessity of the imagination in reconstructing Holocaust representation. This article argues that Nemes’s film is the first feature film to explicitly respond to Didi-Huberman’s arguments.
http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/feature-articles/son-of-saul/
French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has enigmatically declared that "Montage is the art of... more French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has enigmatically declared that "Montage is the art of producing this form that thinks." What does it mean for an image to think? The fundamental principles of montage, such as juxtaposition and shock are well known. Perhaps, however, there is another way to speak of montage, when it is deployed as a mode of knowledge. By claiming that images are capable of thinking, this essay argues that Didi-Huberman is taking up Gilles Deleuze’s proposal that cinema does not merely imitate or reflect philosophy, but produces its own philosophical project. For Deleuze, the challenge facing philosophy was to overcome the assumptions concerning what thinking is, a return to a ground zero of what representation can possibly be. Didi-Huberman’s arguments signal an alternative way of treating images beyond what Deleuze calls "representation," or thought based on resemblance, recognition and identity. To do this, Didi-Huberman retrieves montage from the historical avant-garde and explores its epistemological potential. By emphasising montage’s capacity to create new meaning and generate new lines of thought, images become theoretical objects, things that "think."
emaj art journal http://emajartjournal.com/, Apr 2015
In 1990 French art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman announced he would undertake w... more In 1990 French art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman announced he would undertake what he termed an ‘aesthetics of the symptom’. What exactly this symptomatic approach may mean for art history has often been overlooked in appraising his historiographic project. This essay traces the trajectory of Didi-Huberman’s retrieval of the Freudian symptom in relation to Honoré de Balzac’s 1831 short story The Unknown Masterpiece. While Frenhofer’s failed portrait of his mistress Catherine Lescault has long symbolised the irrecoverable gulf between reality and artifice, model and copy, I argue there is an alternative way of imagining Lescault beyond the terms of mimetic failure by drawing on Didi-Huberman’s aesthetics. If it is possible to recast Frenhofer’s masterpiece not as unsuccessful imitation, but as a successful presentation of the human body, as is proposed in the 1985 book La peinture incarnée, the terms of this aesthetic production need to be re-examined in light of Didi-Huberman’s reception in English. With its origins located in Sigmund Freud’s early studies of hysteria, the attendant issues of overdetermination and the pan of the image provide an entry point into Didi-Huberman’s critique of mimesis and his particular approach to art history.
Art Criticism by Chari Larsson
Artlink, 2017
Australian-born, Los Angeles based artist Jemima Wyman has positioned camouflage and mimicry as t... more Australian-born, Los Angeles based artist Jemima Wyman has positioned camouflage and mimicry as the cornerstones of her practice. Wyman’s body of work is replete with the iconography of contemporary protest culture drawn from the Occupy movements, as well as the Arab Spring and European revolts against austerity measures. She works fluidly across multimedia, sculpture and performance, photography, video, fabric design and archives. Wyman is the quintessential bowerbird, drawing from the largest and most unruly archive of all—the Internet. Like performance art, mass protests tend to be ephemeral, and rely on documentation and transmission through the Internet and social media.
di'van, Dec 2016
In considering how to approach Khaled Sabsabi’s recent work, it seemed appropriate to explore its... more In considering how to approach Khaled Sabsabi’s recent work, it seemed appropriate to explore its engagement with crowds and people. From the very beginning, Sabsabi’s practice has been deeply invested in the multiracial and religious diversity characterising the suburbs of Western Sydney. In recent years, Sabsabi has turned his gaze to documenting sporting communities, in particular the Western Sydney Wanderers’ fan club, the Red and Black Bloc. These works raise important questions pertaining to representation: how to portray the diversity and plurality of the crowd without homogenising or attening complexity? This essay will argue that Sabsabi’s recent work functions as a breach in the normative economy of representation, disrupting the construction of national sporting narratives, and the ideological frameworks sustaining them. Drawing on recent arguments by Judith Butler and Georges Didi-Huberman pertaining to representing “the people”, it will proceed in two parts. Firstly, it will frame Sabsabi’s video works Wonderland and Organised Chaos against an art-historical background, examining the uneasy relationship between artistic representation and crowds. And secondly, it will examine how Sabsabi leverages this historical anxiety as a critical tool for intervention.
It was the egalitarian potential of sound that initially brought together the collective that is ... more It was the egalitarian potential of sound that initially brought together the collective that is Super Critical Mass in 2007. With the goal of creating acoustic pieces through engaging a diverse range of participants, the performance driven project has steadily built on its foundations. Occupying the intersection of sound, performance and participatory art, Super Critical Mass is currently preparing for its latest initiative at Queensland Art Gallery’s flagship event, The Asia Pacific Triennial. Extending over the duration of the Triennial in a series of workshops, installations and delegated performances, the project promises to be the most ambitious commission undertaken by the group to date.
Esse, Sep 2015
The question of the political efficacy of images has resurged in recent years in the wake of foot... more The question of the political efficacy of images has resurged in recent years in the wake of footage from the World Trade Center attacks, as well as images from Abu Ghraib and more recently, the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has claimed it is necessary for images to take a position. This essay will examine the historical context of Didi-Huberman’s claim and its contemporary relevancy. Consideration will be given to British artist Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country (2007-2009).
Conference Abstracts by Chari Larsson
What does it mean to make an imprint? It is difficult to speak of the imprint in general terms: i... more What does it mean to make an imprint? It is difficult to speak of the imprint in general terms: it spans an array of mediums, including clay, plaster, wax and photography. The imprint is simultaneously singular and plural, origin and its copy, present and absent. Imprinting is both a critical component in the sculptural process, yet it is also invisible, disposable, and neglected. The imprint is anachronistic, pointing simultaneously to the past, and a future that is yet to come. The imprint happily cuts across time, destabilising movements and chronological accounts of improvement and development. With this in mind, Hungarian born French artist Simon Hantaï made imprinting, or pliage (folding) the cornerstone of his practice. Starting with an unstretched canvas, Hantaï would famously crumple, knot, roll and tie the canvas. He would then paint the still folded canvas, allowing it to dry and subsequently unfold. Disarmingly straightforward, Hantaï pursued this technique for over twenty years, from 1960 until 1982. The canvas can no longer be thought here as an Albertian window to the world, but instead a matrice, or mould for imprinting. Frequently positioned as France’s response to Jackson Pollock, this paper will argue that Hantaï’s pliage (folding) as method sits outside Anglophone accounts of formalist modernism. Clement Greenberg’s account of the development of modern art, with its emphasis on flatness and purity, was never systematically taken up by French art history and remains an Anglo-American construction.
What does it mean to take a position? How is this different to taking sides? French art historian... more What does it mean to take a position? How is this different to taking sides? French art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman has deployed the phrase in conjunction with his discussion of German playwright and theorist, Bertolt Brecht, in his 2009 Quand les images prennent position (When Images Take a Position). Didi-Huberman’s concern with the political efficacy of images brings his work into dialogue with debates concerning the relationship between images and politics in the wake of 9/11. Footage of the World Trade Centre attacks, as well as photographs from Abu Ghraib and more recently the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris have renewed critical discussions concerning the political power of images. Didi-Huberman’s contribution to this area of scholarship draws deeply on a Marxist strain of aesthetic theory, especially in relation to Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, and establishes its contemporary relevance for discussing the relationship between images, history and politics.
This paper will examine Didi-Huberman’s arguments in relation to Jacques Rancière’s formulation of equality. As is well known, Rancière’s philosophy of equality is understood as active and participatory, as opposed to the passive equality characterising mainstream political theory. Democratic politics is not just something that occurs naturally. Instead, politics demands a confrontation with the status quo, when the pre-existing governing order is challenged and disrupted. This notion of active participation extends to modes of spectatorship itself. In The Emancipated Spector, Rancière distances himself from a Brechtian mode of epic theatre, arguing it is hierarchical and unequal, at odds with his commitment to active equality. Against his dismissal, this paper will argue that Brecht, in Didi-Huberman’s hands, satisfies Rancière’s demand that the spectator becomes an ‘active interpreter’. Consideration will be given to British artist Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country (2007-2009).
The irreconcilable gap between images and the words we use to describe them has led Michael Ann H... more The irreconcilable gap between images and the words we use to describe them has led Michael Ann Holly to identify art history as a quintessentially melancholic discipline. Freud’s theory of melancholy serves as a vehicle for understanding the complexity of the art historian’s relationship with the image. Severed from its historical context, something in the image remains elusive, evades our grasp and refuses to be tamed by language. This is understood by Holly as a melancholic trope of absence and loss.
Against Holly’s proposal, this paper will advance an anti-melancholic reading of the discipline that does not dwell on the object’s absence. Drawing on French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s reading of Aby Warburg’s Nachleben (afterlife) and Pathosformeln (pathos gestures) I will argue that what is at stake here is precisely the opposite to melancholy: the joyful affirmation of the return. As opposed to the pathological obsession for a lost object, Warburg’s model of temporality allows for its productive reappearance. In this way, Didi-Huberman rescues the most melancholic of all art historians from art’s history and reinscribes Warburg’s practice in terms of affirmation and delight.
The Persistence of Melancholia Melancholy and the Arts, 1514-2014
French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has enigmatically claimed that ‘Montage is the art of ... more French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has enigmatically claimed that ‘Montage is the art of producing this form that thinks.’ What does it mean for an image to think? Furthermore, what are the implications for the subject? Didi-Huberman’s proposal signals an enormous shift in agency from the spectator to the image itself. By arguing that images are capable of thinking, my hypothesis here is Didi-Huberman is entering into direct dialogue with Gilles Deleuze’s critique of the image of thought outlined in Difference and Repetition. For Deleuze, the challenge facing philosophy was to overcome the assumptions concerning what thinking is, a return to a ground zero of what representation can possibly be.
Didi-Huberman’s claim signals an alternative way of treating visual images beyond what Deleuze calls ‘representation’, or thought based on resemblance, recognition and identity. To explore these implications, this paper will turn to two of the great experimental montage projects of the early twentieth century, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925-1929) and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (1927-1940). Anachronistically anticipating Deleuze’s concerns, both Warburg and Benjamin explore the possibility of montage as a vehicle for reconsidering history, memory and knowledge itself. What is at stake here is a model of representation that is no longer imitative, but capable of generating its own theoretical and intellectual project. By emphasising montage’s capacity to create new meaning and generate new lines of thought, it becomes a theoretical object, a form that ‘thinks’.
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Book by Chari Larsson
Philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman is one of the most innovative and influential critical thinkers writing today. This book is the first English-language study of his writing on images. An image is a form of representation, but what are the philosophical frameworks supporting it? The book considers how Didi-Huberman takes up this question repeatedly over the course of his career. Placing his project in relation to major historical and intellectual contexts, it shows not only how he modifies dominant disciplinary traditions, but also how the study of images is central to a new way of thinking about poststructuralist-inspired art history.
Book Chapters by Chari Larsson
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429468469
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Chari Larsson
The controversy surrounding Luke Willis Thompson’s film autoportrait (2017) raised important questions regarding the role art events and museums such as the Turner Prize and Tate Britain play in representing traumatic images. My concern in this article is with how French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s theorisation of the symptom might help us think about representing traumatic images in museums. First, a symptomatic reading of autoportrait is apposite to representing trauma as it sidesteps a binary oscillation between mimetic and anti-mimetic curatorial approaches that have historically structured traumatic representation in the museum. Second, a symptomatic approach is sympathetic to a theorisation of the ongoing effects of racial and postcolonial trauma as it eludes the single event model that has formed a cornerstone in trauma theory since the 1990s.
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/393
http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/feature-articles/son-of-saul/
Art Criticism by Chari Larsson
June 8 marks the 50 year anniversary since Associated Press photographer Hyung Cong “Nick” Út captured one of the Vietnam War’s defining images.
Titled “Accidental Napalm”, the black-and-white still photograph has since been repeatedly reproduced and continues to survive in collective memory.
https://theconversation.com/accidental-napalm-turns-50-the-generation-defining-image-capturing-the-futility-of-the-vietnam-war-175050
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-covid-in-ten-photos-145318
Conference Abstracts by Chari Larsson
This paper will examine Didi-Huberman’s arguments in relation to Jacques Rancière’s formulation of equality. As is well known, Rancière’s philosophy of equality is understood as active and participatory, as opposed to the passive equality characterising mainstream political theory. Democratic politics is not just something that occurs naturally. Instead, politics demands a confrontation with the status quo, when the pre-existing governing order is challenged and disrupted. This notion of active participation extends to modes of spectatorship itself. In The Emancipated Spector, Rancière distances himself from a Brechtian mode of epic theatre, arguing it is hierarchical and unequal, at odds with his commitment to active equality. Against his dismissal, this paper will argue that Brecht, in Didi-Huberman’s hands, satisfies Rancière’s demand that the spectator becomes an ‘active interpreter’. Consideration will be given to British artist Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country (2007-2009).
Against Holly’s proposal, this paper will advance an anti-melancholic reading of the discipline that does not dwell on the object’s absence. Drawing on French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s reading of Aby Warburg’s Nachleben (afterlife) and Pathosformeln (pathos gestures) I will argue that what is at stake here is precisely the opposite to melancholy: the joyful affirmation of the return. As opposed to the pathological obsession for a lost object, Warburg’s model of temporality allows for its productive reappearance. In this way, Didi-Huberman rescues the most melancholic of all art historians from art’s history and reinscribes Warburg’s practice in terms of affirmation and delight.
The Persistence of Melancholia Melancholy and the Arts, 1514-2014
Didi-Huberman’s claim signals an alternative way of treating visual images beyond what Deleuze calls ‘representation’, or thought based on resemblance, recognition and identity. To explore these implications, this paper will turn to two of the great experimental montage projects of the early twentieth century, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925-1929) and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (1927-1940). Anachronistically anticipating Deleuze’s concerns, both Warburg and Benjamin explore the possibility of montage as a vehicle for reconsidering history, memory and knowledge itself. What is at stake here is a model of representation that is no longer imitative, but capable of generating its own theoretical and intellectual project. By emphasising montage’s capacity to create new meaning and generate new lines of thought, it becomes a theoretical object, a form that ‘thinks’.
Philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman is one of the most innovative and influential critical thinkers writing today. This book is the first English-language study of his writing on images. An image is a form of representation, but what are the philosophical frameworks supporting it? The book considers how Didi-Huberman takes up this question repeatedly over the course of his career. Placing his project in relation to major historical and intellectual contexts, it shows not only how he modifies dominant disciplinary traditions, but also how the study of images is central to a new way of thinking about poststructuralist-inspired art history.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429468469
The controversy surrounding Luke Willis Thompson’s film autoportrait (2017) raised important questions regarding the role art events and museums such as the Turner Prize and Tate Britain play in representing traumatic images. My concern in this article is with how French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s theorisation of the symptom might help us think about representing traumatic images in museums. First, a symptomatic reading of autoportrait is apposite to representing trauma as it sidesteps a binary oscillation between mimetic and anti-mimetic curatorial approaches that have historically structured traumatic representation in the museum. Second, a symptomatic approach is sympathetic to a theorisation of the ongoing effects of racial and postcolonial trauma as it eludes the single event model that has formed a cornerstone in trauma theory since the 1990s.
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/393
http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/feature-articles/son-of-saul/
June 8 marks the 50 year anniversary since Associated Press photographer Hyung Cong “Nick” Út captured one of the Vietnam War’s defining images.
Titled “Accidental Napalm”, the black-and-white still photograph has since been repeatedly reproduced and continues to survive in collective memory.
https://theconversation.com/accidental-napalm-turns-50-the-generation-defining-image-capturing-the-futility-of-the-vietnam-war-175050
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-covid-in-ten-photos-145318
This paper will examine Didi-Huberman’s arguments in relation to Jacques Rancière’s formulation of equality. As is well known, Rancière’s philosophy of equality is understood as active and participatory, as opposed to the passive equality characterising mainstream political theory. Democratic politics is not just something that occurs naturally. Instead, politics demands a confrontation with the status quo, when the pre-existing governing order is challenged and disrupted. This notion of active participation extends to modes of spectatorship itself. In The Emancipated Spector, Rancière distances himself from a Brechtian mode of epic theatre, arguing it is hierarchical and unequal, at odds with his commitment to active equality. Against his dismissal, this paper will argue that Brecht, in Didi-Huberman’s hands, satisfies Rancière’s demand that the spectator becomes an ‘active interpreter’. Consideration will be given to British artist Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country (2007-2009).
Against Holly’s proposal, this paper will advance an anti-melancholic reading of the discipline that does not dwell on the object’s absence. Drawing on French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s reading of Aby Warburg’s Nachleben (afterlife) and Pathosformeln (pathos gestures) I will argue that what is at stake here is precisely the opposite to melancholy: the joyful affirmation of the return. As opposed to the pathological obsession for a lost object, Warburg’s model of temporality allows for its productive reappearance. In this way, Didi-Huberman rescues the most melancholic of all art historians from art’s history and reinscribes Warburg’s practice in terms of affirmation and delight.
The Persistence of Melancholia Melancholy and the Arts, 1514-2014
Didi-Huberman’s claim signals an alternative way of treating visual images beyond what Deleuze calls ‘representation’, or thought based on resemblance, recognition and identity. To explore these implications, this paper will turn to two of the great experimental montage projects of the early twentieth century, Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925-1929) and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (1927-1940). Anachronistically anticipating Deleuze’s concerns, both Warburg and Benjamin explore the possibility of montage as a vehicle for reconsidering history, memory and knowledge itself. What is at stake here is a model of representation that is no longer imitative, but capable of generating its own theoretical and intellectual project. By emphasising montage’s capacity to create new meaning and generate new lines of thought, it becomes a theoretical object, a form that ‘thinks’.
Balzac’s text has traditionally been interpreted as an allegory concerning the limits of artistic creativity and representation, reality and artifice. Despite this, is there another way of interpreting Frenhofer’s plight beyond the narrative of Platonic failure? This paper will argue that what is at stake here is a model of representation that can no longer be thought of in figurative or mimetic terms. Frenhofer’s masterpiece might be better understood in terms of the doctrine of the Incarnation. This requires a necessary shift in our understanding of representation to a presencing, rather than figuring of the human body.
This paper seeks to examine one aspect of the anti-Hegelian impulse in Didi-Huberman’s thought, specifically the theme of déchirement. Variously translating to tearing or rending, déchirement is an enduring motif in Didi-Huberman’s research, revealing his proximity to Georges Bataille and Bataille’s preoccupation with the “unhappy consciousness” as an irreconcilable rend in subjectivity. Didi-Huberman retrieves a line of thought originating in an early moment in the French reception of Hegel, Jean Wahl’s 1929 publication of Le malheur de la conscience. Wahl’s reading of Hegel emphasised an internally divided and self-alienated subject, unable to achieve unity in experience. This “unhappy consciousness” exerted a profound influence on Bataille’s thinking, who embraced the theme of an irrational, fragmented model of subjectivity. In Didi-Huberman’s hands this becomes a powerful weapon in his critique of a transcendental humanist subject. Didi-Huberman becomes a direct heir to the tradition of the “unhappy consciousness” which has permeated twentieth century French thought as a resistant strain to the Hegelian dialectic.
Finally, I will explore the possible implications of Didi-Huberman’s confrontation between spectatorship and ethics in a discussion of Laura Waddington’s 2004 film Border which documents the plight of asylum seekers in the Sangatte refugee camp in northern France.
The ‘contemporary’, by its very nature, is unwieldy, open-ended, global and decentralised. The ‘national’ is also a slippery noun, constantly in the process of being defined and redefined. In the current political and economic milieu, nationalism is framed in pejorative terms, signalling a regressive retreat to closed nation states, protectivism, and a systematic locking down of borders. The current assertion of aggressive forms of nationalism in parts of Europe is considered a by-product of a generalised negativity directed towards globalism. This dangerous strain has recently been dubbed the ‘new nationalism’ by The Economist.
https://theconversation.com/sex-and-spirit-the-many-faces-of-ecstasy-84585