The Crisis of Political Modernism BLANK PAGE D. N. RODOWICK The Crisis of Political Modern ism Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions. For Edward Brian Lowry Publication of this work was supported in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. First published in 1988 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois First paperback edition © 1994 by The Regents of the Universityof California Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rodowick, David Norman. The crisis of political modernism: criticism and ideologyin contemporary film theoryID. N. Rodowick. - lst pbk. ed. p. cm. Originallypublished: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-08771-2 1. Film criticism. 2. Motion pictures-Political aspects. I. Title. PN1995.R618 1994 791.43'09-dc20 94-25112 CIP Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard forInformation Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984@) Contents Preface to the Second Edition vii Acknowledgments xxxi ONE The Discourse of Political Modernism 1 TWO Modernism and Semiology 42 THREE Ideology and Criticism 67 FOUR Formalism and "Deconstruction" 111 FIVE Anti-Narrative, or the Ascetic Ideal 126 SIX Language, Narrative, Subject (1): The Critique 147 of "Ontological" Modernism SEVEN Language, Narrative, Subject (2): Narration 180 and Negativity EIGHT Sexual Difference 221 NINE The Crisis of Political Modernism 271 Index 303 BLANK PAGE Preface to the Second Edition Today I find that the 1970s, or what I call the era of political modemism, is often treated with an equal mixture of pride and embarrassment. Pride in a decade in which theoretical work in film studies defined the cutting edge of research in the humanities and in which the field itself became increas­ ingly accepted and recognized as an academic discipline. A certain embarrassment in that the era of political modernism now seems a bit passe, especially with respect to its formalism and extravagant political claims. Text-centered semiology, psy­ choanalytic accounts of the subject, and Althusserian Marxism appear in 1994 as relics of a near past that are now surpassed by a variety of approaches: for example, the renewed empha­ sis on historical research, the theoretical questions raised by the debates on postmodernism, and the increasing dominance of television and video studies. The historical dilemma widens. To maintain its place in re­ lation to the debates on cultural studies and postmodernism, film studies today tends retroactively both to pose and to deny its historical continuities with the 1970s. But was the era of political modernism the last phase of a structuralist and mod­ ernist thought now surpassed by a postmodern and poststruc­ tural cultural studies? The deeper question is whether film studies as a university discipline might be disappearing into media studies and cultural studies. With the increasing domi­ nance of electronic and digital technologies, it is now possible to VIII Preface to the Second Edition envision the obsolescence of film as a mechanical and celluloid­ based medium. Just when it seemed to have a place as a dis­ cipline in its own right, :film studies may now have been dis­ placed by cultural studies. The centrality of film as an object of study is disappearing no less than is the question of the subject, which is unraveling into an ever-widening series of differences defined by complex approaches to gender, post­ coloniality, racial and ethnic identifications,and queer theory. All of which brings me to The Crisis of Political Modernism. That is, both to the question of the book you have in your hands in a second edition, thanks to the University of Cali­ fornia Press, and to the "crisis" this book still wishes to ad­ dress. In introducing a new edition, the writer,s goal is always to convince you, the reader, that the book still has relevance beyond historical curiosity. I find myself in a paradoxical posi­ tion in this respect. On one hand, I want to argue that :film studies is indeed disappearing into media and cultural studies and that this is a good thing. But I also want to argue that the era of political modernism is still with us in many ways. The questions posed and the problems confronted during that pe­ riod have not disappeared in the last twenty-five years. In my view, cultural studies does not in any way define a transcen­ dent moment, a historical overcoming of unresolved problems in film studies. Rather, the discourse of political modernism may have been displaced in a varietyof ways by more contem­ porary arguments about culture and identity, as well as the role of a contestatory criticism and art, but the questions it asked and the problems it raised have been neither fully ad­ dressed nor completely worked through. So what exactly is "political modernism," and what is the cri­ sis it portends? The Crisis of Political Modernism is not about experimental or independent film, nor even really about theo­ ries of independent cinema, although I began my research with this in mind. For me the book took shape when I real­ ized that political modernism was the defining idea, what Foucault might call the historical a priori, of 70s film theory. This is true regardless of whether commercial, independent, or third-world cinemas are addressed. Moreover, in spite of the range and vigor of debates that emerged in a number of Preface to the Second Edition IX important international journals-Cahiers du cinema, Cine­ thique, Screen, Afterimage, Women and Film, Jumpcut, m!f, Camera Obscura, and many others-I began to see that there were more commonalities than differences in the concepts, definitions, and questions addressed. In short, the debate oc­ curred because a diverse group of intellectuals and filmmak­ ers were drawn, in their own divergent and contradictoryways, to a common concern-the relationbetween film and ideology. These commonalities can and should be examined through intellectual history. There is a fascinating story to be told, I think, beginning with an editorial history of the journal Tel Quel, including the writers it brought together (Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Phi­ lippe Sollers, Jean-Louis Baudry, Marcelin Pleynet), and the theory of literary modernism it forged from semiology, de­ construction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Althusserian Marx­ ism. The complex political allegiances of the journal are also important, including its alliance, then falling out, with the French Communist Party and its brief flirtation with Maoism after 1971. I argue here that Tel Quel's particular linking and remapping of these diverse theoretical lines profoundly influ­ enced the editorial positions of French film journals such as Cahiers du cinema and Cinethique throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Equally important are the intellectual links between Britain and France, where Cambridge students like Stephen Heath and Colin MacCabe, who later became influential on the editorial board of Screen, came to study. The most impor­ tant Parisian institutions for the formation of British intellec­ tuals were the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where Barthes taught until his appointment to the College de France, and the prestigious Ecole Normale Supe­ rieure, which was home to the seminars of Louis Althusser, Derrida, and, for a certain period, Jacques Lacan. The theoretical lineage of political modernism should be traced through these interesting institutional links and alliances. Its history should also be seen against the complex political and cultural history of the 60s and 70s, whose key event for many was the national uprising of French students, and then workers, in May and June of 1968. The political turbulence of x Preface to the Second Edition this era is important no doubt for the historical crisis that po­ litical modernism felt it had to confront, often expressed as the desire to ''return to zero,·· to make a complete break with the cinema and the theory of the past. Although I sketch out some of this history for the reader, for better or worse, it is not the main concern of this book. Instead, by focusing on the dis­ course of political modernism, I have restricted myself to a critical history of debates in film theory over the relation be­ tween film and ideologybetween 1968and 1984. What this book offers, then, is a critical account of the re­ cent history of film theory. Although I do refer to many inde­ pendent filmmakers-including Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet, Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey, Peter Gidal, Yvonne Rainer, and Sally Potter, to name a few­ readers will find little film analysis here. I do not, however, focus only on theoretical essays. In those instances where films are addressed, they are treated as "theoretical'' documents. This emphasis is strategic. While I focus resolutely on prob­ lems of film theory, my wider project is to enlarge our sense of what "theory.. is, especially with respect to how it informs practices of reading no less than aesthetic practice itself. This leads to the question of what I call "discourse." Theo­ retical arguments are certainly discursive, whether in the form of essays, books, verbal presentations, or even informal class­ room discussion. Moreover, semiological analyses have encour­ aged us to think of films-for example, Gorin and Godard's Vent d 'est-as discursive as well.