This article was downloaded by: [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] On: 19 December 2014, At: 10:47 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20 HEART OF THE MATTER Patricia Pistersa a Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterspad 9, 1012 XT Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Web: www.patriciapisters.com Published online: 18 Dec 2014.
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To cite this article: Patricia Pisters (2014) HEART OF THE MATTER, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 19:4, 23-36, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2014.984430 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.984430
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n “L’Intrus” Jean-Luc Nancy describes the I alienating experience of his heart transplant. Most vividly his words make sensible how from “pain to pain, strangeness to strangeness” his proper “I” withdraws and becomes an intru- der. The suffering of an opened, invaded, vul- nerable body is infinite and the image of the tortured body of a crucified Christ almost auto- matically comes to mind.1 And yet this religious connotation of sacrifice and martyrdom is pre- cisely what Nancy puts into question. The expropriation of organs, the torments of the body bring us not closer to God but are rather patricia pisters an indication of the death of God:
Corpus meum and interior intimo meo, the HEART OF THE MATTER two together state very exactly, and in a com- plete configuration of the death of god, that bodies without organs and the truth of the subject is its exteriority and excessivity: its infinite exposition. The biopolitics in organ intrus exposes me, excessively. It extrudes, it exports, it expropriates: I am the illness transplant films and the medical intervention, I am the can- cerous cell and the grafted organ […]2 “brought into the realm of explicit calculations Nancy explains this further by adding that we and power–knowledge [is] an agent of trans- are at the beginning of a mutation where man formations of human life.”5 is going infinitely beyond man (again, implying However, the death of God that Nancy the death of God) and becoming what he is and encountered in his intruding and extruding always has been, namely the most terrifying and experience of cardiac transplantation also troubling technician who refashions nature, and implies biophilosophical questions relating to 3 Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 re-creates creation. Organ transplantation, the potentiality of the body and a new kind of which is an old phenomenon but only recently ethics that this may imply. Nancy starts successful since the first non-rejected kidney “L’Intrus” with a quote from Antonin Artaud: transplant in 1954, is one more step in this “There is nothing in fact more ignobly useless essential and troubling characteristic of and superfluous than the organ called the heart, mankind.4 In both its legal and illegal practices which is the vilest means that one could have in the world market of globalized capitalism invented for pumping life into me.”6 For today, organ transplantation is a form of bio- Deleuze and Guattari, Artaud’s declaration of power and biopolitics in the Foucauldian war on the organs, expressed on 28 November sense: where life and its mechanisms are 1947 in the radio play “To Have Done with the
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/040023-14 © 2014 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.984430
23 heart of the matter
Judgement of God,” is the beginning of thinking [The surgeon] greatly diminishes the dis- the organism outside its habitual and automatic tance between himself and the patient by composition, the beginning of thinking beyond penetrating into the patient’s body, and a religious framework. Artaud shows us “how increases it but little by the caution with to create a Body without Organs.”7 The Body which his hand moves among the organs […] The painter maintains in his work a without Organs as a concept has to be situated natural distance from reality, the cameraman on a different level of experience than the biopo- penetrates deeply into its web […] Thus, for litical concerns related to organ transplantation. contemporary man the representation of Rather than knowledge and power, it addresses reality by the film is incomparably more sig- an ethics of intensities, vibrations, gradients, nificant than that of the painter, since it joyful and sad affects, all marked by a “striving offers, precisely because of the thorough- to persist.” But what is this striving to persist, going permeation of reality with mechanical what strives to persist in the experience of equipment, an aspect of that reality which 10 organ transplantation? What is the “strange is free of all equipment. conatus of infinite excrescence,” as Nancy calls Laying bare what lies beneath the surface, these his heart transplant? 8 In what sense does this films are not just about organ transplantation, experience involve the death of God and undo but by touching and moving organs they point the judgement of God? And how does this to biopolitical and biophilosophical questions relate to the concept of sacrifice? that are at the heart of the matter of contempor- In this essay I will look at four recent films ary reality. that have organ transplantations “at their heart”: 21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzaleź In˜arritu,́ 2003), L’Intrus (Claire Denis, 2001), Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears, 2002) hearts and kidneys and Heart of Jenin (Leon Geller and Markus Vetter, 2008).9 Each film in its own way shows In all four films that form the “corpus” of my how Nancy’s concept of the intruder balances examinations, the heart is literally the most in a different dynamics between biopolitical vital and problematic organ. In 21 Grams and and biophilosophical concerns. Each film par- L’Intrus the main characters undergo a heart ticipates in the biopolitical discourse that sur- transplant. In 21 Grams Paul (Sean Penn) is a rounds the question of the body that concerns terminally ill maths professor who receives the us here. As such the camera registers the heart from a man killed (together with his two surface of reality, representations that could young daughters) in a hit-and-run car accident. be considered as the visible skin of reality. In˜arritú ’s film presents to us the crossing The films, however, also offer more than rep- paths of Paul, his donor’s widow and now child- resentations. Hidden within the visible body of less mother Cristina (Naomi Watts), and the hit- the image, on a more profound and invisible and-run driver Jack (Benicio del Toro).11 Claire
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 level, they also produce “Bodies without Denis’s film L’Intrus is directly inspired by Organs” that change the concept of sacrifice Nancy’s essay on his heart transplant.12 from religious offering into political or ethical Although there is nothing of Nancy’s essay resistance and allow a-religious strivings to that finds direct cinematographic translation, persist. Therefore, more than an instrument practically every scene of the film is permeated for capturing the world in representations, the with intrusion. Its enigmatic and dark principal camera thus also functions as a surgical instru- character, Louis Trebor (Michel Subor), under- ment itself, putting reality on the operating goes an illegal heart transplant and travels from table. Walter Benjamin’s famous observation the North (the snowy white mountains of the about the film camera as scalpel serves here as Jura on the French–Swiss border) to the South an underlying principle to approach the power (one of the French Polynesian islands of Tahiti of the filmic images discussed: in the Pacific Ocean).
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In both 21 Grams and L’Intrus the proper parts. One of Ahmed’s kidneys went to a heart of the characters, by failing, appears as Bedouin boy, another to an Orthodox Jewish the first intruder. The second intruder is the girl. Although the father initially had doubts grafted heart, a heart that, as Nancy notes, is about donating Ahmed’s heart, it now beats in identified by the host body as foreign, which the chest of a Druze girl.15 necessitates the lowering of the immune Of all the organs the heart seems to be most system “so that his body will better tolerate loaded with both vital and cultural significance. the foreign element. Medical practice thus While many organs come in pairs (lungs, renders the graftee a stranger to himself: stran- kidneys), the heart is a single organ and living ger, that is, to his immune system’s identity – donation of a heart is impossible. Someone has which is something like his physiological signa- to die for another person to receive a heart, to ture.”13 Both 21 Grams and L’Intrus ask onto- live. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood logical questions about what it means to be into the vessels with rhythmic contractions. It human, how we relate to others and deal with is often considered as the soul of a person, con- intrusions of the other, the stranger, to the taining someone’s innermost thoughts and feel- point where we are strangers to ourselves. 21 ings. In the Bible (Genesis 6.5) God sees that the Grams shows the mysterious connections evil thoughts of mankind are seated in their between individual fates. In L’Intrus every hearts. But goodness is also situated in the body is fundamentally disconnected. heart. The sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary Dirty Pretty Things and Heart of Jenin stand as exemplary for this broader connotation present more directly political stories of the of the heart. Even though we do not see the heart. In Dirty Pretty Things Stephen Frears heart, we can sense it easily, feel it working by uncovers some of the invisible dimensions of putting a hand on our chest, or a finger on our contemporary London (or any globalized metro- pulse to sense it beating faster or slower in polis for that matter), featuring asylum seekers different circumstances. Metaphorically, also, who work as cab drivers, night porters, cleaners, we “know” the heart: it can jump with joy, and prostitutes.14 A Nigerian doctor, Okwe recoil with empathy, freeze with fear, it can (Chiwetel Ejiofor) works as a cab driver break.16 during the day and as a night porter in an L’Intrus and 21 Grams both refer to the heart expensive hotel after dark. One night while in this sense of hosting good and evil souls. checking on a clogged toilet in one of the hotel Denis’s film opens with a preamble, an rooms, he finds the cause of the blockage: a ominous image of an unnamed character in a human heart. Then he discovers that the hotel dark grotto, played by Katerina Golubeva, manager Juan (Sergi López) runs an illegal oper- who will return in the film as the haunting ation trading kidneys of immigrants for forged figure of an angel of doom. While she lights a passports. I will return to the significance of cigarette we hear her voice whispering “Your the kidney below. Here I want to remain with worst enemies are hiding inside, in the darkness,
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 the heart that in this film is not transplanted in your heart.” Throughout the film the main but the starting point of an investigation into character Louis Trebor is portrayed as cold illegal practices, asking pertinent questions and “heartless,” unable to connect to his son, about the globalized traffic of biomaterial. to his lover, or to anyone else, living alone Heart of Jenin is in a different way immediately with his two huskies in a cabin in the woods. political. This film is a documentary about Even the huskies are left behind when he Ahmed Khatib, a Palestinian boy shot by leaves the Jura to have his transplant operation. Israeli soldiers in 2005. His father, Ismael This man getting a new heart does not fill our Khatib, decides to give his son’s organs to six own heart with sympathy. In 21 Grams Paul children in Israel. The documentary follows follows Caterina, the widow of his donor. the father when two years later he visits some Rather than a stalker, he acts more like a protec- of the children who received his son’s body tive angel with “a good heart.” His confession to
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Caterina that he is the recipient of her hus- immigrant service workers. As such they are band’s heart first meets her immense anger, nevertheless fully part of the “economic life of and then helps her in the unspeakable grief the city, providing manufacturing, transpor- over her terrible loss. The title of the film tation, and cleaning – especially, like the refers to the idea that a person’s soul, contained kidney, those functions that dispose of the in the heart, has some kind of spiritual material- waste that other’s don’t want to experience.”21 ity that has actual physical weight. As Paul’s At the end of the film Okwe, the illegal immi- voiceover reflects: “They say we all lose 21 grant from Nigeria, a Turkish asylum seeker grams at the exact moment of our death. Every- Senay (Audrey Tautou) and Juliette (Sophie one. And how much fits into 21 grams?” The Okonedo), a black prostitute without legal weight of a heart beat perhaps? papers, work together to plot against the hotel Kidneys are differently connoted organs. manager and, instead of Senay’s body parts, Situated in the lower back they come in pairs, take his kidney to an organ traffic dealer in one kidney each side of the vertebral column. the parking lot of the hotel. At his surprise to They serve many purposes, most crucially the see people he has never met before, Okwe filtering of blood, removing waste that is answers the dealer: “We are the people you diverted to the bladder. The kidneys also regu- don’t see. We drive your cabs. We clean your late blood pressure, balance bodily homeostasis rooms. We suck your cocks.” Dirty Pretty and produce certain hormones. In short, they Things exposes the “underworld of British are just as vital as the heart, but they are more service culture.”22 Kidneys in both their materi- hidden, operating more unnoticed, and ality and metaphoric sense are part of this expo- because we have two kidneys, living donation sition. And as such kidneys are part of the is possible. Kidneys, sometimes referred to as shadow apparatus of globalized capitalism, reins, also feature quite prominently in the which makes it nonetheless a biopolitical issue Bible where they are mentioned more than where life is at the (dark) centre of political thirty times.17 In the Bible, animal kidneys order and trade. are frequently referred to as sacrificial offerings made in seeking divine intervention to cure dis- 18 eases. More metaphorically, human kidneys, biopolitics and border just like the heart, are seen as the mirror of transgressions the soul. Several times, the kidneys are men- tioned as “the organs examined by God to pass Dirty Pretty Things exposes this hidden aspect judgement on a person […]”: “Examine me, O of biopolitics. The film shows how an invisible Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my anonymous part of society can form a new col- heart (Psalms 26:2)”19 In newer translations of lective, a multitude, presenting a resistance to the Bible, however, kidneys and reins have the apparatus of power of global capitalism.23 gradually been replaced by “mind” or “soul.” At the end of the film Okwe and Senay are
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 As Garabed Eknoyan explains, this may have able to leave the anonymous border location of to do with the success rate of kidney transplants the hotel, which could be seen as a metaphor that makes the kidney more “soulless.”20 for the British nation-state, regulating and In Dirty Pretty Things the kidneys are quite “accommodating strangers into the home/ literally sacrificed. Unlike in the Bible they are nation.”24 With their forged passports they not animal organs but human ones, offered not manage to get to that other anonymous border to cure a physical disease but to cure a social- space, the airport. Senay leaves for her sister political “disease,” trading it for a legal identity. in New York; Okwe calls his daughter whom In his review of Dirty Pretty Things, Ted Hovet he had to leave behind in Nigeria after he was refers to further symbolism of the central role of falsely accused of murdering his wife on the kidneys in the film: the kidney is invisible, just operating table. Dirty Pretty Things forms a like the secret and invisible lives of the counter-discourse and is part of a biopolitical
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power–knowledge apparatus that could be takes a heartbreaking decision and agrees, the defined in a broader sense than Foucault pro- Israeli news reports again about this remarkable poses. As Agamben argues, we can deed. Some of the families of the receiving chil- dren are interviewed, just before the operations call an apparatus literally anything that has in on their children. Two years later the documen- some way the capacity to capture, orient, tary makers follow the father and a relative in determine, intercept, model, control, or Israel when he visits some of the children who secure gestures, behaviors, opinions, or dis- received one of his son’s organs. In this way courses of living beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, Heart of Jenin portrays the story of a father confession, factories, disciplines, juridical who instead of burying his son like a martyr measures, and so forth (whose connections and calling for vengeance, chose “gifts of life” with power is in a certain sense evident), instead. In a political situation as explosive as but also the pen, writing, literature, philos- the Palestinian–Israeli conflict this profoundly ophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, humane decision is immediately political. As computers, cellular telephones and – why is the media coverage and the documentary – not language itself, which is perhaps the itself that starts to operate in the discursive – most ancient of apparatuses one in which field. The film travelled and stirred quite some thousands and thousands of years ago a debates. primate inadvertently let himself be cap- While it is widely acknowledged that the tured, probably without realizing the conse- quences that he was about to face.25 story in itself is very moving and the decision of the father to donate his son’s organs is a The camera or film is another apparatus is this remarkable choice, both this choice and sense. Dirty Pretty Things is a fiction film that especially the film’s depiction of it are received nevertheless addresses actual practices and with mixed feelings and disappointment from that can provide empowering discursive resist- both Palestinian and Israeli sides.26 Palestinians ance by showing, on the level of representation complain that the news report of the death of a and storytelling, what is hidden in society’s bio- Palestinian boy suggests that the Israelis would politics of illegal organ traffic. care about the loss of Palestinian innocent Heart of Jenin is a documentary and casualties. From the Israeli side, consciousness addresses biopolitical issues in an even more of the discursive effects of media represen- complicated network of power because it is at tations have led to criticism of one-sided depic- the heart of one of the most pertinent political tion of bad Israelis and victimized Palestinians conflict zones of the modern world: Jenin, the because of the narrow focus on Ismael occupied territories of the West Bank. The Khatib’s decision and journey. On the PBS film starts with an Israeli news item on the website of the film, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein death of the twelve-year-old Palestinian counterbalances the story of Ahmed with that Ahmed Khatib, innocently killed by Israeli sol- of an Israeli woman, killed in a terrorist bomb
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 diers who mistook him for a terrorist while he attack, who donated one of her vital organs to was playing with a toy gun. While Ahmed’s an Arab person. Steven Stotsky, in a review body, covered in the Palestinian flag, is carried for CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in around as a martyr and the cries for vengeance Middle East Reporting in America), argues are growing louder in the streets of Jenin, in that the decision of Ismael Khatib to donate the Israeli hospital where Ahmed died a male his son’s organs could not have taken place nurse had already set in motion a different without the intercession of Israeli doctors and response to the tragedy. At the bedside of his medical staff, whom he calls “the unseen diseased son, he had asked Ahmed’s father to heroes, who continue to administer critical donate his son’s organs to sick children in care to individuals on both sides of the conflict other hospitals who might in this way get a despite the risks.”27 As a result, Stotsky chance to life. When after reflection the father argues, the film reinforces antagonism instead
27 heart of the matter
of offering new insights into the conflict. literally goes to the heart of these matters, pre- Stotsky adds other background information to senting a biopolitical story that is profoundly contextualize Ismael Khatib’s noble gesture, related to all kinds of power relations that reproaching the filmmakers especially in need contextualization and vigilance, but that having portrayed the Orthodox family as grud- operate also at the level of the heart and soul. ging and prejudiced Israelis. And hence, just like Dirty Pretty Things’ Granted, when the Orthodox father Yakov exposure of the invisible side of contemporary Levinson is interviewed in the first instance, London, it starts cutting through the skin of dis- while his daughter is unexpectedly on the oper- cursive representations. ating table, he expresses the wish for the kidney of his little daughter preferably to be a Jewish organ. And one can question here the film- intense cruelty of bodies without makers for capturing people at a very anxious organs and vulnerable moment of their life. When At this point we have to start asking how organ two years later the family receives Khatib and transplantation, this trans-individual exchan- his relative the situation certainly is very ging of vital body parts, with all its political con- painful, partly because of this initial interview. notations entangled in discursive apparatuses Moreover, the political situation weighs heavy and biopolitical networks of power, relates to on the shoulders of both the hosts and the visi- biophilosophical questions. Eric Alliez has tors. And yet the film does not give the one- argued that “biophilosophy realizes itself as bio- sided image of the Jewish family as is argued politics.”28 Can we now also ask how biopolitics in Stotsky’s review and in other online commen- might imply biophilosophy? Does the discursive taries. In fact, the Orthodox family is genuinely representation of organ transplantation relate to grateful: “We owe you so much,” Yakov Levin- the concept of the “Body without Organs”? son says while the little girl with Ahmed’s Does the literal and corporeal “opening of kidney gives Ismael a present. Moreover, the being” that Nancy describes as so powerful in fact that the family agreed to be filmed in “L’Intrus” relate to the pre-individual and these circumstances (not all recipients of trans-individual ethics of immanent vitalism Ahmed’s organs gave their permission) is that is implied in the biophilosophy of Deleuze quite courageous because it exposes them. It and Guattari and that is most vividly expressed makes them liable to the accusation of betrayal in Artaud’s Body without Organs? Before and it shows a willingness to enter into some turning back to the films, let’s have a closer kind of dialogue, even if, as Orthodox Jews, look at the concept itself. they have a strict lifestyle and the father does First, it is useful to clarify that transplant not know how to express himself very well. organs should not be confused with the The film acknowledges this perspective. When concept of “organs without bodies” that Slavoj Ismael and his relative drive back home, the Žizeǩ proposes in his (reverse and perverse Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 uncle comments about Yakov Levinson: “This because related to sexual difference and desire) man really regrets what he said earlier. Did reading of the Body without Organs. Žizeǩ you see the little girl? I think she has a secret gives the examples of Edward Norton’s hand energy behind her. Her name is Menuha, that starts fighting itself in Fight Club, or the which means tranquillity, comfort.” In these recorded voice that sings without being embo- words there is a ray of hope that in the vastness died in Mulholland Drive. These “organs of the political blockages and deadlocks some- without bodies” are, according to Žizek,̌ Laca- thing can still connect, quite literally, a shared nian partial objects: source of life. But the political situation is so incredibly complex and so deeply painful that The hand acting on its own is the drive ignor- any representation becomes part of a much ing the dialectic of the subject’s desire: drive larger discursive network. Heart of Jenin is fundamentally the insistence of an undead
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“organ without a body,” standing, organic use of language and bodily code by like Lacan’s lamella, for that which the uttering “only gasps and cries that are sheer subject had to lose in order to subjectivize unarticulated blocks of sound.”33 Deleuze and itself in the symbolic space of the sexual 29 Guattari argue that the schizo has his own difference. system of coordinates at his disposal, which “ It is quite clear, however, that a grafted organ does not coincide with the social code. It and the experience of organ transplantation might be said that the schizophrenic passes has nothing to do with partial objects that are from one code to the other, that he deliberately ”34 lost in order to be subjectivized or with the sym- scrambles all the codes. Organs are regener- “ ” bolic space of sexual difference and desire nega- ated, re-inscribed in a litany of disjunctions 35 tively defined as “lack” (of the symbolic organ, on the own body. This disorganization of of castration). Quite the contrary, as Nancy the body can be realized in less pathological suggests, the gift of life in organ donation forms in artistic experimentation. But it can be argued as well that it has a techno-physio- institutes among us, without any limit other logical form in the donation and reception of than the incompatibility of blood type (and, organ transplantation. The way Nancy in particular, without the limits of sex or eth- describes his grafted body undergoing an nicity: my heart may be the heart of a black additional excruciating treatment for cancer woman), the possibility of a network that invaded his body as a side-effect of the low- wherein life/death is shared out, where life ering of his immune system is in a sense a connects with death, here the incommunic- “ ” able communicates.30 schizoid experience, an experience that changes the habitual organization of his body What is communicating in the material completely: exchange of body parts (donating and receiving My heart is twenty years younger than I am, an organ) communicates on a pre-individual, and the rest of my body (at least) a dozen transversal level, beneath the habitual organiz- years older. So having at the same time ation of the body and representation. Beyond become younger and older, I no longer have the laws of transcendental subjectivity that, as an age proper, just as, properly speaking, I Deleuze and Guattari argue, “always has a am no longer my own age. Just as I no priest behind it”: the hierarchical organization longer have an occupation, although I am of power and knowledge against normative not retired, so too I am nothing of what I white, male faciality (which has the “face of am supposed to be (husband, father, grand- Christ” as its reference).31 In organ transplan- father, friend) unless I remain subsumed tation the “Christian” (or other national or reli- within the very general condition of the gious normative) organization of subjectivity is intrust, of diverse intrus that at any moment can appear in my place in my literally undermined. Even an Orthodox relations with, or in the representations of, Jewish family is happy with a Palestinian others.36 Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 heart. And so a biopolitical practice of “organs without bodies” operates on an intensive pre- This is, quite literally, a body with scrambled individual level. It obtains the deterritorializing codes, a Body without Organs. It is a body full powers of the Body without Organs that is not of intensities that underneath the organized organized following the laws of the judgement body starts to make new and different connec- of God. tions, experience new (sometimes excruciating) “The Body without Organs hurts,” Alliez affects. “We don’t know what a body can do,” is asserts.32 The references to Artaud indicate Spinoza’s famous question that Deleuze has that for Deleuze and Guattari a particular way emphasized as the most central one that is the in which it hurts is in the confrontation with basis of the Body without Organs. In the transcrip- madness. Artaud, who was diagnosed as schizo- tion of his courses on Spinoza, Deleuze explains phrenic, in his theatre performances resists the further: “Knowing what you are capable of. This
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is not at all a moral question, but above all a phys- This is a disorienting prelude indeed, but it is ical question, as a question to the body and to the also a very expressive way of putting the power soul […] The only question is the power of being of affect before any narrative development or affected.”37 Artaud, in his schizoid experiments of organization. Before we can make sense of the the Body without Organs, created a “theatre of story, before we can identify with the charac- cruelty.” In her article on Deleuze and Artaud, ters, the sensations and affects have already Laura Cull mentions that Artaud’ssystemof grasped us, at a deep and cutting pre-individua- cruelty was directed at allowing cruelty as affective lized level. This primacy of the affect and the power to penetrate everything, especially the fact that we start from a point in the future, relationship to his audience: “Making yourself a that the narrative or narration speaks from a theatre of cruelty, then, is not about ‘wielding a perspective of the future, are what I call else- butcher’s knife on stage at every possible opportu- where the schizo-aspects of contemporary nity’ in order to represent cruelty, Artaud cinema in the digital age.41 The frantic camera explained; rather it means creating a ‘real trans- work and the editing style are the scalpels of formation’ in your audience by acting ‘deeply the surgeon filmmaker. With its jumping, and directly’ on their sensibilities.”38 slicing, looping structure 21 Grams is a Film We have seen that Dirty Pretty Things and without Organs. Moreover, this sense of una- Heart of Jenin are films with huge biopolitical voidable fate that the film’s encircling structure signification, but they remain mostly at the brings about makes 21 Grams, as Robert Hahn level of narrative representation. The Body argues, in spite of its melodramatic materials, without Organs in these films can be sensed reminiscent of Greek tragedies.42 But, as Hahn only indirectly, underneath the acting, the rightly notices, it is not the individual fate of storylines, the visibility of the representation. the characters that interests In˜arritú but rather They are empowering discursive tools (or the impersonal or pre-individual experience of perhaps even weapons) but they do not cut time as such. It is in time that we become, in directly into the “organs” of the audience. 21 time that our fate gets entangled with that of Grams and L’Intrus are films that respect less others, the strangers that intrude on our life the rules of classic narration and representation. and become entangled with ours. Relative to And therefore these films perhaps cut deeper, in the normal organization of the body and that they deal more saliently with the biophilo- human psychology 21 Grams sophical implications of organ transplantation. Aesthetically they perform cruelty (as a disorga- undercuts the premise that we are most our- fi fi nizing force) on the audience. 21 Grams has selves when we are con dent in self-de nition and successful in self-presentation; we are been criticized for its scrambled and fragmented equally real, it suggests, when we are out of narration.39 At the beginning of the film we see fl control, confused, obsessed, deluded, ill, ash-forwards of the main characters that pathetic: we are all of those people – the chronologically only come to know each other people we were then, and the people we Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 later: will be.43
We see Cristina asleep on a bed while Paul All characters in 21 Grams have become stran- sits beside her, smoking, gazing down; we gers to themselves. Paul’s heart transplant is see Paul slumped in a wrecked chair not just his own struggle with that question of outside a desolate motel, in gray light; we a becoming and transforming self. Within the see an abandoned swimming pool, choked intense structure of this film, the heart trans- with debris, under a brooding sky full of floating snow. These introductory epiphanies plant puts us in touch with those fundamental yield to choppy glimpse of the plot’s frantic intruding questions at the core of our identities. climax (Jack driving a car at high speed, Denis’s L’Intrus is even more alienating in its rushing an injured, bleeding Paul and a aesthetics. As a European art film it is less screaming Cristina to the hospital).40 expected to follow a Hollywood organization of
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its material, and hence it is met with different reject his new heart, so the intrusion comes evaluation criteria, even if it is still seen as an again from the inside, from the grafted heart. “evasive and difficult” film.44 In Denis’s adap- Trebor ends up at sea, with a pretended son tation (or rather “adoption” as Nancy had whom he is too weak to reject, destiny called the film version of his text) the concept unknown. The film returns to the Jura and of the intruder is not only related to the physical ends (without Trebor) with the image of his dimension of the transplanted body. Rather, the neighbour (Beatrice Dalle) who is a dog idea of intrusion is sensible in every scene. Com- keeper, who leads a pack of dogs through the pared to 21 Grams’ emphasis on time, Denis’s snow. On the move, a new circle (of hunting?) film is more concerned with space. Moving starting. from the Northern hemisphere (the Jura) to the The physical intrusion of his own body that Southern hemisphere (Tahiti), with transits in Nancy describes in the experience of his heart Geneva (Switzerland) and Pusan (South transplant is not only translated in the film’s Korea), the intrusion is first presented as a highly intrusive elliptic spatial structure but spatial phenomenon. The film starts at a border also in the completely de-psychologized painting control with police dogs, sensing illegal traffic. of the characters that gives a sense of alienation. Dogs, as guardians of the territory, as first to We will never get to know Trebor’s motives, his alert an intrusion, are in practically every scene thoughts or feelings; he is certainly not a sym- of the first part of the film. And many scenes in pathetic character. As Martine Beugnet empha- the snowy mountain forests of the Jura are sizes in her reading of L’Intrus: haunted by dark shadows of strangers who fi ’ fl want to enter the country and whose glimpses Drawn into the lm s circular ow (the journey takes us around the world and we see regularly in the woods, the camera some- back), the characters operate less like psycho- times taking their place as a spying gaze from the – “ ” logical constructs than like chemical bodies shadows for instance when they observe how reacting to a series of contrasted environ- ’ Trebor s own heart becomes an intruder, failing ments, or like cells traveling through the him whilst swimming. body of the film, set on their course by its The illegal immigrants who in Dirty Pretty internal kinesthesia.45 Things get a face, a story and agency remain abstract but nevertheless real and present The rhythm of a perpetual mobile (the beatings forces in L’Intrus. In this film they are haunting of a heart), this continuing movement is more and haunted Bodies without Organs. Some important than narrative continuity, which is scenes have oniric or even delirious qualities demanding and “cruel” for the audiences. and we don’t know whether Louis Trebor actu- Where 21 Grams’ scrambling of filmic codes is ally kills one of those shadowy intruders who confusing, Denis’s L’Intrus is enigmatically alie- is later found under the ice; whether the nating. Beugnet refers to an interview with bloody heart found in the snow is the heart of Denis where she characterizes her films as
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 a girl who intruded Trebor’s cabin is really having a limp, one arm shorter, or a big nose, her heart, or whether it is a metaphoric image some kind of unfitting “excrescence” that for his (illegally obtained) transplanted organ. wants to be felt, experienced. In another inter- Denis leaves these options open, while the pol- view Denis explains that she likes philosophy itical implications are nevertheless always sensi- because it is circular, like a meridian that encir- ble. In the Pacific, Trebor himself is the cles the world, and you can jump on another intruder. He clearly stands out among the meridian and see things differently. “I need islanders and is regarded with suspicion as a things to be open, nothing is definitive. I am European foreigner. His attempts to find his just incapable of being ‘sliced’ (trancheé),” she Polynesian son, whom he left many years ago, explains.46 With this form of “nomadic narra- fail, even if the islanders try to find a replace- tion” L’Intrus is a Film without Organs, a ment son for him. Instead his body starts to Body without Organs, in the sense that
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Beugnet concludes: “The film thus offers itself At the same time Nancy has argued that the as a body of sensations through which, as spec- medical technology involved in transplantation tators, we might sense and practice our ability to practices signifies “the death of God” and let our defences down – to be drawn into and implies an explicit transgression of this religious infused by the unfamiliar.”47 With the abstract framework, in any event the institutional frame- but explicit connection between the stranger as works that are related to the type of normative territorial, physical and cinematographic intru- or habitual organization of the body.49 In the der, L’Intrus presents perhaps the most different films the concept of sacrifice is balanced view between biopolitical and biophi- related in different ways to (the death of) God. losophical questions that organ transplantation In Dirty Pretty Things the main character and Bodies without Organs can bring about. Okwe, who is a doctor, mentions loud and But also the most unsettling ones. Unlike the clear that he has no religion, except to survive. other films, there is no hope as in Heart of Also in 21 Grams and L’Intrus the characters Jenin, or agency and political visibility as in are moving in a world without God. But the Dirty Pretty Things, or even catharsis and issue of religion is more complicated in the redemption as in 21 Grams. Just a continuation latter two films. First of all, as Laura on another “meridian” and the desire to con- McMahon has noted, for Nancy the dead of tinue in an open whole. God “remains pregnant with the possibility if not necessity of a resurrection that restores ”50 sacrifice resurrected both man and God to a common immanence. In 21 Grams and L’Intrus multiple references to All the above lead us to the final question: what Christianity refer to this idea of resurrection. In happens with the concept of sacrifice when we 21 Grams Jack, the ex-con, turns fanatically to consider organ transplantation in light of the religion to seek salvation and seems at first a Body without Organs? In many accounts of Christ figure. However, it is finally Paul who organ transplantation the Christian concept of becomes a resurrected Christ figure, a protective charity is mentioned as an important motivation angel. He who receives the heart transplant for organ donation.48 And, as stated at the sacrifices himself in the end (shooting himself beginning of this essay, the suffering body of in the chest) to help Jack and Cristina to the organ-receiving body does remind us of somehow find redemption and repair them- the suffering body of Christ. In Jesus of Mon- selves (Cristina turns out to be pregnant from treal, organ transplantation is explicitly linked Paul, Jack returns home to his family, leaving to this religious sense of sacrifice. On the Christian dogmas behind). website of Heart of Jenin religious leaders of In L’Intrus the (difficult) father–son lineage is the big monotheist religions (a priest, a rabbi, inscribed with Christian connotations. Louis an imam and a Baptist reverend) all comment Trebor’s neglected French son (Gregoiré Colin) that the gift of life is the greatest act of charity is seen in his father’s deserted cabin, putting
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 one can offer (even the pope has signed a on a crown of leaves that was left behind by a donor certificate). And so Heart of Jenin par- young girl who first intruded the place. The ticipates in the religious discourses surrounding crown certainly looks like Jesus’ crown of organ donation, even if this level is not thorns, and both the girl and Trebor’s son later addressed explicitly in the documentary itself. have their hearts ripped out. As suggested Organ transplantation is inscribed in biopoliti- above, Trebor could have taken either of those cal issues that are guided by religious insti- hearts: an illegal one, or the (metaphoric) heart tutions, albeit in a complex network of other of his son whom he never loved. Moreover, the apparatuses that go beyond institutional film features multiple resurrections, the main power, such as the individual decision to one being, of course, Trebor himself who gets a donate organs in particular (legal and illegal) second chance through his heart transplant. circumstances. When he travels to Tahiti, Denis also inserts a
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young Michel Subor arriving forty years earlier and his organs are taken from his body. Filmed on the same shore in another film, Le Reflux from a high angle, Jesus’ body on the operating (Paul Geauff,́ 1965), which is a cinematographic table seems to be on a cross. 51 fi resurrection. So while the sacri ce in Christian 2 Nancy, “L’Intrus” 12–13. terms is deconstructed and questioned by “the death of God” that organ transplantation 3 Ibid. 7. For the inclusion of technics and technol- ogy in Western philosophy, see also Bernard Stieg- implies, there is a second life, a resurrection of ler’s three volumes of Technics and Time. God, precisely in the different forms of sacrifice and reception of “the other” as a stranger. 4 For the emergence and scope of organ trans- Perhaps what organ transplantation makes plantation and global trade in biomaterial, see quite literally tangible is the immanent life Geesink and Steegers, Nier te Koop, Baarmoeder te force that we share on a pre-individual level Huur [Kidney for Sale, Womb for Hire]. through which we can sense the immanence of 5 Foucault, History of Sexuality 143. Here, the word God (and not God as a transcending judging prin- biopower appears for the first time. The first expli- ciple). Perhaps, indeed as Philip Adamek cit mention of biopolitics is in Foucault’s “Il faut suggests, “Christianity [itself] is like a heart défendre la société.” See also Hardt and Negri, transplant.”52 Sacrifice and redemption are still Empire. For an insightful account of various con- part of our secular medicalized and technologi- ceptions of biopolitics, see Dean. cally mediated culture. But biophilosophy and 6 Nancy, “L’Intrus” 1. the concept of the Body without Organs shows 7 Deleuze and Guattari, “The Body without us that this resurrection after the death of God Organs” in Anti-Oedipus 9–16; and “How Do You “ also implies to have done with the Judgement Make Yourself a Body without Organs?” in A Thou- ” of God, entering a theatre of cruelty that asks sand Plateaus 149–66. us to perceive our relations to others in a new “ ’ ” way. If Christianity is a heart transplant then 8 Nancy, L Intrus 13. God may well be a Body without Organs, 9 Other organ transplantation films that go beyond responding, as Steven Shaviro has argued, both the Frankenstein myth are, among others: Coma to the same necessity: “that of conceiving a non- (Michael Crichton, 1978), EMR (James Erskine and totalizing and open ‘whole’ in which all potential- Danny McCullough, 2004), Valley of the Wolves: ity may be expressed […] without any sort of Iraq (Serdar Akar and Sadullah Sentürk, 2006), ’ finality or closure.”53 The image, according to Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008), My Sister s Keeper (Nick Cassavetes, 2009), and Never Let Me Nancy in The Ground of the Image,isalways Go (Mark Romanek, 2010). There are quite a few “sacred,” distinct from reality but with its own 54 Korean films that have organ trafficking in their force. If Artaud has put man and God on the action-plot. For instance, Heartbeat (Yoon Jae- fi anatomy table to re-organize his body, the lm- keun, 2010), The Man from Nowhere (Lee Jeong- maker can help with his scalpel to imagine this res- beom, 2010) and The Traffickers (Kim Hong-Sun, urrected concept of sacrifice with 2012). For an extended discussion of Coma, see
Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 new intensities and new power of Pisters, Matrix of Visual Culture 61–64. Another transformation at the heart and film that should be mentioned here is Anand soul of the matter beyond the Gandhi’s film Ship of Theseus (2012) which brings institutional framework and together three different stories of organ transplan- dogmas of religious discourse. tation in a beautiful and intelligent way. For an analy- sis of this film, see Pisters, “Transplanting Life.” 10 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of ” notes Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations 227. 11 For a review, see Hahn. 1 In Denys Arcand’s film Jesus of Montreal (1989) this was made explicit. Here, the actor who plays 12 For a special issue on the Nancy– Jesus in a modern update of the passion play dies Denis encounter, see Film-Philosophy 21.1. See
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50 McMahon 70. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian 51 For an extended analysis of images of resurrec- Massumi. London: Athlone, 1988. Print. tion in Denis’s films, see Morrey, “Open Wounds.” Derrida, Jacques. Le Toucher: Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: 52 Adamek 196. Gallimard, 2000. Print. 53 Shaviro 129–30. Eknoyan, Garabed. “The Kidney in the Bible: What 54 Nancy, Ground of the Image. As he explains in Happened?” Journal of the American Society of the first essay of the book, “The Image – the Dis- Nephrology 16.12 (2005): 3464–71. Web. 12 Oct. tinct,” Nancy defines “sacred” here in a non-reli- 2014. gious way as something that is distinct, separate. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1990. Print. bibliography Foucault, Michel. Il faut défendre la société. Cours au Adamek, Philip M. “The Intimacy of Jean-Luc Collège de France 1976. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1997. Nancy’s L’Intrus.” CR: The New Centennial Review Print. – 2.3 (2002): 189 201. Print. Geesink, Ingrid, and Chantal Steegers. Nier te Koop, Agamben, Giorgio. What is an Apparatus? And Other Baarmoeder te Huur: Wereldwijde Handel in Essays. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Lichaamsmateriaal. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009. Print. Bakker, 2011. Print. “ Alliez, Eric. “The BwO Condition or, The Politics Gibson, Sarah. The Hotel Business is about of Sensation.” Multitude: Revue Politique, Artistique, Strangers: Border Politics and Hospitable ’ ” Philosophique 9 (2004). Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Spaces in Stephen Frears Dirty Pretty Things. Third Text 20.6 (2006): 693–701. Web. 12 Oct. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed. and intro. 2014. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. London: “ ” Pimlico, 1999. Print. Hahn, Robert. 21 Grams. Film Quarterly 58.3 (2005): 53–58. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Beugnet, Martine. “The Practice of Strangeness: L’Intrus – Claire Denis (2004) and Jean-Luc Nancy Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War (2000).” Film-Philosophy 12.1 (2008): 31–47. Web. and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: 12 Oct. 2014. Penguin, 2004. Print. Bordeleau, Erik. Foucault anonymat. Quebec: Le Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Quartanier, 2012. Print. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 2000. Print. Cull, Laura. “Ethics in Deleuze’s Encounter with “ Artaud.” Deleuze and Ethics. Ed. Nathan Jun and Hovet, Ted. The Invisible London of Dirty Pretty ” Daniel W. Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011. Things; or Dickens, Frears, and Film Today. 44–62. Print. Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Downloaded by [UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek SZ] at 10:47 19 December 2014 Representation of London 4.2 (2006): 1–4. Web. 12 Dean, Jodi. “Drive as the Structure of Biopolitics: Oct. 2014. Economy, Sovereignty, and Capture.” Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 2 (2010): Jager, Erik. The Book of the Heart. Chicago: U of 2–15. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Chicago P, 2000. Print. Deleuze, Gilles. Les Cours de Gilles Deleuze: Spinoza McMahon, Laura. “Deconstructing Community 24-01-1978. Trans. Timothy S. Murphy.
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Morrey, Douglas. “Open Wounds: Body and Image in Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Denis.” Film- Philosophy 12.1 (2008): 10–31. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “L’Intrus.” Trans. Susan Hanson. CR: The New Centennial Review 2.3 (2002): 1–14. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Ground of the Image. Trans. Jeff Ford. New York: Fordham UP, 2005. Print. Pisters, Patricia. The Matrix of Visual Culture. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Print. Pisters, Patricia. The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film- Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2012. Print. Pisters, Patricia. “Transplanting Life: Bios and Zoe in Images with Imagination.” The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Concepts and Politics. Ed. Bolette Blaagaard and Iris van der Tuin. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 65–71. Print. Steven Shaviro. Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2009. Print. Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. Print. Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation. Trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009. Print. Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise. Trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011. Print. Stotsky, Steven. “Film Review: Heart of Jenin.” CAMERA: Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.