Almost one week has passed since the verdict on the Trayvon Martin case was publicly announced. I refer to it as the Martin case because to me it was clear that the political, social and human condition of the victim, rather than that of the killer, was being tacitly disputed here. Many have noted that the no guilty verdict represents a legally just decision given the case presented by the prosecution. But that assessment presupposes that the jury of six women (five white and one minority) were indeed deliberating based on the case that both prosecution and defense staged. And that they indeed deliberated, namely grappled with the information and various sets of interpretation presented to them. And that they deliberated, in other words, willfully considering with care and attention the many intricacies of the case. Moved by emotions. But always guided by reason. I for one do not entertain such presuppositions.
Andrew Cohen's article in The Atlantic addresses the larger concerns undergirding the many presuppositions listed above, none of which I uphold: "Trials like this one can never answer the larger societal questions they pose. They can never act as moral surrogates to resolve the national debates they trigger." Thus, hoping and expecting that the trial redresses, even if just partially or imperfectly, the social ill that it had been committed on the person of Trayvon Martin (and his family and by extension the African American community) promised to be a forlorn quest from the start.
At the same time, nor will clintonesque national dialogues have any consequential effect in changing the material, including legal and political, conditions that have ushered the social tragedy that has been the Trayvon Martin case.
My posts usually dangle in more abstract territory, although no less real or meaningful for being abstract. This week I would like to step outside the universe of pressing abstraction to jot down some impressions that the case's culmination have assembled in me at once quickly and gradually. Many emotions and fragmented thoughts roamed in me as the specificity of what I felt and thought was swiftly taking form. The process was helped by reading writers I respect: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb; and listening to public political and social commentators I follow: Melissa Harris Perry. All of them amassed insights and words that have helped me to articulate my own thoughts about what was staged on Saturday, when the decision delivered and made public: a miscarriage of social and political justice, whose causes and incentives had been instituted over a century ago, and whose repercussions continue unabated today.
More to follow.
7.19.2013
6.28.2013
The cigarette as a cinematic object in Hannah Arendt
What do I mean by a cinematic object? I hope to muster a tentative answer in this post.
First, I would like to elaborate a few more thoughts about the aesthetic connection that I traced between thinking and dying in the previous post. To begin, it is important to highlight the term dwell, which Heidegger deploys to speak of language as the house of dwelling that relates person to Being. The idea of dwelling suggests a space in which or at which one can reside, spend time, continue to be or being. Could we say that language is where time becomes materialized or spatialized, and thus ceases to be pure negativity? The verb presupposes a spatial configuration that is repository-like, presenting a discernable depth, where the surface-level appearance of things is hardly the most defining aspect. It follows that his magnum opus Being and Time, could also be Being in Time, as Being cannot happen outside the duration or passing of Time. That is, one approaches the truth gradually by journeying through the layered distance of things and in the passing of time.
In both his books and lectures, Graham Harman reminds us that for Heidegger Being represents the start and end of philosophical thought. And "Letter on Humanism" affords us a glimpse into this paradigmatic view, which largely informed Heidegger's philosophical work. Meaning does not lie on flat surfaces, but rather in that which withdraws from immediate perception. There are levels to things, including, of course, people. Think of his tool analysis, for instance, of which Harman offers an unconventional yet re-energized interpretation. Not all the features of a thing appear or become accessible to the perceiving individual. Harman's treatment of Heidegger's tool analysis takes it a step further to claim that the things hide qualities not only to the perceiving individual but also to other things, that is, not only to things (or beings) that bear consciousness. [I will continue to develop this paragraph in future posts.]
I view the cigarette in von Trotta's film as a cinematic object insofar as the cigarette's meaning in the many scenes in which it appears cannot be exhausted to operate as a unified, non-contradictory entity of signification. Cinematic objects do not simply amount to narratable signification. It is an object rather than a metaphor or even a figure because the role it is playing in each of the scenes as well as the film as a whole cannot be entirely deciphered or decodified. What the cigarette is in the film becomes decidedly inexhaustible. At the same time, in its varied cinematic articulations, the cigarette assembles aesthetic effects and impressions for the viewer.
Thus I propose that cinema does not express itself only or mainly through metaphors or figures that advance an intelligible narrative–of meaning or even lack thereof. Despite commonly held beliefs by those who produce cinema and those who consume it, films do not exist only to tell stories. Aesthetically speaking, cinema is composed of objects, cinematic objects that assemble a tenuous whole. In other words, I ask us to view cinema's coming into being not just to represent some other or something other or to tell a story in an inevitably mimetic operation in which the film mimics or prefigures something outside the film.
First, I would like to elaborate a few more thoughts about the aesthetic connection that I traced between thinking and dying in the previous post. To begin, it is important to highlight the term dwell, which Heidegger deploys to speak of language as the house of dwelling that relates person to Being. The idea of dwelling suggests a space in which or at which one can reside, spend time, continue to be or being. Could we say that language is where time becomes materialized or spatialized, and thus ceases to be pure negativity? The verb presupposes a spatial configuration that is repository-like, presenting a discernable depth, where the surface-level appearance of things is hardly the most defining aspect. It follows that his magnum opus Being and Time, could also be Being in Time, as Being cannot happen outside the duration or passing of Time. That is, one approaches the truth gradually by journeying through the layered distance of things and in the passing of time.
In both his books and lectures, Graham Harman reminds us that for Heidegger Being represents the start and end of philosophical thought. And "Letter on Humanism" affords us a glimpse into this paradigmatic view, which largely informed Heidegger's philosophical work. Meaning does not lie on flat surfaces, but rather in that which withdraws from immediate perception. There are levels to things, including, of course, people. Think of his tool analysis, for instance, of which Harman offers an unconventional yet re-energized interpretation. Not all the features of a thing appear or become accessible to the perceiving individual. Harman's treatment of Heidegger's tool analysis takes it a step further to claim that the things hide qualities not only to the perceiving individual but also to other things, that is, not only to things (or beings) that bear consciousness. [I will continue to develop this paragraph in future posts.]
I view the cigarette in von Trotta's film as a cinematic object insofar as the cigarette's meaning in the many scenes in which it appears cannot be exhausted to operate as a unified, non-contradictory entity of signification. Cinematic objects do not simply amount to narratable signification. It is an object rather than a metaphor or even a figure because the role it is playing in each of the scenes as well as the film as a whole cannot be entirely deciphered or decodified. What the cigarette is in the film becomes decidedly inexhaustible. At the same time, in its varied cinematic articulations, the cigarette assembles aesthetic effects and impressions for the viewer.
Thus I propose that cinema does not express itself only or mainly through metaphors or figures that advance an intelligible narrative–of meaning or even lack thereof. Despite commonly held beliefs by those who produce cinema and those who consume it, films do not exist only to tell stories. Aesthetically speaking, cinema is composed of objects, cinematic objects that assemble a tenuous whole. In other words, I ask us to view cinema's coming into being not just to represent some other or something other or to tell a story in an inevitably mimetic operation in which the film mimics or prefigures something outside the film.
6.25.2013
Thinking as dying in Hannah Arendt
In yesterday's post I offered a quick and concise summary of Heidegger's idea on thinking from his essay "Letter on Humanism." I noted primarily his concern that philosophical thinking is defined, thought about in relation to scientific practice, always as a way to prove its legitimacy vis-a-vis the latter. Just as Plato and Aristotle viewed thinking as a techne, an operation that becomes action and deed, consequences of quantifiable, verifiable results. Heidegger, on the other hand, reminds us that thinking falls in between poeisis and praxis.
If von Trotta cinematically represents thinking in any particular way, it is far from rendering it scientific. Yes, there are several moments in the film in which Hannah Arendt and other characters discuss evidence and accuracy. We also see the countless piles of documents from the trial of Eichmann. They besiege her office space. With rigor, Hannah Arendt reviews the statements from the trial, as she begins to focus in the expanding gap between what Eichmann says and who he seems to be, and the colossal atrocities of his deeds. Arendt's thoughts dwell in the gap, and her thoughts are produced to make some intelligible sense of that gap. Is the banality of evil the result of her dwelling in that seemingly irreconcilable gap? This is matter for another post.
The film also presents other several moments of thinking, of her lying, sitting or standing alone accompanied only by silence and a cigarette. On two occasions we see her lying on a divan in her UPW apartment. On the coffee table near the divan we see an ashtray for the lit cigarette that remains still yet gently burning between her two fingers. She looks calm, asleep if not in a state nearing or resembling death. Without being unnecessarily extended, the duration of the scene does make us wonder, albeit briefly, whether she is indeed asleep. Soon she placidly moves the right hand closer to her mouth to smoke the cigarette. Her eyes still shut, she inhales. She is very much awake. No, she is not asleep, let alone dead. She is thinking. And yet thinking happens almost as if she were performing no deed or action. Thinking happens as if life were inadvertently slipping away from her.
The other scenes in which Hannah Arendt is thinking, reflecting or contemplating show her sitting against the window of the house in upstate NY. Fixing her gaze on the glass, she smokes and thinks. Once again, nothing much seems to be happening, yet we know that Arendt is producing thoughts. These various scenes illustrate Heidegger's idea on thinking:
"Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because it concerns the relation of Being to man. But all working or effecting lies in Being and is directed toward beings. Thinking, in contrast, lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this letting." Then, he concludes: "Thinking is engagement by Being for Being" (217-8).
It seems to me that von Trotta's recreation of Hannah Arendt's thinking moments dramatize Heidegger's own ideas on thinking: thinking's autonomous validity is perched on thinking itself as it connects person to Being. It seems that for von Trotta thinking also bears the aesthetic of dying or death, a quietude of body and mind that nears the appearance of death itself. In other words, these scenes suggest that there is an actual loss that comes with thinking, a destruction of self. Only under such conditions of destruction, loss and death, can thinking connect person to Being.
If von Trotta cinematically represents thinking in any particular way, it is far from rendering it scientific. Yes, there are several moments in the film in which Hannah Arendt and other characters discuss evidence and accuracy. We also see the countless piles of documents from the trial of Eichmann. They besiege her office space. With rigor, Hannah Arendt reviews the statements from the trial, as she begins to focus in the expanding gap between what Eichmann says and who he seems to be, and the colossal atrocities of his deeds. Arendt's thoughts dwell in the gap, and her thoughts are produced to make some intelligible sense of that gap. Is the banality of evil the result of her dwelling in that seemingly irreconcilable gap? This is matter for another post.
The film also presents other several moments of thinking, of her lying, sitting or standing alone accompanied only by silence and a cigarette. On two occasions we see her lying on a divan in her UPW apartment. On the coffee table near the divan we see an ashtray for the lit cigarette that remains still yet gently burning between her two fingers. She looks calm, asleep if not in a state nearing or resembling death. Without being unnecessarily extended, the duration of the scene does make us wonder, albeit briefly, whether she is indeed asleep. Soon she placidly moves the right hand closer to her mouth to smoke the cigarette. Her eyes still shut, she inhales. She is very much awake. No, she is not asleep, let alone dead. She is thinking. And yet thinking happens almost as if she were performing no deed or action. Thinking happens as if life were inadvertently slipping away from her.
The other scenes in which Hannah Arendt is thinking, reflecting or contemplating show her sitting against the window of the house in upstate NY. Fixing her gaze on the glass, she smokes and thinks. Once again, nothing much seems to be happening, yet we know that Arendt is producing thoughts. These various scenes illustrate Heidegger's idea on thinking:
"Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because it concerns the relation of Being to man. But all working or effecting lies in Being and is directed toward beings. Thinking, in contrast, lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this letting." Then, he concludes: "Thinking is engagement by Being for Being" (217-8).
It seems to me that von Trotta's recreation of Hannah Arendt's thinking moments dramatize Heidegger's own ideas on thinking: thinking's autonomous validity is perched on thinking itself as it connects person to Being. It seems that for von Trotta thinking also bears the aesthetic of dying or death, a quietude of body and mind that nears the appearance of death itself. In other words, these scenes suggest that there is an actual loss that comes with thinking, a destruction of self. Only under such conditions of destruction, loss and death, can thinking connect person to Being.
6.24.2013
Thinking (as) philosophy
I would like to follow up on some brief, unfinished reflections I laid out in the previous post, in which I discussed how the cinematic representation of thinking signifies more poeisis than praxis. Here I would like to take a step away from the film per se to discuss instead how thinking is theorized and aestheticized in the film. To avoid an inconveniently long text, the post will consist of two or three parts.
In "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger notes that "Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man. It does not make or cause the relation. It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells" (Basic Writings 217).
Heidegger continues to explain that, whereas Plato and Aristotle viewed thinking as techne, "a process of reflection in service to doing and making" his text proposes a way of understanding reflection "from the perspective of praxis and poeisis" (218). Thus Heidegger insists that, taken as such thinking is not necessarily practical. He goes so far as to regard "The characterization of thinking as theoria and the determination of known as theoretical behavior" as a reactionary position that attempts "to rescue thinking and preserve its autonomy over against acting and doing" (218).
For Heidegger, the need to press argumentative exigency upon the autonomy of thinking apart from that of acting and doing stems from philosophy's ongoing struggle to legitimate itself vis-a-vis the solid standing of the sciences, to which truth and logic are immediately attributed. Philosophy justifies itself and its main activity by stressing the fact that thinking is not structurally tied in to action or deed, nor it is merely a premature phase that becomes fulfilled upon the subsequent completion of acting and doing. Heidegger's explanation for rejecting this reactive attempt to think philosophy's position always in relation to that of the sciences centers on the following point:
"Thinking does not become action only because some effect issues from it or because it is applied. Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because it concerns the relation of Being to man" (217).
Heidegger's essay carries the implication that philosophy should examine thinking at the heart of philosophy while firmly sustaining that philosophical thinking is not unscientific for not being science. And to show that it is not unscientific does not mean that it ought to be discursively and methodologically scientistic. The tragic consequence of failing to dislodge philosophical thinking from the imperious place of the sciences would be, Heidegger specifies, that "Being, as the element of thinking, is abandoned by the technical interpretation of thinking" (219).
In "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger notes that "Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man. It does not make or cause the relation. It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells" (Basic Writings 217).
Heidegger continues to explain that, whereas Plato and Aristotle viewed thinking as techne, "a process of reflection in service to doing and making" his text proposes a way of understanding reflection "from the perspective of praxis and poeisis" (218). Thus Heidegger insists that, taken as such thinking is not necessarily practical. He goes so far as to regard "The characterization of thinking as theoria and the determination of known as theoretical behavior" as a reactionary position that attempts "to rescue thinking and preserve its autonomy over against acting and doing" (218).
For Heidegger, the need to press argumentative exigency upon the autonomy of thinking apart from that of acting and doing stems from philosophy's ongoing struggle to legitimate itself vis-a-vis the solid standing of the sciences, to which truth and logic are immediately attributed. Philosophy justifies itself and its main activity by stressing the fact that thinking is not structurally tied in to action or deed, nor it is merely a premature phase that becomes fulfilled upon the subsequent completion of acting and doing. Heidegger's explanation for rejecting this reactive attempt to think philosophy's position always in relation to that of the sciences centers on the following point:
"Thinking does not become action only because some effect issues from it or because it is applied. Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because it concerns the relation of Being to man" (217).
Heidegger's essay carries the implication that philosophy should examine thinking at the heart of philosophy while firmly sustaining that philosophical thinking is not unscientific for not being science. And to show that it is not unscientific does not mean that it ought to be discursively and methodologically scientistic. The tragic consequence of failing to dislodge philosophical thinking from the imperious place of the sciences would be, Heidegger specifies, that "Being, as the element of thinking, is abandoned by the technical interpretation of thinking" (219).
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