Books by Nikolaj Lubecker
Twenty-First-Century Symbolism, 2022
How do the writings of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé speak to our time? Why should we contin... more How do the writings of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé speak to our time? Why should we continue to read these poets today? How might a contemporary reading of their poetry differ from readings delivered in previous centuries? Twenty-First-Century Symbolism argues that Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé prefigure a view of human subjectivity that is appropriate for our times: we cannot be separated from the worlds in which we live and evolve; human beings both mediate and are mediations of the environments we traverse and that traverse us, whether these are natural, urban, linguistic, or technological environments. The ambition of the book is therefore twofold: on the one hand, it aims to offer new readings of the three poets, demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary debates, putting them into dialogue with a philosophical corpus that has not yet played a role in the study of nineteenth century French poetry; on the other, the book relies on the three poets to establish an understanding of human subjectivity that is in tune with our twenty-first century concerns.
For more than forty years, the experimental filmmaker James Benning has been engaged in a systema... more For more than forty years, the experimental filmmaker James Benning has been engaged in a systematic investigation of the relations between man, landscape, and the filmic medium, and during the last decade it has become increasingly clear how much these investigations have to offer to contemporary debates about ecology, the age of the anthropocene and the potentialities of new digital technologies. In James Benning’s Environments a range of international scholars highlight the thematic and formal coherence of Benning’s practice, whilst providing readers with an artistic and historical context to understand his experimental film work. The volume offers a number of interpretative frameworks drawing on film theory, environmental humanities, visual culture and philosophy, explaining why Benning has emerged as one of today’s essential filmmakers.
In recent years some of the most innovative European and American directors have made films that ... more In recent years some of the most innovative European and American directors have made films that place the spectator in a position of intense discomfort. Systematically manipulating the viewer, sometimes by withholding information, sometimes through shock or seduction, these films have often been criticised as amoral, nihilistic, politically irresponsible or anti-humanistic. But how are these unpleasurable viewing experiences created? What do the directors believe they can achieve via this ‘feel-bad’ experience? How can we situate these films in intellectual history? And why should we watch, study and teach ‘feel-bad’ films?
Answering these questions through the analysis of work by directors such as Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, The Feel-Bad Film invites readers to consider cinematic art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are radically different from the ones we would hope to find outside the movie theatre.
(To read the introduction, please click the link to EUP or download the sample)
The uploaded chapter about Roland Barthes is a close-to-final version of the fourth chapter in my... more The uploaded chapter about Roland Barthes is a close-to-final version of the fourth chapter in my book "Community, Myth and Recognition in 20th Century French Literature and Thought". Here is the publisher's presentation of the book:
"Taking as its point of departure the notion of community in mid-twentieth century French literature and thought, this ambitious study seeks to uncover the ways in which Breton, Bataille, Sartre and Barthes used literature and art to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society. In exploring the relevance these writings hold for contemporary debates about community, Lubecker argues for the continuing social importance of literary studies.
Throughout the book, he suggests that literature and art are privileged fields for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the periphery of human rationality. The authors studied put to work the concepts of Thanatos, sado-masochism and (self-)sacrifice; they also write more poetically about man's attraction to Silence, the Night and the Neutral.
Many sociological discourses on the question of community tend to marginalize the drives inherent within these concepts; Lubecker argues it is essential to take these drives into account when theorising the question of community, otherwise they may return in the atavistic form of myths. Moreover if handled with care and attention they can prove to be a resource."
Le sacrifice de la sirène propose une lecture détaillée du Coup de dés et une étude du rapport en... more Le sacrifice de la sirène propose une lecture détaillée du Coup de dés et une étude du rapport entre poésie et société chez Stéphane Mallarmé. Au cœur du livre se trouve une notion peu développée par la critique mallarméenne : le sacrifice. Celle-ci désigne à la fois un procédé ouvrant vers ce qui échappe à la raison discursive, et un acte social par lequel le plus-que-conceptualisable assume un rôle politique. Dans cette double acceptation, comment le sacrifice pourra-t-il élucider la poétique de Mallarmé? Une réponse sera avancée par Le sacrifice de la sirène.
Papers by Nikolaj Lubecker
Screen, 2023
Chris Marker’s Level Five (1997) is a dense, self-reflexive, and fragmented film that investigate... more Chris Marker’s Level Five (1997) is a dense, self-reflexive, and fragmented film that investigates a crucial event in the final months of World War II: the battle of Okinawa. This article focuses on the relationship between two key strands in Marker’s film: (1) the critical examination of images and their ability to render events; and (2) the reflection on the status of historical knowledge in the digital world. We contend that Marker’s film not only queries a number of conventional epistemological foundations in documentary filmmaking, but also searches for new ways to relate to history. By elaborating on the notion and practice of montage, and reading Marker’s work alongside Karen Barad, Vilém Flusser, and Georges Didi-Huberman, the article argues that Level Five should be read as a ‘non-representational historical documentary’. The film does not merely bear witness to the Battle of Okinawa, but enacts a different way of doing history.
Modernism/modernity, 2020
Since the late 1990s, a plethora of new theoretical approaches has emerged in literary studies as... more Since the late 1990s, a plethora of new theoretical approaches has emerged in literary studies as well as in the humanities and social sciences more widely. The first part of the article brings Brian Massumi’s writings on affectivity into dialogue with Baudelaire’s poem; the second and third parts step back and seek to clarify how a non-anthropocentric reading of Baudelaire’s text differs from two other (and to some extent related) readings of Baudelaire: Georges Poulet’s Baudelaire chapter from 'Les Métamorphoses du cercle' (1961), and the more recent volume by Ross Chambers, 'An Atmospherics of the City: Baudelaire and the Poetics of Noise' (2015). [...] twilight takes yet another form in the poet himself—or rather, it takes several forms. From the beginning, the poem presents a kind of hydraulic system; evening falls and sounds begin to rise from a mysterious “black asylum [noir hospice] perched on the mountain”; next they flood the city (62; 1:311).
Paragraph 43:2, 2020
How do Mallarmé’s writings speak to the present? To answer this question, this article establishe... more How do Mallarmé’s writings speak to the present? To answer this question, this article establishes a dialogue between one of Mallarmé’s early prose poems, ‘Le Démon de l'analogie’, and texts by the contemporary media theorists Mark Hansen, Steven Shaviro and Eugene Thacker. The article argues that Mallarmé’s poem explores how it feels to be a body modulated by code. The poem puts twentieth-century phenomenology with its focus on human perception under pressure, and instead presents a very contemporary view of individuation (subject-formation) as a process that is both thoroughly bound up with the environment, and difficult to comprehend and unify. In a final section, the article considers ‘Le Démon de l'analogie’ in relation to the poet's dream about le Livre, and suggests that Mallarmé’s work as a whole brings together the utopian and the dystopian tendencies that have marked media studies from their inception, and that continue to characterize our relations to the technological object.
Alphaville no. 23, 2022
This article considers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s essay film about Paul Cézanne: 'A ... more This article considers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s essay film about Paul Cézanne: 'A Visit to the Louvre' ('Une visite au Louvre', 2003). Remarkably, this film features no artworks by Cézanne, nor any photographs of the painter—instead, it combines three elements: a female voiceover reads Cézanne’s reflections on fifteen famous artworks in the Louvre; as we listen, Straub and Huillet show the artworks in static shots; finally, the directors add three further shots: first we see the Louvre from the outside; halfway through the film, we see the Seine from the Louvre; the film then ends with a circular shot of a forest clearing, lifted from the directors’ previous film 'Workers, Peasants' ('Operai, contadini', 2000). The article argues that Straub and Huillet teach us to see the world with the eyes of Cézanne. We understand that he searches for a fire-force beneath the level of figuration, and that he relies on colour to render this force. Next, the article examines how the directors communicate Cézanne’s fire-force through the singular diction of the voiceover and with their mainly static images. Finally, the article suggests that Straub and Huillet also aim to retrieve the fire-force for political purposes, boldly positioning 'Workers, Peasants' as a continuation of Cézanne’s art.
Angelaki, 2019
Chantal Akerman’s relatively under-studied 1999 documentary Sud (1999) investigates the brutal ra... more Chantal Akerman’s relatively under-studied 1999 documentary Sud (1999) investigates the brutal racist murder of James Byrd, Jr. that took place in Jaspers, Texas in 1998. Sud is a socio-political documentary, but it is also, as the director explains, an experimental film about the relation between physical and mental landscapes, between social and affective ecologies.
This article places Akerman’s film in the context of contemporary debates about non-anthropocentric ontologies. Whereas some critics have been keen to assert a strong distinction between socio-political analysis on the one hand and affective and ecological analysis on the other, Sud demonstrates not only how these different epistemologies can combine, but also how the ecological and the affective can enhance and nuance a political critique. In other words, Akerman’s film reveals the socio-political potential of non-anthropocentric ontologies. To explain how this is achieved, the article draws on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, and introduces the notion of the “spectator- environment”.
Mallarmé's Instruments: The Production of the Individu-Livre, 2019
(Draft of article)
What does Mallarmé mean when he describes the book as an ‘instrument spirituel... more (Draft of article)
What does Mallarmé mean when he describes the book as an ‘instrument spirituel’? What does this idea tell us about his understanding of subjectivity? Analyzing a selection of Mallarmé’s prose writings from Divagations (1897) and his pedagogical work L’Anglais récréatif (from the late 1870s), this article answers these questions in three sections. First, it considers Mallarmé’s speculative theorizations of the book, as it argues that the book is both a place and an event. Next, the article analyses the ‘practice of the book’, detailing how readers and writers engage with the book (and its worlds). Finally, the article draws on Gilbert Simondon’s writings about technology (Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques (1958) and ‘Culture et technique’ (1965)) to present the view of subjectivity that underpins Mallarmé’s understanding of the book as a spiritual instrument. Mallarmé emerges as a contemporary and radically ecological writer, defiantly dreaming about how fiction can help to align humans and their environments.
James Benning's Environments: Politics, Ecology, Duration, 2018
(Draft of chapter for James Benning's Environments)
James Benning is often described as a filmmak... more (Draft of chapter for James Benning's Environments)
James Benning is often described as a filmmaker who focuses on the relation between human beings and their surroundings. He uses very long takes that allow us to rethink our relation to an environment to which we generally forget to attend. From this description there is only a small step to the idea of a minimalist and contemplative filmmaker; there is only a small step to the notion of slow cinema, and to debates about the ethics and politics of an alternative to conventional narrative cinema. This description is not wrong, but Benning's work is more diverse than it suggests. Many of Benning's films provoke and challenge the spectator via the subject matter with which they deal. They work with logics of unease and suspense - even when they remain slow, minimalist and discreet. The aim of this chapter is therefore not to challenge debates about the ethical potential of eco-and slow cinema, but rather to show that eco-and slow cinema can also be violent, thematically dense, and politically poignant.
French Ecocriticism, 2017
(From "French Ecocriticism", Eds. Finch-Race & Posthumus, 2017)
Over a ten-year period, the expe... more (From "French Ecocriticism", Eds. Finch-Race & Posthumus, 2017)
Over a ten-year period, the experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau visited the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a natural spring in southern France. The result of Rous-seau's encounter with these landscapes, La Vallée close (1995), explores three processes of becoming. The first is cosmological: the director films the valley and its spring, bringing to life the landscape with its river, vegetation and grotto. The second is meta-filmic: the film thematises its very singular production process, discreetly showing how images combine without any cuts being made. The third is (auto-)biographical: towards the end of its 143-minute running time we understand that the film is a reflection on Rousseau's childhood , and a semi-fictional chronicle of the break-up of a relationship. This chapter draws on Henri Bergson's commentary on Lucretius' De rerum natura (explicitly featured in the soundtrack to the film), Félix Guattari's late ecosophical writings, and the process-oriented philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, in order to analyse Rousseau's exploration of the relations between ontology, perception and subjectivity. From Simondon's work, the chapter imports the concept of the individu-milieu [the individual as environment]. Simondon's concept helps to explain how worldmaking and filmmaking connect in an individual, bringing it into being, pulling it apart, eventually renewing it. The chapter concludes that the individu-milieu is a thoroughly ecological concept with a relevance for ecocriticism that far exceeds the particular case of La Vallée close. In the Vaucluse region of southern France, a peculiar natural phenomenon has fascinated locals and visitors for centuries. If you walk along the river Sorgue, all the way to the end of the valley, you arrive at the Fontaine de Vaucluse. For most of the year, a small stream runs from this grotto into the river. But every spring, a violent gush of water bursts forth, emptying millions of cubic metres into the river. The amount of water and the specific moment of its release do not correlate in any obvious way with the downpour seen throughout winter. Not surprisingly, a rich tradition of folklore has arisen around the fountain. Holy rituals have been performed, dragons and fairies have been spotted, artists and poets have painted and written (Petrarch; Frédéric Mistral), and scientists have attempted to dispel the myths-sometimes with near-fatal consequences (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team).
Paragraph, 2013
The last ten to fifteen years have seen the publication of numerous books and articles considerin... more The last ten to fifteen years have seen the publication of numerous books and articles considering the relation between images and politics. The reasons for this development are obvious: footage of the World Trade Center attacks and photos from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (to give just a few examples) have clearly demonstrated that images not only respond to political events, but also play an important part in shaping them. Images have therefore been blamed for their complicity in these events (in ways that literature and music, for instance, have not), and these accusations have prompted artists, philosophers and theoreticians to investigate how images can also be used to think critically about political events. This article examines two quite different, though not opposed, explorations of this last question: Georges Didi-Huberman’s 2009 'Quand les images prennent position' (When images take a stance)—the first volume in a book series entitled L’Œil de l’histoire (The eye of history)—and Judith Butler’s 2009 Frames of War. In addition to these, a number of Jacques Rancière’s recent writings will be included in the discussion.
(The uploaded version of the article had not been proofread).
Abstract
This article stages an encounter between Antonin Artaud’s writings from the mid-1930s an... more Abstract
This article stages an encounter between Antonin Artaud’s writings from the mid-1930s and selected aspects of contemporary non-anthropocentric theory. First it argues that "Heliogabalus; or, The Crowned Anarchist" (1934) is a rare example of what can be called ‘a non-anthropocentric biography’; next it begins to tease out an Artaudian theory of expression that includes stones, deserts and the sun; finally it concludes by emphasising that cruelty prevents us from drifting towards a naïve celebration of Nature that would most likely amount to little more than yet another version of anthropocentrism.
Résumé
Cet article établit un dialogue entre certains textes d’Antonin Artaud des années 1934-36 et la philosophie non-anthropocentrique contemporaine. La première partie de l’article défend l’idée qu’"Héliogabale, ou l’anarchiste couronné" (1934) doit être considéré comme quelque chose d’aussi rare et paradoxal qu’« une biographie non-anthropocentrique »; la seconde présente une théorie artaudienne de l’expression qui inclut non seulement les hommes mais aussi les pierres, le désert et le soleil; enfin, la conclusion souligne que l’idée artaudienne de la cruauté devrait interdire toute apologie naïve de la Nature qui, en toute vraisemblance, ne serait qu’une nouvelle forme d’anthropocentrisme.
This is a modified version of a talk I gave (in French) when Judith Butler received an honorary d... more This is a modified version of a talk I gave (in French) when Judith Butler received an honorary degree at the University of Bordeaux some years back. A mini-conference brought various academics together, I spoke about 'Giving an Account of Oneself'. There were plans for publishing the presentations, but these have not yet materialised. This text is therefore somewhere between an oral and a written presentation.
Paragraph, 2007
Throughout the twentieth century a significant tradition in French thought promoted a highly dram... more Throughout the twentieth century a significant tradition in French thought promoted a highly dramatized reading of the Hegelian struggle for recognition. In this tradition a violent struggle was regarded as an indispensable means to the realization of both individual and social ideals. The following article considers Claire Denis's film I Can't Sleep (J'ai pas sommeil, 1994) as an oblique challenge to this tradition. I Can't Sleep performs a careful dedramatization of an extremely violent story and thereby points to the possibility of an alternative form of co-existence outside a logic of conflict.
For most viewers it came as a big surprise when Bruno Dumont ventured into TV comedy with the fou... more For most viewers it came as a big surprise when Bruno Dumont ventured into TV comedy with the four-part series P’tit Quinquin (2014). This article examines why Dumont was attracted to comedy. Drawing on texts by Henri Bergson and Wolfgang Iser, the article first attempts to define the specificity of what shall be called Dumont’s comic look. Next, it analyses what it means to take a comic look at socio-political problems such as religious and racial conflicts. The article argues that Dumont refrains from trying to move beyond these problems, but also that P’tit Quinquin places the spectators in a non-tragic relation to the problems raised. The series therefore looks at the social world in a very different way than many of Dumont’s previous, more tragic feature films. Ultimately, this not only allows an auteurist reading of P’tit Quinquin (the series is gently laughing at Dumont’s earlier films), but also supports the more general point that comedy can be particularly well suited to negotiating contemporary social challenges.
Sartre Studies International, 2008
The article examines the conjunction of writing and the Hegelian theory of recognition as it appe... more The article examines the conjunction of writing and the Hegelian theory of recognition as it appears in Jean-Paul Sartre's text "Why Write?" The author argues that Sartre's theory of literature is not only a theory of literature as conversation and communication, but also a theory about the relation to a certain silence, and since literature and recognition go together in Sartre's text, the presence of silence has consequences for his theory of recognition.
Studies in French Cinema, 2011
In 1970, Michelangelo Antonioni took the viewers of Zabriskie Point into the Californian desert, ... more In 1970, Michelangelo Antonioni took the viewers of Zabriskie Point into the Californian desert, where he—with sympathy—explored the much-observed avant-garde correlation between transgression and emancipation. Thirty-three years later, the viewers of Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms (2003) were taken on a similar journey, but now Antonioni's emancipatory optimism had been replaced by self-destructive violence. This article examines the relation between Dumont's film and the avant-garde, and it argues that the power of Twentynine Palms lies in attempting to force a way from transgression to emancipation—and in failing to reach this goal.
Uploads
Books by Nikolaj Lubecker
Answering these questions through the analysis of work by directors such as Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, The Feel-Bad Film invites readers to consider cinematic art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are radically different from the ones we would hope to find outside the movie theatre.
(To read the introduction, please click the link to EUP or download the sample)
"Taking as its point of departure the notion of community in mid-twentieth century French literature and thought, this ambitious study seeks to uncover the ways in which Breton, Bataille, Sartre and Barthes used literature and art to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society. In exploring the relevance these writings hold for contemporary debates about community, Lubecker argues for the continuing social importance of literary studies.
Throughout the book, he suggests that literature and art are privileged fields for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the periphery of human rationality. The authors studied put to work the concepts of Thanatos, sado-masochism and (self-)sacrifice; they also write more poetically about man's attraction to Silence, the Night and the Neutral.
Many sociological discourses on the question of community tend to marginalize the drives inherent within these concepts; Lubecker argues it is essential to take these drives into account when theorising the question of community, otherwise they may return in the atavistic form of myths. Moreover if handled with care and attention they can prove to be a resource."
Papers by Nikolaj Lubecker
This article places Akerman’s film in the context of contemporary debates about non-anthropocentric ontologies. Whereas some critics have been keen to assert a strong distinction between socio-political analysis on the one hand and affective and ecological analysis on the other, Sud demonstrates not only how these different epistemologies can combine, but also how the ecological and the affective can enhance and nuance a political critique. In other words, Akerman’s film reveals the socio-political potential of non-anthropocentric ontologies. To explain how this is achieved, the article draws on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, and introduces the notion of the “spectator- environment”.
What does Mallarmé mean when he describes the book as an ‘instrument spirituel’? What does this idea tell us about his understanding of subjectivity? Analyzing a selection of Mallarmé’s prose writings from Divagations (1897) and his pedagogical work L’Anglais récréatif (from the late 1870s), this article answers these questions in three sections. First, it considers Mallarmé’s speculative theorizations of the book, as it argues that the book is both a place and an event. Next, the article analyses the ‘practice of the book’, detailing how readers and writers engage with the book (and its worlds). Finally, the article draws on Gilbert Simondon’s writings about technology (Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques (1958) and ‘Culture et technique’ (1965)) to present the view of subjectivity that underpins Mallarmé’s understanding of the book as a spiritual instrument. Mallarmé emerges as a contemporary and radically ecological writer, defiantly dreaming about how fiction can help to align humans and their environments.
James Benning is often described as a filmmaker who focuses on the relation between human beings and their surroundings. He uses very long takes that allow us to rethink our relation to an environment to which we generally forget to attend. From this description there is only a small step to the idea of a minimalist and contemplative filmmaker; there is only a small step to the notion of slow cinema, and to debates about the ethics and politics of an alternative to conventional narrative cinema. This description is not wrong, but Benning's work is more diverse than it suggests. Many of Benning's films provoke and challenge the spectator via the subject matter with which they deal. They work with logics of unease and suspense - even when they remain slow, minimalist and discreet. The aim of this chapter is therefore not to challenge debates about the ethical potential of eco-and slow cinema, but rather to show that eco-and slow cinema can also be violent, thematically dense, and politically poignant.
Over a ten-year period, the experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau visited the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a natural spring in southern France. The result of Rous-seau's encounter with these landscapes, La Vallée close (1995), explores three processes of becoming. The first is cosmological: the director films the valley and its spring, bringing to life the landscape with its river, vegetation and grotto. The second is meta-filmic: the film thematises its very singular production process, discreetly showing how images combine without any cuts being made. The third is (auto-)biographical: towards the end of its 143-minute running time we understand that the film is a reflection on Rousseau's childhood , and a semi-fictional chronicle of the break-up of a relationship. This chapter draws on Henri Bergson's commentary on Lucretius' De rerum natura (explicitly featured in the soundtrack to the film), Félix Guattari's late ecosophical writings, and the process-oriented philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, in order to analyse Rousseau's exploration of the relations between ontology, perception and subjectivity. From Simondon's work, the chapter imports the concept of the individu-milieu [the individual as environment]. Simondon's concept helps to explain how worldmaking and filmmaking connect in an individual, bringing it into being, pulling it apart, eventually renewing it. The chapter concludes that the individu-milieu is a thoroughly ecological concept with a relevance for ecocriticism that far exceeds the particular case of La Vallée close. In the Vaucluse region of southern France, a peculiar natural phenomenon has fascinated locals and visitors for centuries. If you walk along the river Sorgue, all the way to the end of the valley, you arrive at the Fontaine de Vaucluse. For most of the year, a small stream runs from this grotto into the river. But every spring, a violent gush of water bursts forth, emptying millions of cubic metres into the river. The amount of water and the specific moment of its release do not correlate in any obvious way with the downpour seen throughout winter. Not surprisingly, a rich tradition of folklore has arisen around the fountain. Holy rituals have been performed, dragons and fairies have been spotted, artists and poets have painted and written (Petrarch; Frédéric Mistral), and scientists have attempted to dispel the myths-sometimes with near-fatal consequences (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team).
(The uploaded version of the article had not been proofread).
This article stages an encounter between Antonin Artaud’s writings from the mid-1930s and selected aspects of contemporary non-anthropocentric theory. First it argues that "Heliogabalus; or, The Crowned Anarchist" (1934) is a rare example of what can be called ‘a non-anthropocentric biography’; next it begins to tease out an Artaudian theory of expression that includes stones, deserts and the sun; finally it concludes by emphasising that cruelty prevents us from drifting towards a naïve celebration of Nature that would most likely amount to little more than yet another version of anthropocentrism.
Résumé
Cet article établit un dialogue entre certains textes d’Antonin Artaud des années 1934-36 et la philosophie non-anthropocentrique contemporaine. La première partie de l’article défend l’idée qu’"Héliogabale, ou l’anarchiste couronné" (1934) doit être considéré comme quelque chose d’aussi rare et paradoxal qu’« une biographie non-anthropocentrique »; la seconde présente une théorie artaudienne de l’expression qui inclut non seulement les hommes mais aussi les pierres, le désert et le soleil; enfin, la conclusion souligne que l’idée artaudienne de la cruauté devrait interdire toute apologie naïve de la Nature qui, en toute vraisemblance, ne serait qu’une nouvelle forme d’anthropocentrisme.
Answering these questions through the analysis of work by directors such as Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, The Feel-Bad Film invites readers to consider cinematic art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are radically different from the ones we would hope to find outside the movie theatre.
(To read the introduction, please click the link to EUP or download the sample)
"Taking as its point of departure the notion of community in mid-twentieth century French literature and thought, this ambitious study seeks to uncover the ways in which Breton, Bataille, Sartre and Barthes used literature and art to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society. In exploring the relevance these writings hold for contemporary debates about community, Lubecker argues for the continuing social importance of literary studies.
Throughout the book, he suggests that literature and art are privileged fields for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the periphery of human rationality. The authors studied put to work the concepts of Thanatos, sado-masochism and (self-)sacrifice; they also write more poetically about man's attraction to Silence, the Night and the Neutral.
Many sociological discourses on the question of community tend to marginalize the drives inherent within these concepts; Lubecker argues it is essential to take these drives into account when theorising the question of community, otherwise they may return in the atavistic form of myths. Moreover if handled with care and attention they can prove to be a resource."
This article places Akerman’s film in the context of contemporary debates about non-anthropocentric ontologies. Whereas some critics have been keen to assert a strong distinction between socio-political analysis on the one hand and affective and ecological analysis on the other, Sud demonstrates not only how these different epistemologies can combine, but also how the ecological and the affective can enhance and nuance a political critique. In other words, Akerman’s film reveals the socio-political potential of non-anthropocentric ontologies. To explain how this is achieved, the article draws on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, and introduces the notion of the “spectator- environment”.
What does Mallarmé mean when he describes the book as an ‘instrument spirituel’? What does this idea tell us about his understanding of subjectivity? Analyzing a selection of Mallarmé’s prose writings from Divagations (1897) and his pedagogical work L’Anglais récréatif (from the late 1870s), this article answers these questions in three sections. First, it considers Mallarmé’s speculative theorizations of the book, as it argues that the book is both a place and an event. Next, the article analyses the ‘practice of the book’, detailing how readers and writers engage with the book (and its worlds). Finally, the article draws on Gilbert Simondon’s writings about technology (Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques (1958) and ‘Culture et technique’ (1965)) to present the view of subjectivity that underpins Mallarmé’s understanding of the book as a spiritual instrument. Mallarmé emerges as a contemporary and radically ecological writer, defiantly dreaming about how fiction can help to align humans and their environments.
James Benning is often described as a filmmaker who focuses on the relation between human beings and their surroundings. He uses very long takes that allow us to rethink our relation to an environment to which we generally forget to attend. From this description there is only a small step to the idea of a minimalist and contemplative filmmaker; there is only a small step to the notion of slow cinema, and to debates about the ethics and politics of an alternative to conventional narrative cinema. This description is not wrong, but Benning's work is more diverse than it suggests. Many of Benning's films provoke and challenge the spectator via the subject matter with which they deal. They work with logics of unease and suspense - even when they remain slow, minimalist and discreet. The aim of this chapter is therefore not to challenge debates about the ethical potential of eco-and slow cinema, but rather to show that eco-and slow cinema can also be violent, thematically dense, and politically poignant.
Over a ten-year period, the experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau visited the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a natural spring in southern France. The result of Rous-seau's encounter with these landscapes, La Vallée close (1995), explores three processes of becoming. The first is cosmological: the director films the valley and its spring, bringing to life the landscape with its river, vegetation and grotto. The second is meta-filmic: the film thematises its very singular production process, discreetly showing how images combine without any cuts being made. The third is (auto-)biographical: towards the end of its 143-minute running time we understand that the film is a reflection on Rousseau's childhood , and a semi-fictional chronicle of the break-up of a relationship. This chapter draws on Henri Bergson's commentary on Lucretius' De rerum natura (explicitly featured in the soundtrack to the film), Félix Guattari's late ecosophical writings, and the process-oriented philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, in order to analyse Rousseau's exploration of the relations between ontology, perception and subjectivity. From Simondon's work, the chapter imports the concept of the individu-milieu [the individual as environment]. Simondon's concept helps to explain how worldmaking and filmmaking connect in an individual, bringing it into being, pulling it apart, eventually renewing it. The chapter concludes that the individu-milieu is a thoroughly ecological concept with a relevance for ecocriticism that far exceeds the particular case of La Vallée close. In the Vaucluse region of southern France, a peculiar natural phenomenon has fascinated locals and visitors for centuries. If you walk along the river Sorgue, all the way to the end of the valley, you arrive at the Fontaine de Vaucluse. For most of the year, a small stream runs from this grotto into the river. But every spring, a violent gush of water bursts forth, emptying millions of cubic metres into the river. The amount of water and the specific moment of its release do not correlate in any obvious way with the downpour seen throughout winter. Not surprisingly, a rich tradition of folklore has arisen around the fountain. Holy rituals have been performed, dragons and fairies have been spotted, artists and poets have painted and written (Petrarch; Frédéric Mistral), and scientists have attempted to dispel the myths-sometimes with near-fatal consequences (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team).
(The uploaded version of the article had not been proofread).
This article stages an encounter between Antonin Artaud’s writings from the mid-1930s and selected aspects of contemporary non-anthropocentric theory. First it argues that "Heliogabalus; or, The Crowned Anarchist" (1934) is a rare example of what can be called ‘a non-anthropocentric biography’; next it begins to tease out an Artaudian theory of expression that includes stones, deserts and the sun; finally it concludes by emphasising that cruelty prevents us from drifting towards a naïve celebration of Nature that would most likely amount to little more than yet another version of anthropocentrism.
Résumé
Cet article établit un dialogue entre certains textes d’Antonin Artaud des années 1934-36 et la philosophie non-anthropocentrique contemporaine. La première partie de l’article défend l’idée qu’"Héliogabale, ou l’anarchiste couronné" (1934) doit être considéré comme quelque chose d’aussi rare et paradoxal qu’« une biographie non-anthropocentrique »; la seconde présente une théorie artaudienne de l’expression qui inclut non seulement les hommes mais aussi les pierres, le désert et le soleil; enfin, la conclusion souligne que l’idée artaudienne de la cruauté devrait interdire toute apologie naïve de la Nature qui, en toute vraisemblance, ne serait qu’une nouvelle forme d’anthropocentrisme.
This is a link to a conversation I had with Thomas Simonsen Balmbra for his Podcast series 'Unpleasant Movies'.