Before Our Eyes: Les Mots, Non Les Choses Jean-Luc
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BEFORE OUR EYES: LES MOTS, NON LES CHOSES JEAN-LUC GODARD’S ICI ET AILLEURS (1970-74) AND NOTRE MUSIQUE (2004) By Irmgard Emmelhainz A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Ph.D., Graduate Department of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Irmgard Emmelhainz 2009 ii “Before Our Eyes: Les mots, non les choses Jean-Luc Godard’s Ici et ailleurs (1970-74) and Notre musique (2004)” Ph.D June 2009 Irmgard Emmelhainz Department of Art History University of Toronto ABSTRACT Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin made in 1970 a “political film politically” about the Palestinian Revolution, Jusqu’à la victoire, which remained unfinished. Under the framework of their audio-visual research project, Sonimage, Godard edited the Palestinian footage with Anne-Marie Miéville. Working through the collapse of the revolutionary project, imaging the Palestinian resistance became a matter of the restitution of speech to the absent and to the dead Palestinians – to whom, as Godard laments self-critically in the film, they had not listened to. Godard’s and Miéville’s compass for action was reconfigured as “audiovisual journalism,” addressing the changing conditions in political engagement, challenging the mediatization of mediation prompted by the Leftist utopian belief in the emancipatory potential of the media. The hegemonic discourse circulating within Leftist intellectual culture abandoned the iconic referent of “The Revolution,” which became the fatal harbinger of totalitarianism. Since then, Third World subjects have been figured as terrorists or victims who are incapable of determining themselves politically, or to “develop” economically. Such a turn has given leeway to new models of engagement and emancipation that account for the real of reality, embedded in the non-discourse of rights or counter-memory, while beckoning for a politics of infinite restitution. Godard returned to the Palestine Question thirty years later in Notre musique, by stopping-over in post-war Sarajevo, a place where it became possible for Godard to host a gathering of the Trojan poets and storytellers of sorts. iii Reconciliation and rehabilitation are the reverse-shot of a world of violent ethnic strife evidencing the futility of the politization of forgiveness. By way of a montage, Godard vouches for the mobilization of the powers of the false in order to save the real. The beautiful becomes necessary to “cover” memories of catastrophe. The aesthetico-political task is the regulation of the distance between the viewer and the screen. The conditions are the belief in images, faith and the desire to see as our links to the world. Within the pervasiveness of the hyperreal and culture, which Godard equates to ruins, the exiles and vanquished call for the exception, which is art. iv Acknowledgments I thank at the end of this journey those who made it more bearable, exciting and supported it unwavering: In Toronto, Eshrat and Jeevan Erfanian, Bruce Parsons, Rosa Macip, Romi Mikulinski, Etienne Turpin, Alessandra Renzi, Christine Shaw, John Greyson and BH Yael. From Mexico, Miguel Ventura, Silvia Gruner, Fausto Esparza, Pilar Reyes, Helga Kaiser, Iliana Padilla, Ana Paola Frías, Jimena Acosta, Irma Robles, Diana Gónzalez, Karen Cordero Reimann and Stephen Vollmer. Elsewhere: Shay de Grandis, Margaret Schlubach-Rueping, Thierry de Duve, Nora Adwan. Kifah Fanni is present in every key typed. I am indebted to my dissertating friends who read drafts of this work and who contributed with invaluable feedback. Nathalie Khankhan, Romi Mikulinski, and Etienne Turpin. Tom Williams’ brilliant insights and editorial comments shed light not only on this work, but also on the project as a whole. I am forever grateful and touched by Maria José Bruña and Mélanie Potevin, who made sure I was not on my own at the rez de chausée at the Bibliothèque Nationale when I was going through hard times. To David Faroult and Michael Witt for their Godardian insights and materials. To Olivier Hadouchi, for our email exchanges on cinema and tiermondisme. To the Jumex Collection in Mexico City, for funding my research in Paris. To Elizabeth Legge, Kim Tomckzak, Lisa Steele, Eric Cazdyn and John Massey for their support at the University of Toronto. Without Mikki Kratsman, Haggai Matar, Matan Kaminer and Katie Miranda, I would have not been able to spend precious months in the West Bank. Such months were invaluable, productive and unforgettable. Sonia Nimr was my mentor in Ramallah; she generously answered questions, shared stories and transmitted insights to me. She showed me to open up my ears like Kifah Fanni, whose love for Arabic and poetry are contagious. Khadijeh Habashneh and Mustapha Abu Ali shared their lives’ stories and passion for cinema, revolution and political work with me. I am indebted to everyone at the Qattan Foundation, especially Sally Abu Bakr, for their hospitality, friendship and support, for encouraging my meeting with Mahmoud Darwish and for inviting me to present my work. Thank you, Romi Mikulinski, for your unwavering friendship and support from Tel Aviv. Finally, this work would not have been possible without Rebecca Comay, Peter Fitting and John Paul Ricco. They not only supported but also inspired and enriched this work in many different ways. I consider myself to be supremely privileged to have been able to work with them and to count on their generosity and commitment. Rebecca Comay was there since the beginning as a friend and as a mentor, encouraging me to keep on writing during critical moments. Her profound and knowledgeable insights turned the thesis upside down more than once, only to make it stronger. Peter Fitting helped me navigate the Marxist-Leninist French sixties, Godard’s films and scholarship about his work. I am indebted to his invaluable help and guidance, generous readership and always-enriching and available source of references and materials. John Ricco encountered stubbornness with infinite patience and grace. He “fell from the sky” to be a generous mentor and midwife, guiding me through the material and helping to deliver the thesis with great care and thoroughness. This work is dedicated to the memory of my father, Luis Emmelhainz Irmgard Emmelhainz, Toronto-Paris-Ramallah, October 2005-May 2009. v Table of Contents Preface ................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Godard: Les mots, non les choses ................................................................ 11 Chapter 1 Here: Who Speaks? (1968) 1. Enunciative Positions and the Avant-garde .............................................................. 48 2. Art, Realism, Spectacle: Aragon and Debord ........................................................... 57 3. Engaged Positions: André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre ........................................... 61 4. The Dziga Vertov Group: Working Through the Ideologemes of the Left .............. 69 4.1 Maoism and the Dziga Vertov Group ................................................................. 77 4.2 From Zero and Self-critique ................................................................................ 81 4.3 Materialist Fictions, Realism and Materialist Filmmaking ................................. 83 4.4 The Cahiers-Cinéthique Debate .......................................................................... 88 4.5 Toward a Theory of Images and Sounds ............................................................ 92 4.6 Sound/Image Struggle = Class Struggle ............................................................. 97 5. Le Vent d’Est ............................................................................................................. 99 5.1 The Strike .......................................................................................................... 106 5.2 The Delegate (traduttore/traditore) .................................................................. 107 5.3 The General Assembly ...................................................................................... 108 6. Guernica and Ici et ailleurs, 1974 ........................................................................... 111 Chapter 2 Elsewhere: Dialogues of Points of View 1. A Deaf Point of View ............................................................................................. 123 2. A Short Genealogy of Points of View .................................................................... 127 3. Godard’s Tiermondisme .......................................................................................... 138 4. Radical Tourism and the Palestinian Revolution: The Seen and the Seers ............ 148 5. Constructing a Point of View: The DVG’s Jusqu’à la victoire: Méthodes de travail et de pensée de la révolution Palestinienne ................................................................ 161 6. The Demise of Third Worldism .............................................................................. 169 7. The Myth of Objectivity ......................................................................................... 174 8. Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger .............................................................. 182 9. From Jusqu’à la victoire to Ici et ailleurs .............................................................. 191 10. Godard and Suleiman: Points of View in Dialogue .............................................. 200 vi Chapter 3 Technique (Theory + Practice): The Expiration