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Preemptive Narratives in Recent Television Series Par Toni Pape

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Preemptive Narratives in Recent Television Series Par Toni Pape Université de Montréal Figures of Time: Preemptive Narratives in Recent Television Series par Toni Pape Département de littérature comparée, Faculté des arts et des sciences Thèse présentée à la Faculté des arts et des sciences en vue de l’obtention du grade de Ph. D. en Littérature, option Études littéraires et intermédiales Juillet 2013 © Toni Pape, 2013 Résumé Cette thèse de doctorat propose une analyse des temporalités narratives dans les séries télévisées récentes Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010) et Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). L’argument général part de la supposition que les nouvelles technologies télévisuelles ont rendu possible de nouveaux standards esthétiques ainsi que des expériences temporelles originales. Il sera montré par la suite que ces nouvelles qualités esthétiques et expérientielles de la fiction télévisuelle relèvent d’une nouvelle pertinence politique et éthique du temps. Cet argument sera déployé en quatre étapes. La thèse se penche d’abord sur ce que j’appelle les technics de la télévision, c’est-à- dire le complexe de technologies et de techniques, afin d’élaborer comment cet ensemble a pu activer de nouveaux modes d’expérimenter la télévision. Suivant la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze et de Félix Guattari ainsi que les théories des médias de Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre et Jussi Parikka, ce complexe sera conçu comme une machine abstraite que j’appelle la machine sérielle. Ensuite, l’argument puise dans des théories de la perception et des approches non figuratives de l’art afin de mieux cerner les nouvelles qualités d’expérience esthétique dans la fiction sérielle télévisée. Pour ce faire, je développe le concept de figure de temps définie comme la forme abstraite, immédiatement ressentie, du mouvement temporel effectué par un récit. Il sera montré, en troisième lieu, que ces mouvements figuraux mettent en jeu l’orientation vers l’avenir et la préemption. Tous les récits du corpus anticipent leur propre fin et prennent forme en fonction de cette fin prédite, ce pourquoi ils seront appelés récits préemptifs où l’avenir pose un problème affectif plutôt qu’épistémologique. Je montre que, i dans ces séries, la boucle passant par l’avenir est immédiatement ontogénétique dans la mesure où elle crée la réalité dans le présent en suscitant l’incertitude et la peur. Enfin, la thèse soutien qu’une telle politique affective fait partie de ce que Gilles Deleuze appelle les « sociétés de contrôle » qui opèrent une modulation continue des conditions de vie de l’individu. En suivant les écrits de Deleuze sur les sociétés de contrôle et sur l’Éthique de Spinoza, je suggère que les exigences d’un tel environnement modulant sont éthiques (plutôt que morales). Seront ensuite décortiquées les complexes de techniques, appelés procédures suivant les artistes-philosophes Madeline Gins et Arakawa, qui soutiennent une éthique pour survivre la société de contrôle dans la série Damages. Mots clés: séries télévisées, temporalités complexes, expérience esthétique du temps, préemption, figures du temps, éthique ii Abstract This thesis examines complex narrative temporalities in the recent television series Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010), and Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). The general argument proposes that the renewed technics of television have enabled innovative aesthetic standards and temporal experiences in serial TV fiction. It is subsequently shown that these new aesthetic and experiential qualities of TV fiction are correlative to an increased political and ethical relevance of time. This overall argument is laid out in four major steps. The project first addresses the technics of recent television to show how new technologies have enabled new techniques of experiencing television. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as the media theories of Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre, and Jussi Parikka, the complex and productive linkages between technology and techniques will be theorized as an abstract machine which I call the serial machine. The argument then draws on theories of perception and nonrepresentational approaches to art in order to analyze the new qualities of aesthetic experience in serial TV fiction. For this purpose, I develop the central concept of the figure of time understood as the directly felt abstract shape effectuated by a narrative’s movement through time. It will be seen, in a third step, that the figural movements discussed in this thesis concern questions of future-orientation and preemption. All of the narratives in this project anticipate their own ending and take form with respect to this foretold future. They are therefore conceptualized as “preemptive narratives,” in which the future poses an affective rather than epistemological problem. I will show that, in the serial narratives under discussion, iii the preemptive loop through the future is immediately ontogenetic in that it creates a reality in the present by inducing uncertainty and fear of the future. Finally, the thesis proposes that such affective politics are an element of what Gilles Deleuze calls control societies, in which conditions of life are constantly modulated. Following his writings on control societies and Spinoza’s Ethics, it is argued that the requirements of such a modulatory environment are ethical in nature (rather than moral). Drawing on the work by artists-philosophers Madeline Gins and Arakawa, I elaborate the techniques of attention which sustain an ethics for surviving the control society in the TV series Damages. Keywords: television series, temporal complexity, aesthetic experience of time, preemptive narratives, figures of time, ethics of attention iv Tables of Contents Résumé ............................................................................................................................................. i Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Tables of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v Tables of Figures ........................................................................................................................... vii Remerciements/Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. ix 0. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 0.1. Technics: Into Time ........................................................................................................ 5 0.2. Aesthetics: Making Time .............................................................................................. 12 0.3. Politics: Preemption and Premediation ........................................................................ 17 0.4. Ethics: Surviving Complexity ...................................................................................... 24 1. The Serial Machine: Towards Figures of Time ..................................................................... 29 1.1. The Machine at Work ................................................................................................... 29 1.2. Figures of Time ............................................................................................................ 37 1.3. The Serial Machine ...................................................................................................... 44 1.4. Expressive Machines: The Season ............................................................................... 51 1.5. Complicated Times ...................................................................................................... 57 1.6. Future Politics .............................................................................................................. 64 2. Three Representations and a Figural: Bergsonian Variations on Metric Time, the Virtual and Creative Becoming in Life on Mars ................................................................................ 72 2.1. Lost in Representation .................................................................................................. 72 v 2.2. “Back in Time”: Metric Time and Memories of the Future ......................................... 74 2.3. “In a Coma”: Virtual Present and Actual Future ......................................................... 89 2.4. “Mad”: Image-event and Creative Becoming .............................................................. 99 2.5. Loop-Through ............................................................................................................ 109 3. Loop into Line: The Moral Command of Future-Orientation in Flashforward .................. 111 3.1. Knowledge and Thought: From Detective Fiction to Science Fiction ....................... 111 3.2. Security and Identity: Begone, Self-difference! ......................................................... 114 3.3. Imaging the Future ..................................................................................................... 118 3.4. Self-causing Future Visions ....................................................................................... 129 3.5. Politics: Get in timeline! ............................................................................................ 138 4. Damages as Procedural Television
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