Rights of Passage: An Aesthetic Cultivation of Contingency Trevor Mowchun A Thesis in The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Film Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2010 © Trevor Mowchun, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliothèque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-67148-1 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-67148-1 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada iii ABSTRACT Rights of Passage: An Aesthetic Cultivation of Contingency Trevor Mowchun The connections between creativity, contingency and necessity, loosely with respect to modernism, have a peculiar ifnot puzzling way of hinging on the nature of moving images and the experience of being still while beholding them, one after another. If we accept, after TJ. Clark, that contingency "is an issue of representation [and] not empirical life-chances," then contingency can emerge as a historical process in which representation can be seen to adapt to various crises of meaning by becoming more and more susceptible to meaninglessness. The medium of the moving image along with the passive position required of its spectators is here understood as offering a kind of formal invitation to contingency, giving it a permanent place in the realm of hermeneutics in the form of a symbolic threat against the powers of human agency. The primary objective of this thesis is to raise the stakes of contingency within modern aesthetics and demonstrate some ways in which the plight of contingency can become the purpose of subjectivity and hence the very medium of self-realization. Acknowledgements Finding one's way through the shadows of doubt requires the help and patience of others. All the writing and rewriting that has taken place over the past couple of years has been anything but smooth and straightforward; and in setting myself a task at the limits of what I could hope to achieve I am fortunate to have had such supportive people lighting the way in times of uncertainty. Thanks goes to my supervisor, Erin Manning, for encouraging me to experiment while holding me to the highest standards of rigor, and to Martin Lefebvre and Andrew Klevan for the sheer lucidity and scrupulousness of their criticisms. I am grateful to both Giovanna Masella and Eve Majzels for performing rich, detailed translations of some very challenging essays and interviews on the film Dream ofLight. I also wish to thank those who took the time and energy to help me work out my ideas against the ultimate test (and gift) of conversation: Daniel Gerson, Shama Rangwala, George Toles and Mustafa Uzuner. My debt to Daniel in particular seems to me completely inexhaustible, forno one helped me help myself more than him, even if it meant indulging me a bit. ? Table of Contents Introduction: An Autobiography of Ideas 1 Chapter 1 At the Drawing Board of the World: Reading the Filmmaking of Victor Erice's Dream ofLight 34 Chapter 2 Facing the Wall of the World: The Value of Contingency in Moving Images, or "Contingency Where It Counts" 95 Chapter 3 Reading our Rights of Passage 160 Conclusion: Exemplary Work(ing)s of Art 208 References 23 1 1 Introduction An Autobiography ofIdeas "What is the idea behind the idea?" Jacques Derrida, in a documentary on the philosopher/professor, very casually puts this question to a student struggling to articulate, in a few simple sentences, the original seeds of her research. Her inability to respond, quickly and sincerely, and the sight of her distress over not knowing where to begin as if she had completely forgotten her reasons for beginning, got me wondering about why it is such tricky business to think or write or act in accordance with our deepest motivations. Why is the concept of motive localized somewhere beneath intention, visualized perhaps as the motor or fuel of intention, and consequently veiled by the concept of human action when it remains the very cause of what we do and why and to what end? Is it the case that the commencing of some action necessarily conceals an awareness of the motive it is meant to carry out? And if so, does it become the "conspiracy" of action that motivation is to be completely swallowed up and forgotten by the time the fruits of our labor are ready to be reaped? Such questions began to fill and even cloud my mind as I started to realize that what little basis I had for acknowledging the idea behind the ideas in the following essays was primarily by way of a direct appeal to the ideas comprising them, swimming on the surface of thought as it were. This underlying idea seems for precisely this reason - this limitation of action - to be all the more important to uncover and constitute through a process of critical backtracking because I only started writing with a bigger picture in mind after each part - each fact of an unbeknownst whole - had been more or less sketched out, with identities as opposed 2 to destinies more or less determined. My task, as I saw it close to a year ago by now, was not to hatch new ideas but rather to take care of those I already had by following a sneaking suspicion that these three essays composed in this particular order brought to fruition an idea "behind" ideas I was too busy working through - as if living and breathing - to tap the root of my own motivation. I have yet to read a single book by Derrida, but I suspect that my reaction to his question at least points in the direction of what I take him to mean when he takes writing, or a specific mode and mood of it, as the work of mourning (for departed friends and times and causes alike). It was my first instinct to set the stage here by looking down as if I had reached the end of a journey whose tracks lay safely behind me and, from a vantage so high and a stance so still, could only then begin to account for the logic of my chosen path. But, as I weigh the consequences of having begun on three separate occasions an investigation whose logic I was only half aware, it seems presumptuous, even unruly, to cast myself here as all-knowing from the outset or as someone who had consciously set out with a neatly arranged itinerary of questions (or theses) and plans for possible solutions. Since I did not properly or conventionally begin, I feel I can't in good conscience create the impression in this introduction that I did (through, say, succinct declarations of introductory signatures such as topic, scope, prevailing discourses and cultural import). For what it's worth, I did, however, begin at the end, in the quiet wake of a reprieve (when the work was more or less over, more or less set in stone, hence more or less abandoned to its particular fate), which I took as an occasion to consolidate my investigations by looking back instead of down - back being the only direction with a 3 view I could actually take without succumbing to a belated, self-fulfilling type of authority. A big part of what this thesis is about is therefore tied to how its parts came to appear in the light of a whole. Retracing steps, going back for the full answer, is to shine such a light. But remarks like the following remain worrisome as mandates for articulation: "How can I know what I think until I've seen what I've said?" sounds a bit like an excuse, depending on the degree of rhetoric reached, and certainly can be used to excuse oneself from taking responsibility over one's choice of expression. But it can also come as an honest confession that serves to remind all us listeners that those who speak are always a bit ahead of themselves as if sped up and separated by the moving vehicle of language.