It is often argued that between 1967 and 1974 Godard operated under a misguided assessment of the effervescence of the social and political situation and produced the equivalent of “terrorism” in filmmaking. He did this, as the argument goes, by both subverting the formal operations of narrative film and by being biased
01/13 toward an ideological political engagement.1 Here, I explore the idea that Godard’s films of this period are more than partisan political statements or anti-narrative formal experimentations. The filmmaker’s response to the intense political climate that reigned during what he would retrospectively call his “leftist trip” years was based on a filmic-theoretical Irmgard Emmelhainz praxis in a Marxist-Leninist vein. Through this praxis, Godard explored the role of art and artists and their relationship to empirical reality. He Between examined these in three arenas: politics, aesthetics, and semiotics. His work between Objective 1967 and 1974 includes the production of collective work with the Dziga Vertov Group (DVG) Engagement until its dissolution in 1972, and culminates in his collaboration with Anne-Marie Miéville under the framework of Sonimage, a new production and Engaged company founded in 1973 as a project of “journalism of the audiovisual.” Cinema: Jean- đđđđđđđđđđGodard’s leftist trip period can be bracketed by two references he made to other politically engaged artists. In Camera Eye, his contribution Luc Godard’s to the collectively-made film Loin du Vietnam of 1967, Godard refers to André Breton. Then in Ici “Militant et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere), a film Godard made with Anne-Marie Miéville in 1970–74, he Filmmaking” cites Picasso’s Guernica (1937). These references help explicate Godard’s leftist trip years. In the former, Godard (mis)attributes to Breton a (1967-1974), position aligned with the French Communist Party and their instrumentalization of art in the Part I name of a political cause – what we will call “objective denunciation.” In the latter, by citing Guernica Godard enters into a dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre and his theories on political engagement and aesthetic autonomy, especially his debate with Adorno about the effectiveness of images versus words in transmitting political messages. Oscillating between these two positions, Godard carved out his own form of objective denunciation in opposition to Sartre’s schizophrenic split between two activities that he considered to be incommensurable: “artistic
e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I enunciation” and “active political engagement.” Godard synthesized these activities, exploring and embracing the contradictions between the roles of “filmmaker” and “militant.” We must bear in mind, however, that Godard’s revolutionary constellation cannot be reduced to these literary references. Indeed, in La Chinoise (1966) Godard established the genealogy of his politicized aesthetics – one that departed from
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Still from “Camera Eye” in Jean-Luc Godard, Far from Vietnam, 1967.
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT traditional European intellectual history – by “fellow traveler” and the “party’s classifying literary authors, philosophers, and consciousness.” Breton claimed to be a artists as either “reactionary” or “revolutionary.” communist but distinguished his own artistic In general, between 1967 and 1974 Godard practice from the PCF’s socialist realism; he developed a revolutionary imaginary in which lamented the party’s “bad taste” and averred Dziga Vertov and Bertolt Brecht were pioneers, that the “leftist political milieus do not know how Breton was a deviation, Guy Debord’s Society of to appreciate art outside of art made with the Spectacle was a shared paradigm, Sartre was 03/13 consecrated and expired forms.”4 The heyday of his bête noire, and philosophers such as Michel the PCF as a point of reference for intellectuals Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Gilles Deleuze were coincided with the highpoint of Structuralism, his compagnons de route (fellow travelers). when political discourse and the ethics of the đđđđđđđđđđFigures like Breton and Sartre are intellectual were shaped by Marxism, inseparable from the history and tradition of the psychoanalysis, and linguistics. At that time, French avant-garde, which I consider here in “the signifier” (the author, the phallus, the light of the relationship between French father) was treated with the greatest respect, as intellectuals and the French Communist Party were intellectuals, who were regarded as public (PCF). Modeled after Lenin’s vanguard party, the figures speaking truths.5 In the Sixties, however, PCF bestowed a pivotal role on intellectuals the signifier, the phallus, and the father were between the end of World War II and 1965: the contested as figures of authority and truth. production and transmission of political Likewise, intellectuals and their status as the knowledge to the proletariat. As described in consciousness of the party and society were What Is To Be Done?, Lenin’s Party functioned as challenged. As Frederic Jameson has argued, the vanguard of the proletariat, a highly this was an unprecedented situation in which it centralized body organized around a core of became possible for radical intellectuals to experienced intellectuals designated as imagine revolutionary work outside and “professional revolutionaries” who were charged independent of the PCF.6 with leading the social democratic revolution.2 đđđđđđđđđđEnter Maoism. To subscribe to Maoism was This ideological avant-garde operated in the a way of taking a position against the Communist realm of opinion and leftist common sense, Party in accord with the Sino-Soviet split and to putting art in the service of political causes and disconnect from the “dark” outcome of the taking for granted the artist’s position as the Cultural Revolution. In line with the attempt to porte parole of humanity. Such an avant-garde break away from the model of the vanguardist posits a transitive relationship between art and intellectual, the Maoists “established” politics – that is, a causal relationship between themselves in factories; they worked alongside the two, even the instrumentalization of art in the workers and rejected the exteriority of the name of leftist political ideology. discourse in favor of the interiority of practice, believing in the creative potential of the proletariat. By rejecting theory in favor of practice and giving preference to direct intervention (without mediation), Maoism embraced the mythical junction of students and workers and declared war against the despotic regime of the signifier, the figure from above who speaks truths. Around May ’68, rejecting the idea that “knowledge is power,” Maoists launched an attack on vanguardist politics by posing the following questions: Who speaks and acts, from where, for whom, and how? Specifically, these interrogations were addressed to union delegates, intellectuals, professors, writers, and artists, as Maoists questioned the representativity of engaged intellectuals and Sartre speaking out. delegates. Maoists challenged their legitimacy as disinterested agents who could speak đđđđđđđđđđCommitted French avant-garde artists, critically on behalf of the proletariat and lead the intellectuals, and writers were obliged to take a Revolution. Walter Benjamin’s critique of Lenin’s position regarding the PCF and its dogmatic professional intellectual was influential in the socialist-realist aesthetic.3 For example, French Sixties. For Benjamin, the problem with Althusser and Aragon were members of the party, professional intellectuals is that when they Breton was a dissident, and Sartre was a distant attempt to integrate themselves into the
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Still from Dziga Vertov Group and Sonimage's film, Here and Elsewhere, 1970-1974.
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT proletariat, they ignore their own position in the contradiction. Maoist contradiction is a kind of process of production. Benjamin calls this the nondialectical, eternal struggle of opposites trap of logocracy, a system that implies the ruling which starts from a principal contradiction to power of words.7 In order to avoid this trap, which other contradictions are subordinated. Maoists prioritized practice (working alongside Maoist contradiction is thus a self- workers) and denigrated discourse, focusing revolutionizing logic that, instead of reaching a their energies on liberating the forms and higher order, advances from quantitative change instruments of production (to achieve self- 05/13 to qualitative change through leaps forward. management) and promoting self- Godard’s gesture of simultaneously incorporating representation. and rejecting politicized modernism reflected đđđđđđđđđđIn accord with Maoist theory and practice, the epistemological change brought on by the the logic under which Godard’s work operated post-structuralist separation of the signifier during this period was not that of the old from the signified. This shift brought ideological avant-garde but that of the war of representation into crisis and was transfigured position, a strategic rather than an ideological into the theoretical and practical ideologemes of approach. Godard’s avant-garde was nominal the Left: instrumentality, realism, reflexivity, insofar as it transformed proper names, cries, didacticism, and historiography.8 Taking into battles, and avant-garde positions into concepts account the theoretical-practical problems of and slogans. The filmmaker’s vanguard was these ideologemes, Godard developed a series of further predicated upon a relationship to art of contradictions relating to the new historical the past that differed from the traditional problems that brought traditional Marxism to its vanguardist negativity; instead of treating it as a limits, such as the novelty of an emergent class tabula rasa, Godard reclaimed, contradicted, and of university-educated consumers and the disavowed the art of the past. His strategy, relationship between art and the explosion of therefore, consisted of repeating, testing, and mass media and information – phenomena incorporating different historical and without historical precedents. contemporary avant-garde strategies through đđđđđđđđđđIn Godard’s Camera Eye, we see an image of the logic f Maoist double negativity or Godard standing behind his camera. This image
Still from Dziga Vertov Group and Sonimage's film, Here and Elsewhere, 1970-1974.
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT is interspersed with images from life in Vietnam. politics? Such a position would imply a causal In the voiceover, Godard says that these images link between aesthetics and politics: if political of Vietnam are similar to those he would have freedom, then aesthetic liberation. By contrast, filmed if the authorities had issued him a visa to the position of objective denunciation entails visit Phnom Penh. He also states maliciously that that aesthetic activity be intrinsically linked to in adopting his own engaged position of “the long political action as the means to achieve or revolutionary wait and of objective and announce the emancipation of humanity. As we declarative enunciation,” he takes after André 06/13 will see, Godard’s position is more complex, as it Breton. It is malicious to attribute this attendiste was not only in dialogue with the vanguardist position of the PCF to Breton because, as tradition, but he also entered into dialogue with mentioned above, Breton distanced himself from Jean-Paul Sartre. the party. This position implies that the artist, while waiting for the revolution, speaks out ceaselessly for others, expressing his indignation in the name of just causes. Godard thus calls for the imperative of listening to and transmitting a scream of horror against injustice. Godard further states that he is aware that art cannot change the world but what he can do, as a filmmaker in France, is to articulate his rage and criticism as often as he can: that is why he mentioned the Vietnam War in every single one of his films until the war ended, from Vivre sa vie (1962) until Tout va bien (1972). This position is that of objective denunciation, which implies a transitive relationship between aesthetic and politics: art is put in the service of political critique, denying art’s autonomy from ethics and politics. In his manifesto Pour un art indépendant révolutionnaire (1938), Breton stated the following:
True art, which is not content to play variations on ready-made models but rather insists on expressing the inner needs of man and of mankind in its time – true art is unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society. This it must do, were it only to deliver intellectual creation from the chains which bind it, and to allow all mankind to raise itself to those heights which only isolated geniuses have achieved in the past. We recognize that only the social revolution sweeps clean the path for 9 a new culture. Godard at the printshop of La Cause du Peuple, 1970.
For Breton, “true art” or advanced art must be led by social revolution.đBreton’s position implies đđđđđđđđđđSartre believed that artists are not obliged a causal link between aesthetics and politics: if to follow any mandate, yet they are called to there is political freedom (through social speak critically in the name of the emancipation revolution), then there will be aesthetic of humanity. In this sense, objective liberation. Further, true art is necessarily denunciation is similar to Sartre’s model of revolutionary. This means that any art that does “collective objectivity,” which calls for the not have political freedom as its basis and the exercise of one’s freedom in order to act in the emancipation of humanity as its purpose is not name of universal values. Sartre’s position, true art. A question thus arises: Does Godard, by however, implies a schizophrenic split between adopting the same avant-garde position as the “writer function” and the “intellectual Breton (his real position, not the misattributed function.” In Sartre’s view, a writer inhabits a one), likewise deny art any autonomy from fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, the
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Still from Dziga Vertov Group and Sonimage's film, Here and Elsewhere, 1970-1974.
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT artist/writer is a creator and articulates his that is subservient to the class in power, and being-in-the world through language, producing therefore the artist/writer is an unhappy partial yet universalizing non-knowledge. The consciousness pushed to act politically in the writer is also capable of producing practical empirical realm. Furthermore, for Sartre a work knowledge, and he does so not in his own work, of art or literature does not have to be measured but by operating in “lived reality” in the name of by its “effectiveness” in the realm of politics or universal truth. What is at stake here for Sartre is ethics, since artworks should not be effective in the “utility” of works of art and the contradictory 08/13 the political realm. Taking Picasso’s Guernica as situation in which writers live: the non- an example, he famously stated, “Does anyone knowledge that the writer produces (knowledge think that it won over a single heart to the that is not scientific or objective – savoir as Spanish cause?”15 Further, Sartre’s intellectual opposed to connaissance) mainly serves the function involves a “radical overcoming” class in power and has limited use for the (dépassement radical) of the bourgeois writer masses, since artworks are shaped by class function in order to become a “transcendental interests. That is why for Sartre the writer has consciousness” and to bring truth to institutions two functions, the intellectual function and the that lack it (Sartre was the Party’s writer function: the intellectual is not mandated consciousness) and to carry philosophy to the by anyone and therefore, produces practical streets (he was the proletariat’s fellow truths in the name of the universal.10 According traveler).16 to Sartre the two activities were unbridgeable. đđđđđđđđđđGodard grappled with Sartre’s split between Godard explained his relationship to Sartre and engaged activism and artistic enunciation in a his engaged position in an interview in 1972. text from 1970 published in Manifeste, Fatah’s17 journal in France: “In literature as in art, to fight I participated with him [Sartre] in a few on two fronts. The political front and the artistic actions for [the journal] La cause du front – that is the current stage, and we’ll have to peuple.11 And after, I tried to establish a learn to resolve the contradictions between dialogue with him but it was impossible. I these two fronts.”18Adopting Breton and Sartre’s was trying to know what was the opposing avant-garde positions and holding relationship between his texts about the them in suspension allowed Godard to highlight Russell Tribunal or about the Houillères, the contradictions inherent in both models of the which were amazing texts, and his older or aesthetic-political avant-garde. This mirrored his recent studies about Flaubert and own effort to problematize both the transitive Mallarmé. He then tells you that there are relationship between politics and aesthetics two men in him. One who continues to write implied by objective denunciation, and the about Flaubert because he doesn’t know separation between the artist and the activist what else to do, and another one who has implied by Sartre’s belief in the autonomy of art. thrown himself with all his soul into the As we have seen, Godard claimed that Sartre did struggle, by going to address the workers at not go far enough; in his view, Sartre should have the Renault factory standing on top of a attempted to reconcile the intellectual function barrel. We don’t deny either position. We with the writer function. Bridging Sartre’s split simply think that as an intellectual between active engagement and artistic radicalizing himself, he should bridge both enunciation, while also going beyond the positions.12 practice of objective denunciation, Godard adopted the position of “militant filmmaker.” In Thus there is “Sartre-the-writer,” who spends ten this manner, Godard kept his filmmaking practice hours a day writing about Flaubert, and “Sartre- somehow separate from the “intellectual” the-intellectual,” who addresses workers from function of active engagement, yet the two the top of a barrel.13 The intellectual speaks out positions – militant and filmmaker – could be while the writer works subjectively with easily conjoined because in his Marxist-Leninist language.14 Clearly, Sartre drew a distinction films, the relationship to the political is not between the writer and the intellectual in order clearly intransitive, as we shall see. to avoid a transitive relationship between e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I đđđđđđđđđđIn his political sympathies, Godard aesthetics and politics. For Sartre, objective gravitated towards the Proletarian Left Party denunciation must take place separately from (Gauche Prolétarienne, a Maoist party active the field of aesthetic production, in the domain from 1969-1973), collaborating in actions around of engaged activism. Literature (and art) is thus their journal La Cause du peuple.19 Godard also severed from a critical function. “Freedom” in the wrote five articles for the Maoist journal J’accuse aesthetic and in the political domain is and helped create the newspaper Libération.20 maintained not by a transitive link, but by a When he founded the Dziga Vertov Group with separation: art is autonomous non-knowledge Jean-Pierre Gorin in 1969, Godard reinvented his
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT practice as a filmmaker. His purpose was to cinema. In general, left-wing films of the 1970s rethink the notion of authorship – specifically, tended to film social movements live because the auteur theory advanced by Cahiers du they aimed to show the “reality” from which the Cinéma’s – and to position himself vis-à-vis members of the movements sought to other militant film collectives and their avant- emancipate themselves. This “realist” militant garde agendas. The group thought of itself as a cinema was put at the service of good causes cell (like a political group or groupuscule), but in and addressed an activist public. It also contrast to other film collectives and Maoist 09/13 depended on political reality; consequently, it groupuscules that were organized around could be said that its content (social figures in specific struggles (i.e., solidarity with female struggle) prevailed over its form. We must workers, with Chile or Vietnam, and so forth), distinguish, however, this militant cinema DVG situated itself within the history of cinema (similar to socialist realism) from the materialist by adopting the name of a pioneering radical version, which sought to critique socialist filmmaker. None of their nine films are signed. realism and realism by transforming them Rather, members of DVG claimed authorship of formally; materialist film practice is thus them a posteriori in interviews or written characterized by observing reflexively the documents.21 Godard and Gorin recognized that discourse of the cinematographic apparatus. As the Maoists had contributed greatly to a practice, materialist cinema sought to revolutionary filmmaking by developing radically overcome socialist realism by transforming it new aesthetic-political practices, but they felt formally. This means that it attempted to that the Maoists hadn’t taken their confrontation demystify the process of cinematic production with intellectuals and delegates far enough.22 and the notion of the cinematographic image as đđđđđđđđđđStanding against the vanguardist logic that a pure or objective register of reality, seeking to seeks to figure a future emancipatory image of produce self-knowledge based on self-criticism. the world, DVG’s movies show the political In the discussions that took place during those actuality; by describing their films as years about materialist cinema, the notion of the “materialist fictions,” DVG took a position with “objective whole” of the materialist regard to “realist” and “materialist” politicized Weltanschaung was based on André Bazin’s
Stills from Dziga Vertov Group and Sonimage's film, Here and Elsewhere, 1970-1974.
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT realist ontology. The critique of “objectivity” in autonomy in the means of production and cinema was crystallized in 1969 in a debate distribution of their films. With the hope of between two key publications in France: Cahiers expanding their innovations to television, Godard du Cinéma and Cinéthique, the latter devoted to and Gorin sought out the technical and financial realism, indexicality, and reflexivity in cinema. alternative of televisual production. And even (Cinéthique was heavily influenced by the films of though DVG’s movies – British Sounds, Pravda, Godard and DVG.) In contrast with materialist and Lotte in Italia, and Vladimir et Rosa – were made militant films, the Dziga Vertov Group’s 10/13 with television producers – London Week materialist fictions address the viewer Television, Munich Tele-Pool, the European didactically and, in a Brechtian vein, consider Center for Radio-Film-Television, and RAI, him or her as an active agent in the respectively – in most cases the producers decodification of the movie. refused to show the movies. Nonetheless, đđđđđđđđđđIn DVG’s first written manifesto, “Premiers television became for them a place to create new Sons Anglais,” which appeared in the film journal relationships of production, to try out technical Cinéthique in 1969, they began to outline their innovations, and to create new relationships political praxis.23 In another text entitled “Quoi between viewer at text; they were also able to Faire?,” published in the British film review explore television’s pedagogical potential, which Afterimage in 1970, Godard described the until then had been repressed by militant program of DVG as underscoring a institutionalized television practices. Walter distinction between political films and films Benjamin’s notion of the “Author as Producer” is conceived politically. Political films, in Godard’s obviously a key influence here, as well as in view, correspond to a metaphysical conception DVG’s proposal (inspired by Brecht’s epic theater) of the world: these films describe situations – for to erase the dichotomy between form and example, the misery of the world – and are thus content and to reconceptualize it in terms of in accord with bourgeois ideology and operate technique. According to Benjamin, a progressive under representational logic. By contrast, “films work of art will innovate technically at the same made politically” belong to the dialectical time that it places the means of production at conception of the world, which entails doing the disposal of the masses – which translates in concrete analyses of concrete situations with the Godard and Gorin to technical innovations and to purpose of showing the world in struggle in order the pedagogical aspects of their movies. to transform it. Instead of making images of the đđđđđđđđđđIn ideological terms, DVG’s political line was world that are “too whole” in the name of a Marxist-Leninism, also known as Maoism.25 In relative truth, making films politically entails methodological terms, they applied the Maoist studying the contradictions that exist between principle of contradiction or the “struggle of the relations of production and productive forces opposite tendencies” as a method in filmmaking and producing scientific knowledge of the which, as we have seen, consisted of studying revolutionary struggles and their history. This concrete situations, outlining the contradictions program insists on a theoretical preoccupation inherent in them, and then applying various with the relationships between world, image, and methodological grids for a comprehensive study representation.24 of the situation from all sides: their films British đđđđđđđđđđThus, DVG’s battle was fought on the field of Sounds, Pravda, Lotte in Italia, Vladimir and a scientific theoretical practice, contesting Rosa, and Until Victory (among other things) are Sartre’s conception of art and literature as the concrete analyses of the political situations in realms of the production of non-knowledge. That Britain, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, and is to say that DVG’s aim of uniting theory and Palestine, respectively.26 They applied Maoist practice shows their attempt to bring art out of materialism, which is a tool for understanding Sartre’s domain of non-knowledge. It also shows the development of a thing dividing internally their effort to account for the explosion of and looking at the thing’s relationships to other information and the transformation of art into things, focusing on self-movement and information. This led them to create semiotico- interaction. Mao designed this method because visual experiments, which became the basis of for him, complex things hold many the pedagogy of their “blackboard films.” In e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I contradictions in their process of development, these films, they aim to fabricate images that are and it is contradiction that makes them change. not “too whole” and that carry a contradiction Mao’s contradiction differs from the principle of within them. They also aim to make simple or dialectical materialism, which claims that “just images” as opposed to making “images that change happens through sublation into a higher are just,” by articulating disjunctions between unity; Mao claimed instead that change happens “true sounds put on top of false” images. At the through small quantitative alterations that same time, their practice was based on a accumulate and eventually burst out into larger “productivist” model, seeking to achieve qualitative leaps. Following Maoist method,
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT Godard and Gorin located a principle Irmgard Emmelhainz is an independent writer, scholar, contradiction dominating a concrete situation and translator based in Mexico City. and subordinated all other contradictions pertaining to the situation to the principal one.27 (For example, the main contradiction in Lotte in Italia branches into the contradictions of being a female middle class student who is also an activist.) After isolating the contradictions, 11/13 Godard and Gorin built images according to these contradictions and proceeded to engage in self-critique. In summary, the application of the Maoist method for the acquisition of knowledge by DVG implied making “simple” images that reflected a double process of cognition and codification. This was a pedagogical enterprise in a Brechtian vein that maintained the fiction necessary for artistic discourse while at the same time distancing the viewer (and the filmmakers) from the ideological implications inherent to the concrete situations they analyzed in their films. Further, DVG’s films postulate the political actuality as a historicizing fiction, placing actuality beyond individual and collective events, turning “social types” (i.e., “worker”) and historical figures (i.e., “third world revolutionary”) into characters in their films. Historical specification becomes relevant here because DVG describes history in action, positing critically Maoist militants as the actors of history rather than passive followers of the universalizing discourse of “class struggle.” In these films Maoism is not taken as an ideological basis. Rather, it becomes both the code of representation and the method for making images; the films render Maoist practice literal by taking the materialist method à la lettre, separating themselves from the branches of “realist” as well as “materialist” filmmaking by calling their films “materialist fictions.” I am indebted to Thierry de Duve, John Ricco, and Tom Williams for their rich insights and helpful comments on the various versions of this essay. đđđđđđđđđđ× đđđđđđđđđđTo be continued in “Between Objective Engagement and Engaged Cinema: Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Militant Filmmaking’ (1967-1974), Part II.” e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT đđđđđđ1 War, however, this signifies the classless writing, that is, writing period, see Michael Witt, Godard’s practice of this period end of War.” (Trotsky,đHistory of as a matter of “se déclasser,” or “Godard dans la presse has been equated to terrorism the Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, expelling oneself from the d’extrême gauche” inđJean-Luc by Serge Daney and condemned 362.) Trotsky advances two bourgeois class. For Sartre, in Godard Documents, 165–177. as nihilistic and iconoclastic by regimes of enunciation here: the Flaubert and in his own Colin MacCabe. See Serge speech of “enlightened” intellectual and political đđđđđđ21 Daney’s “Le thérrorisé intellectuals, made up of practice the autonomy of art is a Jean-Pierre Gorin and Godard (Pédagogie “rationalist arguments” based matter of how a writer’s work met in 1966 while Godard was godardienne),”Cahiers du Cinéma on knowledge and theory; and should be understood in relation filmingđLa Chinoise, at a time nos. 262–263 (January 1976): the speech of the masses, based to his life and to the historical when Gorin was associated with 32–39, special issue on five on Reason or causal forces and social conditions that the Marxist-Leninist movement essays aboutđNuméro Deux by explanations, that is, based on 12/13 shape a writer’s life. See Union de Jeunes Communistes Godard; and Colin practice. Sartre,đThe Family Idiot: Gustave Marxistes-Leninistes (UJCm-l) at MacCabe,Godard: Images, Flaubert, 1821–1857, vol. 5 the École Normale Supérieure. It Sounds, Politics (London: British đđđđđđ8 (Chicago: The University Press, is said that after the events of Film Institute/Macllian, 1980). In linguistics, the suffix “-eme” 1993); and Graham Good and May ’68, Godard sought to work See alsođRaymond indicates a structural unit of T.H. Adamowski, “Sartre’s with someone who was not a Bellour,đL’entre-images Photo. some kind in the lexicon, Flaubert, Flaubert’s Sartre,” filmmaker. Legend has it that he Cinéma. Vidéo. (Paris: La grammar, and phonology of review of Sartre, L’Idiot de la and Gorin met again while Différence, 1990);đand Peter languages. As Fredric Jameson famille, vol. 3, inđNOVEL: A Forum attending a meeting of the États Wollen, “Godard and Counter has demonstrated, the leftist on Fictionvol. 7, no. 2 (Winter Généraux de Cinéma, a Cinema:đLe Vent d’est” ideologemes mentioned here are 1974), 175–186. collective of militant French inđReadings and Writings: part of a materialist theoretical filmmakers founded during the Semiotic Counter-Strategies practice that was derived from đđđđđđ14 events of ‘68. (For more (London: Verso, 1982), 79–91. certain readings and practices Sartre’s position is similar to information on the États of Marxism in the Sixties. See Barthes’s position on the “author Généraux assembly, seeđCahiers đđđđđđ2 “Periodizing the Sixties,” function.” This is a conception of du Cinéma [September 1968]; What Is To Be Done?, printable 195–196. authorship based on and Silvia Harvey’s account edition produced by Chris depersonalization in favor of inđMay ’68 and Film Culture Russell for the Marxist Internet đđđđđđ9 subjectivity in writing, implying [London: British Film Institute, Archive, 46. André Breton, “Towards a Free that there is an intransitive 1978]). Dissatisfied with the Seeđhttp://www.marxists.org/ Revolutionary Art,” trans. Dwight relationship between reality and eclecticism reigning in the États archive/lenin/works/1901/wit MacDonald, inđArt in Theory, fiction. Thus, the writer function Généraux, Godard and Gorin fled bd/. 1900–2000: An Anthology of implies a subject separate from the meeting and founded the Changing Ideas, 2nd the real subject that becomes Dziga Vertov Group. According to đđđđđđ3 edition, eds. Charles Harrison manifest in the here and now of David Faroult, Godard filmed two It must be noted, echoing David and Paul Wood (Malden, MA : the reader encountering the DVG films with Jean-Henri Caute, that in France the term Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 533. text. Roger:đBritish Sounds “intellectual” designates a Originally published inđPartisan andđPravda, both in 1969. In moral-political vocation that Review vol. 4, no. 1 (Fall 1938): đđđđđđ15 Faroult’s account, Gorin entered was affirmed during the critical 49–53. What is Literature?,đtrans. the picture that same year when climate of the Dreyfus affair, Bernard Frechtam (New York: he collaborated with Godard on epitomized by Emile Zola’s đđđđđđ10 Harper Colophon Books, 1965), the DVG manifesto and the famous letter “J’accuse.” See Jean-Paul Sartre, Bernard 5. First published in France in filming ofđLe Vent d’est in Italy. According to the PCF’s Pingaud, and Dionys 1947. (See Faroult, “Never More definition, the notion of Mascolo,đDu rôle de l’intellectuel Godard,”đJean-Luc Godard “intellectual” embraces writers, dans le mouvement đđđđđđ16 Documents, 123.) Other militants philosophers, scientists, révolutionnaire (Paris: Le terrain See Pierre Bourdieu,đ“Sartre, who gravitated toward DVG scholars, artists, and people in vague, 1971); and Sartre’s three l’invention de l’intellectuel included Gérard Martin, Nathalie the performing arts and liberal conferences held in Kyoto, total,”Libération, March 31, Billard, and Armand Marco. professions. In short, it Japan in 1965, published 1983. According to Julia designates society’s inSituations, VIII Autour de 68 Lesage,đPravda was filmed in disseminators of ideas. See (Paris: Gallimard, 1972). đđđđđđ17 Prague with Jean-Henri Roger David Caute,đCommunism and Movement for the National and Paul Burron. (See Julia the French Intellectuals, đđđđđđ11 Liberation of Palestine, founded Lesage, “Godard and Gorin’s Left 1914–1960 (London: Andre La Cause du people along in the 1960s by Yasser Arafat. Politics,”đJump Cut 23 [April Deutsch, 1964), 12. withđJ’accuse were journals 1983].) directly linked to the Proletarian đđđđđđ18 đđđđđđ4 Left, a party supported by Sartre Quote fromđManifeste: “En đđđđđđ22 André Breton,đManifestes du and other prominent literature et en art, lutter sur Interview with Godard by Surréalisme, édition complète intellectuals. It dissolved in 1973 deux fronts. Le front politique et Marlene Belilos, Michel Boujut, (Paris: France Loisirs, 1962), due to internal conflicts. le front artistique, c’est l’étape Jean-Claude Deschamps, and 248. actuelle, et il faut apprendre a Pierre-Henri Zoller, ibid. đđđđđđ12 résoudre les contradictions đđđđđđ5 Interview with Godard by entre ces deux fronts.” Reprinted đđđđđđ23 See Michel Foucault’s preface to Marlene Belilos, Michel Boujut, inđJean-Luc Godard Documents, Cinéthique 5 Deleuze and Guattari’sđAnti- Jean-Claude Deschamps, and ed. Nicole Brenez et. al. (Paris: (September–October 1969): 14. Oedipus, trans. Brian Massumi Pierre-Henri Zoller, first Centre Pompidou, 2006), 138. (Minneapolis: University of published inPolitique Hebdo, đđđđđđ24 Minnesota Press, 1983), xiii. nos. 26–27 (April 1972); đđđđđđ19 See the original manuscript reprinted in Godard,Godard par Many famous intellectuals were ofđ“Quoi Faire?,”đreproduced đđđđđđ6 Godard (Paris: Cahiers associated with the Maoists, inđJean-Luc Godard Documents, Frederic Jameson, “Periodizing duđCinéma, 1998), 374. who referred to these 145–151. the Sixties,”đSocial Text 9/10 intellectuals as fellow travelers (Spring–Summer 1984): 182. đđđđđđ13 or “democrats.” Among them đđđđđđ25 InđThe Family Idiot (1974), his were Sartre (who lent his name For an extremely detailed đđđđđđ7 multi-volume work on Flaubert, to the directorship ofđLa Cause account of the “political lines” Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Sartre combines existentialism du peuple), Simone de Beauvoir, followed by DVG inđPravda,đLe
Producer,”đNew Left Review vol. and social critique to explore the e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I Marin Karmitz, Katia Kaupp, Vent d’est andđLotte in Italia, see 1, no. 62 (July–August 1970): situation of Flaubert in 1840, Mariella Righini, Alexandre Gérard Le Blanc, “Sur trois films 83–96. In an early version of this when the young writer wrestled Astruc, Agnes Varda, and Gérard du Dziga Vertov Group,”đVH 101 6 text, Benjamin cited the with the opposing legacies of the Fromanger, among others. See (September 1972). According to following quote from Trotsky but Enlightenment and Christophe Bourseiller,đLes Le Blanc, the main political line crossed it out before Romanticism: truth versus Maoïstes: La folle histoire des that shaped DVG’s overall publication: “When enlightened beauty, communication and the gardes rouges français (Paris: practice wasđtheoricism, pacifists undertake to abolish enlightening of others versus Plon, 1996), 198. characterized by abstract war by means of rationalist literature. Sartre studied analyses of real contradictions arguments, they are simply Flaubert as part of his attempt đđđđđđ20 in social formations. ridiculous. When the armed to resolve the contradictions For an account of Godard’s Furthermore, each individual masses start to take up the between bourgeois ideology and involvement with the French film was dominated by an arguments of Reason against literature, searching for a leftist press during his DVG additional political line.đPravda
08.27.12 / 17:34:29 EDT was dominated by “dogmatic spontaneism,” a political line followed by students who had quit the PCML-F (Partie Communiste Marxiste-Léniniste Français), objecting to its revisionism.đLe Vent d’est was dominated by “right wing opportunism,” a line followed by those who tried to maintain “the organizations” (the UJC-ml) that attempted to take over the 13/13 student movement in May ’68.đLotte in Italia was dominated by “leftist opportunism,” or the first line of the Proletarian Left.
đđđđđđ26 For detailed descriptions of DVG’s films see Peter Wollen, “Godard and counter cinema:đVent d'est” andđJulia Lesage, “Tout va bien andđCoup pour Coup: Radical French Cinema in Context,”Cineaste vol. 5, no. 3 (Summer 1972); David Faroult, “Never More Godard,” ibid.; James Roy MacBean,đFilm and Revolution(Bloomington: Indiana University Pres, 1975); and Gérard Le Blanc and David Faroult,đMai 68 ou le cinéma en suspense (Paris: Syllepse, 1998).
đđđđđđ27 See Mao Tse-Tung, “On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing,” and “On Contradiction” inđOn Practice and Contradiction (London: Verso, 2007), 52–102; also available atđhttp://www.marxists.org/. e - f l u x j o r n a # 3 4 — p i 2 0 1 đ I m g d E h z B e t w n O b j c i v E g a m d C : J - L u G o r ’ s “ M l F k ” ( 1 9 6 7 4 ) , P I
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