“HAVOC OF MATTER”: DÉTOURNEMENT IN THE FILMS OF DEBORD, ROUCH, GODARD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Soyoung Yoon August 2010 © 2010 by Soyoung Yoon. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/ry903pp1294 Includes supplemental files: 1. Illustrations (Yoon_Dissertation_August 2010_2.pdf) ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Pavle Levi, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Scott Bukatman I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Jean Ma I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Tom McDonough Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract The dissertation addresses the significance of the practice of détournement in the films of Guy Debord, Jean Rouch, and Jean-Luc Godard. The purpose is threefold: to see détournement 1) as part of a re-conceptualization of montage after World War II; 2) as a critique of the reification of political representation during les trentes glorieuses, the so-called Golden Age of capitalism from 1950’s to the 1970’s; 3) as a method for the (de)construction of subjectivities. For Debord and the Situtionist International [SI], détournement was a re- conceptualization and radicalization of montage – a method of appropriating an image, of turning it away and leading it astray from its seemingly natural, normal use. Emphasizing various contemporaneous critiques of the relation between power, knowledge, and subjection/subjectivation (especially, the critiques of Debord, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze), I argue for the practice of cinematic détournement as a deconstruction of the image that not only dissociates it from its source, but also dissociates our habituated modes of perception and experience, action and reaction, of relating to the world and to oneself – especially those modes through which one constitutes and recognizes oneself as a subject. The dissertation underscores the affective force of such dissociations, especially its implications for the struggles against subjection/subjectivation, that is, the struggles against a form of power in which procedures of subjection become ever more implicated with the processes of subjectivation. Particularly, I point to how détournement is deployed in attempts to iv respond to the unsettling, disjunctive encounter with the new political subjectivity of the colonized subject in France of the 1950’s, 60’s – not only in relation to the struggles for decolonization (for example, the Algerian War, an especially significant example for France at this moment), but also in relation to the struggles against “the colonization of everyday life” (for example, the SI’s call to address the problem of the quality of life, of “happiness,” during the period of an aggressive, at times violent, form of state-led modernization). In short, the dissertation aligns the practice of cinematic détournement with a method of analysis that seeks to deconstruct the habituated truths about one’s relation to oneself and others (particularly, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and Jean Laplanche). And it addresses the significance of this method in the films of not only Debord but also his contemporaries, Rouch (cinéma-vérité) and Godard (French new wave, Dziga Vertov group) – two of the foremost practitioners of a new mode of filmmaking that unsettles the dichotomy between documentary and fiction, objective and subjective, true and false, and poses the question of how truth is articulated, imposed, enacted upon and for whom. v Acknowledgements At the end of a long and challenging process of writing a dissertation, I am moved, even overwhelmed, by the number of people who have assisted me in various ways throughout this entire endeavor. I offer my most sincere gratitude to my advisor, Pavle Levi, for his unparalleled generosity and patience, his enthusiasm and support for my work, and whose own work has been and always will be a perpetual source of inspiration. I thank him, and other members of my doctoral committee – Tom McDonough, Jean Ma, Scott Bukatman – for their insights and encouragement, especially during the final stages of the materialization of this dissertation. I’d also like to thank Pam Lee whose teaching was significant in the formative stages of thinking and writing. Among the many colleagues from Stanford University, I am indebted to the camaraderie of Kiersten Jackobsen, Karen Rapp and to the care of Jill Davis without whom it would have been impossible to complete this degree. I am also specially grateful to the support of following colleagues throughout the process: Daniel Hackbarth, Arnold Kemp, Diane Landry, Naomi Nagano, Megan O’Hara, Kenneth White, and others. Ron Clark and the Whitney Independent Study Program have been influential in the crystallization of my arguments for this dissertation. I thank Ron Clark for our invaluable conversations about critical theory and his commitment to creating an exceptional space for the rigorous discussions/debates about politics and aesthetics. vi As a critical studies fellow at the Whitney ISP, I have been fortunate to be in dialogue with many of the writers and artists who have made significant contributions to the fields of study with which this dissertation is concerned. In particular, I thank Emily Apter, Benjamin Buchloh, Tom McDonough, and Laura Mulvey for their guidance during the process of writing the initial chapter of this dissertation. From the Whitney ISP, I’d like to single out the support of the following friends: Matthew Buckingham, Maggie Clinton, David Dempewolf, Ewa Einhorn, Elaine Gan, Andrea Geyer, Tamar Guimares, Sharon Hayes, Lan Thao Lam, Steven Lam, Simon Leung, Lana Lin, Rit Premnath, Minnie Scott, Virginia Solomon, Mike Sperlinger, Jeannine Tang, Jonathan Thomas, among others. I also thank Anne Lislegaard and Jee-Eun Kim for their invitation to teach and present my work at the School of Media Arts, Royal Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts and the Malmö Art Academy, Lund University. Significantly, the bulk of this dissertation was written whilst teaching at the Film Program of SUNY Purchase College. I offer genuine gratitude to my colleagues and students who have taught me the strength of the pursuit of theory through practice. Of my fellow faculty and staff, I thank Iris Cahn, Deanna Kamiel, Lorraine Miller – as well as Tom Gunning, a former faculty, who established a model for the dialogue between film theorists and filmmakers and whose guidance for a fledgling teacher have been most informative. For sharing their ambitions and passions for an intellectual cinema, I thank all of my students, especially the students of my seminars on André Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard, and the Soviet School of Montage. In particular, I thank my teaching assistants Joel Anderson and Nikki Morse. vii Last but not least, I offer my deepest, deepest gratitude to Una Chung and to my family, whose contribution throughout this difficult process of dissertation writing is even more difficult to put in words. So, to them, I offer a simple but most heartfelt thank you. It is to my family that I dedicate the efforts of this dissertation: Junyoung Park, Chulsoo Yoon, Eunha Park, Sojin Yoon. viii Table of Contents: “Havoc of Matter” Détournement in the Films of Debord, Rouch, Godard Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents ix List of Illustrations x Introduction 1 Chapter 1: “Détournement” 17 Chapter 2: “Pédovision” 55 Chapter 3: “Close-Up” 130 Conclusion 183 Select Bibliography 187 Illustrations 201 ix List of Illustrations Fig. 1. “The Return of Charles Fourier” Fig. 2. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 3. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 4. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 5. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 6. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 7. Still from Chronicle of a Summer (1961) Fig. 8. Still from Critique of Separation (1961) Fig. 9. Still from On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959) Fig. 10. Still from Critique of Separation (1961) Fig. 11. Still from Critique of Separation (1961) Fig. 12. Still from Critique of Separation (1961) Fig. 13. Still from On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959) Fig. 14. Still from Le Petit Soldat (1960) Fig. 15. Still from Le Petit Soldat (1960) Fig. 16. Still from Le Petit Soldat (1960) Fig. 17. Still from A Letter to Jane