University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2016 Deconstruction of the Sacred, Ontologies of Monstrosity: Apophatic Approaches in Late Modernist Cinema scott d. vangel University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation vangel, scott d., "Deconstruction of the Sacred, Ontologies of Monstrosity: Apophatic Approaches in Late Modernist Cinema" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 691. https://doi.org/10.7275/8438271.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/691 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SACRED, ONTOLOGIES OF MONSTROSITY: APOPHATIC APPROACHES IN LATE MODERNIST CINEMA A Dissertation Presented By SCOTT VANGEL Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2016 Comparative Literature © Copyright by Scott Vangel 2016 All Rights Reserved DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SACRED, ONTOLOGIES OF MONSTROSITY: APOPHATIC APPROACHES IN LATE MODERNIST CINEMA A Dissertation Presented By SCOTT VANGEL Approved as to Style and Content by: __________________________________ Catherine Portuges, Chair __________________________________ Donald Maddox, Member __________________________________ Barton Byg, Member __________________________________ David Lenson, Member ___________________________________ William Moebius, Director Languages, Literatures, and Cultures __________________________________ Edwin Gentzler, Program Director Comparative Literature ABSTRACT DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SACRED, ONTOLOGIES OF MONSTROSITY: APOPHATIC APPROACHES IN LATE MODERNIST CINEMA MAY 2016 SCOTT VANGEL, B.A., FRAMINGHAM STAT UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Catherine Portugues In this dissertation I compare apophatic[i] approaches including those associated with Christian mysticism, early postmodern thought and the literature of Gothic monstrosity through their collective emergence in late-twentieth century modernist cinema. I identify confluences between these and related theoretical strains with regard to metaphysics, ontology, ethics and mimesis. The dissertation is structured around concepts relative to limit-experience including death’s impossibility, the gift and phenomenological excess culled from texts such as Jacques Derrida’s Donner la mort (1999), Emmanuel Levinas’ Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (1961), Maurice Blanchot’s L’écriture du désastre (1980), and Jean-Luc Marion’s De Surcroît: Études sur les phénomènes saturés (2001). After establishing connections between these texts and earlier works, including Denys’[ii] “Mystical Theology” (circa Fifth Century) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus (1818, revised in 1831), I provide close readings of late modernist films illustrative of this inheritance. I compare the iv manner in which films such as Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (1959), Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51 (1952), Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1956), Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), Robert Bresson’s Le diable, probablement (1978) and R.W. Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982) utilize singular formal strategies influenced by or reminiscent of those of the aforementioned sources to flout reductive tendencies inherent in representation, semiotics and visual reception. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION: “REFUSING TO READ IN ORDER TO BE BETTER ABLE TO SEE” ...... 1 CHAPTER 1: WHERE LANGUAGE AND GAZE FAIL: THE FACE OF THE OTHER AS RADICALLY OTHER IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY, LITERATURE AND FILM ........................... 15 2: “GIVING FACE, DE-FACING, FIGURATION AND DISFIGUREMENT”: A POETICS OF FLESH AND BLOOD IN SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND FRANJU’S LES YEUX SANS VISAGE .......................................................................................................................................... 71 3: “…SI ON NE VEUT PAS TOMBER DANS LA REPRÉSENTATION:” ESCAPING A PRISONHOUSE OF LANGUAGE, GAZE AND TECHNOLOGY IN BRESSON’S LE DIABLE, PROBABLEMENT ....................................................................................................... 133 4: “ALL I HAVE LEFT TO GIVE YOU IS MY DEATH:” THE PASSIONLESS CHRIST AND THE LONGING OF R.W. FASSBINDER IN DIE SEHNSUCHT DER VERONIKA VOSS ...... 165 CONCLUSION: AN ART REPRESENTATIVE OF NOTHING: AN ETHICS OF ABSENCE IN POSTWAR CINEMA ............................................................................................................ 186 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 191 vi INTRODUCTION “REFUSING TO READ IN ORDER TO BE BETTER ABLE TO SEE”1 “To show the world and its reality as they are prior to our gaze, and therefore outside of it, is to desire another relationship with the visual than that which leads to understanding it. At this point in the history of the visual arts, the desire to see without reading is not a regression toward the absence of meaning but, on the contrary, an advance to the very heart of things, and often the setting aside of the subject and its consciousness, which have become burdensome” Jacques Aumont (128). “It’s the bad combination, it’s the wrong synthesis, made by the eye as it looks around, that keeps us from seeing everything as strange” Georges Franju (Durgnat, 2). In this dissertation I analyze cinematic strategies reliant upon negative or apophatic means. In Philosophy of the Unsayable (2014), William Franke describes apophatic and negative theology as “a kind of perennial counter-philosophy to the philosophy of Logos,” emphasizing “that what is not and even cannot be said is actually the basis for all that is said” (Franke, 1). “Negative theology is not so much a theology or a philosophy as a dimension inherent to thought – precisely what escapes it in all its forms, hence its formless, unformulatable ground” (296). Thus, this dissertation focalizes cinematic formal treatments that, often paradoxically, call attention to that which cannot be visualized or conceptualized. I compare apophatic approaches associated with Christian mysticism, early postmodern thought and the literature of Gothic monstrosity through their collective emergence in late-twentieth century modernist cinema. I identify confluences and related theoretical strains with regard to metaphysics, ontology, ethics and mimesis. The 1 dissertation is structured around concepts relative to limit-experience including “l’impossibilité de la mort,” “le non pensé” as well as “les phénomènes saturés” culled from texts such as Emmanuel Levinas’ Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (1961), Maurice Blanchot’s L’écriture du désastre (1980), Gilles Deleuze’s Cinéma I: L’image- mouvement (1983) and Jean-Luc Marion’s De Surcroît: Études sur les phénomènes saturés (2001). After establishing connections between these texts and earlier works, including Denys’2 Mystical Theology (circa sixth century) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus (1818, revised in 1831), I provide close readings of late modernist films illustrative of this inheritance. I compare the manner in which films such as Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (Eyes without a Face, 1959), Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51 (1952), Carl Theodore Dreyer’s Ordet (The Word, 1956), Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live, 1962), Robert Bresson’s Le diable, probablement (The Devil, Probably, 1978) and R.W. Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Veronika Voss, 1982) utilize formal strategies influenced by or reminiscent of these approaches to flout reductive tendencies inherent in representation, semiotics and visual reception. I analyze the manner in which filmic strategies, as much as diegetic content, introduce ontological and ethical concerns through approaches that test and exceed the limits of conception and representation. Through strategies predicated upon moments or sequences resistant to ‘reading’ and cognitive apprehension, I suggest that directors such as Franju and Bresson frustrate scopophilia and epistephilia - the drives to see and to comprehend - intrinsic to spectatorship.3 These films, I go on to argue, belie expectations developed through a legacy conditioned by the distantiated, monocular viewpoint 2 inherent in Cartesian perspectivalism, the proliferation of spectacle emergent in the nineteenth century and the privileging of vision over other senses.4 Efforts to foster “another relationship with the visual than that which leads to understanding it” (Aumont, 128) proceed through affective methods manifested as bodily shock and cognitive strain, sensory disorientation or beguilement. I will thus utilize the term affect as it is applied in Gilles Deleuze’s work on cinema. In Cinéma I: L’image movement (1983), Deleuze’s use of the term is derived directly from Bergson’s