Werner Herzog and the Contemporary Philosophy of Cinema
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE A New Grammar of Images: Werner Herzog and the Contemporary Philosophy of Cinema DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in German Studies by David Michael Lamme Dissertation Committee: Professor David T. Pan, Chair Professor Emerita Gail K. Hart Associate Professor Kai Evers 2019 © 2019 David Michael Lamme TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: HERZOG AND THE GRAMMAR OF IMAGES 41 CHAPTER II: CRACKING THE CRYSTAL 79 CHAPTER III: VOLCANIC (SUR)FACE 100 CHAPTER IV: THE COVENANT OF CONNECTION 139 CONCLUSIONS 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY 170 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a dissertation is not mere academic activity, but a crucible for one’s life. The efforts of this dissertation – like most I imagine – started off with a simple, yet far too broad investigation: to look at the films of Werner Herzog and chart their mechanics. It grew and grew, ballooned and then contracted, before taking this, its final form. Only now, having been written, does its question seem assured; only now do its investigations and juxtapositions seem valid; only now do the most interesting problems generated by the problematics it encountered along the way rise to the surface, affect that (sur)face. Writing this dissertation, finally, taught me what it means to write in the first place. To write is to become aware of limits: limits of patience, limits of isolation, limits of talent, limits of thought. To write is to break those limits and return, repeat. In the 21st century, one finds the ground to stand up only through the creative and destructive capabilities of fabulation. The crook in Kafka’s back has become everyday reality that each and every one of us fights to straighten in his or her own way. Questions of who and what we are, as individuals, as groups, as a species, come shot through with inhuman actors, cosmopolitical concerns, chaotic consternations, indiscernibility. We do not know what to think but only that we must think. What is it to think? What is it to envision? What is it to act and what is it to act ethically? Doxa reigns not as king but as unconscious invader. It lies in our utterances, in our politics, in our aesthetics, our taste, our morals, our likes and posts and comments. The barbarian in all of us recoils, however large, however small. What is a horizon if it does not move, does not recede upon our advance? Can steps be measured if the sun never sets? Stirrups no longer suffice to chase the light, nor cars, nor planes, nor will a rocket iii driven future. The former nomad has lost the fight and been incorporated. Another takes its place and, through it all, the spirit of wonder remains. Thought marches on across deserts, through forests, down river, over mountains, and under seas. To write is to risk. To write is to choose to choose. To write is to think. So, we write, we risk, we choose, we think, we repeat and differ. As a creative endeavor in the Deleuzian vein, this dissertation would not be complete without acknowledging those who have supported me, challenged me, encouraged me, and simply put up with me along the way. Though we may often be separated by time and space, my work would not bare meaning without you and neither would I. So thank you to my mother and father, my sister and nephews – thank you for the laughs, love, patience, and for the money that kept my head afloat through grad school poverty. I’d have drowned long ago without you. Thank you to my colleagues, friends, and mentors at UC Irvine, who wouldn’t let me rest in my thinking, even when I desperately wanted to. A warm thank you in particular to David, Gail, Matt, and Jaime, and to those folks in anthropology that kept me grounded in the human throughout my heady work: thanks James, Nima, Nathan, Valerie, and Bill (and so many others). Thank you to the wonderful and challenging minds I’ve met along the way, that I so rarely get to see, but still made an impact and continue to do so; thank you Zuza and Valentina, thanks Tim and Gabbi. And, finally, thank you Renée for supporting and believing in me as I went about this half-crazed project. I once was lost but now am found. You and the Beagle Beast brighten my life and give me a home. With that one can do most anything. iv CURRICULUM VITAE David Michael Lamme 2004-2005 Year Abroad at Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena – concentration in German as a Foreign Language (DaF) and Linguistics 2006 B.A. in Anthropology (cultural and linguistic) and German Studies, Southeast Missouri State University 2006 Guest Scholar and English Teacher at Universidad de Costa Rica, Sede del Atlantico, Turrialba – anthropological field work and language instruction 2010 Research Assistant, Department of Economics, New York University 2011 M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought, New York University 2013-2014 Regents Fellowship, Department of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine 2014-2018 Teaching Assistant and Instructor of German, Department of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine 2017-2018 Regents Fellowship, Department of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine 2017-2018 Teaching Assistant (online), Department of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine 2019 Ph.D. in German Studies, University of California, Irvine v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A New Grammar of Images: Werner Herzog and the Contemporary Philosophy of Cinema By David Michael Lamme Doctor of Philosophy in German Studies University of California, Irvine, 2019 Professor David Tse-Chien Pan, Chair In his central mission of working on “a new grammar of images,” the German film director Werner Herzog presents a challenge to the philosophy of cinema. Pairing Herzog’s work with Deleuzian film theory, I argue against the prevalent secondary literature that Herzog’s oeuvre engages with an anti-romantic and non-ironic material philosophy in order to provide ethical challenges to a contemporary, connected world. Specifically focusing on spatiotemporal formations derived from empirical science, I demonstrate that Herzog’s approach to cinema utilizes a four-tiered semiotic that is at its core not merely a film theory, but rather an entire material philosophy of nature with profound ethical and political implications. vi Introduction This dissertation begins with the problem of how our conceptions of the world relate to empirical reality and what role film can play in that process. The problematics of the transcendental – of Kantian critique founded on human conceptions of space and time – have seeped over the centuries into everyday life, presenting practical and embodied difficulties for contemporary, connected society. Yet, while these problems – both within and for the individual, both within and for political society – have gradually continued to mount, the logical capacities of the Western world have struggled to find the means to appropriately grasp them, to face them head on. Still clinging to the identity and national politics of a foregone era, humankind now asks global questions and faces global risks. Climate change, rapidly proliferating technologies and inhuman intelligences, nuclear arsenals and overpopulation: these are just a few of the problems that threaten not only the individual, but the species. And until a logical, practical philosophy is developed that can begin to address both transcendental critique and empirical reality, that can keep up with societal change and scientific progress or at the very least finds itself capable of charting their movements, thought will forever lag behind what is being demanded of it. In hopes of signaling vital steps we might take in critiquing the logical approach we take to such species-wide dangers, I turn to the films of Werner Herzog. Relying on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical formulations concerning cinema, I argue that Werner Herzog’s films are not simply a reflection of reality, but that empirical reality already has in itself an image structure. As we slowly discover more of this structure through the efforts of artists, scientists, critics and philosophers, we alter not only our factual understanding of that image structure, but also the foundations of human 1 thought itself. While cinema might seem at first of limited purview in the realm of global threats, in light of the entrenching nationalisms that have reappeared, newly clad and newly armed with far reaching, globally connective technologies, I argue that in fact it has never had more practical or theoretical importance. While cinema is but an aspect of the global media sources that inform us and reform society in their very process, the cinema holds within itself the glimmer of potential to change the way we think, or at the very least bring awareness to the inherent and often autocatalytic problems of contemporary thought. Certain films, including but not limited to Herzog’s, participate in empirical structures as a further manifestation of them rather than mere representation; they form a monstration of empirical reality that tests and aims at exceeding the limits of human knowledge. Herzog’s landscapes, for example, merge outer landscapes with the subject’s inner mental landscapes so that the inner vision manifests the structures of the outer one: the result is not a representation of some “true” landscape of the self, but rather a correlative and probabilistic causality derived from empirical experience. Alternatively, I argue that one should read Lo and Behold not just as a documentary about informatics but rather as an attempt to establish a particularly human perspective forged in the film sequence itself that would encompass informatics and subject its seeming independence to an ethical vision that informatics seeks desperately to avoid.