OF CLOUDS AND BODIES: FILM AND THE DISLOCATION OF VISION IN BRAZILIAN AND JAPANESE INTERWAR AVANT-GARDES A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by André Keiji Kunigami August, 2018 © 2018 André Keiji Kunigami OF CLOUDS AND BODIES: FILM AND THE DISLOCATION OF VISION IN BRAZILIAN AND JAPANESE INTERWAR AVANT-GARDES André Keiji Kunigami, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 Of Clouds and Bodies: Film and the Dislocation of Vision in Brazilian and Japanese Interwar Avant-gardes examines the political impact of film in conceptualizations of the body, vision, and movement in the 1920s and 1930s avant-gardes of Brazil and Japan. Through photographs, films, and different textual genres—travel diary, screenplay, theoretical essay, movie criticism, novel—I investigate the similar political role played by film in these “non-Western” avant-gardes in their relation to the idea of modernity, usually equivalent to that of the “West.” I explore racial, political, and historical entanglements that emerge when debates on aesthetic form encounters the filmic medium, theorized and experienced by the so-called “non-Western” spectator. Through avant-garde films such as Mário Peixoto’s Limite (1930), and Kinugasa Teinosuke’s A Page of Madness (1926); the theorizations of Octávio de Faria and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō; and the photographs and writings by Mário de Andrade and Murayama Tomoyoshi, this dissertation follows the clash between the desire for a universal and disembodied vision, and the encounter with filmic perception. I argue that the filmic apparatus, as a technology and a commodity, emphasizes an embodied and localized experience of vision and time that revealed the discourse on cultural-historical iii difference—the distinction between West and Rest, or modern and non-modern—as a suppressive modulator of material power dynamics embedded in racial, class, and gender hierarchies enjoyed by the cosmopolitan elite in the “peripheral” spaces. The temporality of filmic perception becomes a problem for the avant-garde program of “moving forward.” The dissertation is punctuated with images that traveled across national territories, building a political theory of the technical image that takes into consideration the experience of a displaced spectatorship: transnational, in racially marked bodies, and within discourses of historical belatedness. Comparing two disparate spaces through a mobile medium that represents movement, I explore the possibilities and limits of nation-bound comparison and area studies, while contributing to debates in film and media theory. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH André Keiji Kunigami received his B.A. in Communications from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2005; and an M.A. in Communications (Film Studies) from the Fluminense Federal University (Niterói, Rio de Janeiro) in 2009. He joined the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University in August 2012. During the academic year of 2015–2016, he was a research fellow at Meiji Gakuin University, in Tokyo, supported by the Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship; and in the Spring of 2017 he was a visiting researcher at PUC-Rio, in Rio de Janeiro. While at Cornell, Keiji was also awarded research grants from the Mario Einaudi Center and the East Asia Program. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film History at Fluminense Federal University (Niterói, Rio de Janeiro). In the Fall of 2018 he will join the Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Carolina Postdoctoral Research Fellow. v To my parents, Hideharu Kunigami and Claudete Norie Kunigami. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is the result of many fine encounters. Firstly, I thank my PhD committee at Cornell, for the trust and full support from the early stages of this project. Pedro Erber has been a generous interlocutor in many different ways, in scholarly and non-scholarly matters, offering me invaluable help navigating academic life the United States and the task of being a comparatist. Naoki Sakai has shown me the importance of pushing the boundaries of intellectual inquiry, and the political value of a critical theorization of theory itself. Amy Villarejo has shown me a new breadth and depth to film and media studies through serious critical thinking and open theoretical dialogue. Brett de Bary has been a relentless supporter, careful and generous reader, introducing me to new theoretical approaches to Japanese media and helping me finding my way in Japanese film studies. With the grants from the Mario Einaudi Center, the East Asia Program, and the Graduate School I was able to visit archives and take time off teaching. I also thank the Japan Foundation for the generous fellowship that supported one year of research in Tokyo. The professionals that work in the archives and libraries were absolutely fundamental for these pages: Gabriela Giacomini de Almeida and Denise de Almeida Silva, at the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB) of the University of São Paulo; Saulo Pereira de Mello and Filippi Fernandes Silva at the Arquivo Mário Peixoto; and Ogawa Ryōji and Hori Junsaburō, at the Meiji Gakuin Library, who have helped me get precious materials that would have taken me ages to find. Cornell professors Patty Keller, Tracy McNulty, Victor Koschmann, Andrea Bachner, and Neil Saccamano, have made my doctoral years a time of true intellectual vii enjoyment and growth. In Japan, Saito Ayako and Iwamoto Kenji wholeheartedly embraced my project. Through Iwamoto I encountered the work of Murayama Tomoyoshi, which became a central piece to this dissertation. In Brazil, Karl Erik Schollhammer generously received me at PUC-Rio. Also, the intellectual exchanges with Beatriz Jaguaribe and Denilson Lopes have enrichened this project in uncountable ways. I thank our dear Brazilian Modernisms Reading Group; the members of my writing groups, Zachary Price, Chairat Polmuk, Ed Curran, Katryn Evinson, who have carefully read my work in different stages; and my friends at Cornell and Meiji Gakuin: Jahyon Park, Andrea Mendoza, Clarence Lee, Andrew Harding, Gustavo Quintero, Sebastián Antezana, Michaela Brangan, Jane Glaubman, Rebecca Kosick, Yagna Chowdhuri, Chris Haselbein, Sahar Tavakoli, Vincent Guimiot, Eunkyung Shin. Time and thought shared with Mehmet Ekinci, Alana Staiti, Janet Hendrickson, Bret Leraul, Lara Fresko, Rodrigo Octávio Cardoso, Mônica Mourão, Maria Fantinato, Fernanda Frotté, Carol Sá, Juliana Lugão have provided crucial fuel for the completion of this work. Fábio Savino, Veronica Otero, Renato Cosentino, Joanna da Hora, Luana Carvalho, Arthur Guerrante, Fernanda Rabelo, Tiago Coutinho, Bruno Marinoni, Paco Majic, Tyana Santini have proved that militant, intellectual, and musical life go together. Saravá! Finally, my deepest gratitude to my family, especially my parents, who have always provided unconditional support and motivation. Muito obrigado. viii TABLE OF CONTENS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ……………………………………………………...…. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………………………………...vii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 Comparison and World-Mapping: the modern problem of film .................................... 1 Vision, Movement, Body ................................................................................................. 4 Structure by chapter ....................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 1: THE FUTURE OF A MEDIUM: TWO PROPOSITIONS .................. 13 Universals; apparatuses ............................................................................................... 13 The Eye and the No-body: displacing Soviet theory .................................................... 18 Visual Labor and Absolute Value ................................................................................. 26 Filmic Crystallization ................................................................................................... 36 The Anthropological Screen and Image as Interruption .............................................. 44 Geopolitics of Perception: the dislocation of movement .............................................. 58 CHAPTER 2: TWO FOSSILS OF THE AVANT-GARDE ........................................ 62 Fossils of the Avant-garde ............................................................................................ 62 Experiments .................................................................................................................. 67 Disjointed time: Limite and the universal trap of waiting ........................................... 74 Disjointed time: A Page of Madness and the promise of movement ............................ 81 What Time Is Movement? ............................................................................................. 90 The Masochistic Spectator ......................................................................................... 107 Chapter 3: LIVING FOLDS: MURAYAMA TOMOYOSHI’S VARIATION ON THE VISIBLE ..................................................................................................................... 109 Murayama Tomoyoshi’s Imagens............................................................................... 109 All of life: historicism, avant-garde, and totality ......................................................