Psychoanalyzing Cinema This page intentionally left blank Psychoanalyzing Cinema A Productive Encounter with Lacan, Deleuze, and Žižek Edited by jan jagodzinski PSYCHOANALYZING CINEMA Copyright © jan jagodzinski, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-33855-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-34155-9 ISBN 978-1-137-11694-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137116949 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Psychoanalyzing cinema : a productive encounter with Lacan, Deleuze, and Žižek / [edited by] Jan Jagodzinski. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. 1. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures— Psychological aspects. 3. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Žižek, Slavoj—Criticism and interpretation. I. Jagodzinski, Jan, 1948– PN1995.9.P783P795 2012 791.43Ј653—dc23 2012013712 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Ian Buchanan whose collaborative generosity continues to keep critical thought alive This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction . of Sorts, Sort of 1 jan jagodzinski Lacan: Master I 1 Žižek: Master II 7 Slave Revolt: Guattari 10 Badiou: Master III 13 Revolt Slave! Deleuze 17 SchizoCrets 19 Part I Encountering Lacan 1 Light, Camera, Action! The Luminous Worlds of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze 45 Hanjo Berressem 2 Hearing Voices: Schizoanalysis and the Voice as Image in the Cinema of David Lynch 71 Frida Beckman 3 Encore: Trauma and Counter-memory in Kim Ki-duk’s Time 89 Meera Lee Part II Encountering Deleuze 4 Antagonism or Multiplicity: The Struggle between Psychoanalysis and Deleuze in Godard’s Cinema 111 Todd McGowan viii CONTENTS 5 Against Limits: Deleuze, Lacan, and the Possibility of Love 129 Sheila Kunkle 6 Occasioning the Real: Lacan, Deleuze, and Cinematic Structuring of Sense 147 Emanuelle Wessels Part III Encountering Žižek 7 The Universe as Metacinema 169 Patricia Pisters 8 On the Possibilities of Political Art: How Žižek Misreads Deleuze and Lacan 205 Robert Samuels 9 The Surplus Gaze of Legibility: Guilt, Ethics, and Out-of-Field in Deleuze, Lacan, and Žižek 227 A. Kiarina Kordela Part IV Encountering . 01 Living . Again: The Revolutionary Cine-Sign of Zombie-Life 249 Jason Wallin Notes on Contributors 271 Index 275 List of Illustrations 1.1 Lacan’s Three Diagrams 54 Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI (NY: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 91 and p. 106. 2.1 Aligning the body with an already determined voice 75 2.2 The present becoming thin as a mirror 76 2.3 A song and a tear that already exist 77 From Mulholland Drive (2001) directed by David Lynch, Universal Pictures 3.1 A path crossing of Se-hŭi (Park Ji-yeon) and Sae- hŭi (Seong Hyeon-a) in the opening sequence of Time 90 From Time (Shi gan) (2006) directed by Kim Ki-duk, Happinet Pictures 5.1 Manni and Lola 138 From Run Lola Run (Lola rennt) (1998) directed by Tom Tykwer, Sony Pictures Classics 6.1 Arial View, Dogville 157 6.2 Grace and Tom 159 From Dogville (2003) directed by Lars von Trier, Zentropa Entertainments 01.1 Zombie 250 From Land of the Dead (2005) directed by George A. Romero, Universal Pictures This page intentionally left blank Preface his collection of chapters addresses the productive encounters among Tthree well-known figures: Lacan, Deleuze, Žižek, as applied to the field of cinema and its discontents. While there is no question concerning the influence of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze within cinema stud- ies, the extraordinary oeuvre that Slavoj Žižek has produced is equally formidable. Love him or hate him he is a voice to be reckoned with. Can there be such a thing as a ‘productive’ encounter among|between these positions|systems? If you’re a Deleuzian you might ask whether a combi- nation of such strange heterogeneous singularities can come together to form an interkingdom of new desires. Can a species of deleuzežižekians emerge, or is that too monstrous a creature to walk the planet? Or, there may well be a productive repulsion at work, a quarantine enforced around the creature so that its contamination doesn’t continue to spread virally. If you were a Lacanian (early, middle, late?) you might play the analyst to see if a productive signifier might emerge within the clinic of the Academy; if you were a Žižekian, perhaps you would commit an impossible rev- olutionary ‘act’ to crush the soul of the symbolic order. The cinematic field, after all, already has its hard divisive lines and boundaries in place: its cognitivists, neoformalists, phenomenologists, hermeneuticians, and post-structuralists. Some will never budge. Yet boundaries are necessary to play the game of life even though we don’t know when the endgame will come. All we know is that it will, for all of us. When one reads intel- lectual autobiographies like Elizabeth Rudinesco’s on Lacan, or François Dosse’s exploration of the lives of Deleuze and Guattari (and I am sure in the future one will be written that dwells on Žižek’s escapades—stories already circulate), there should be no surprise to learn that academics are no less besieged by demons of their own making and choosing than anyone else. Who isn’t ‘fucked up’ in some way? More important is how one relates in the world knowing one’s flaws. The cinematic field remains teaming with life like those bugs digging away under the well-manicured lawn in the opening sequence of shots of Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I have structured the book in four parts: Encountering Lacan, Encountering Deleuze, Encountering Žižek, and Encountering . xii PREFACE The friends who have been grouped this way are somewhat arbitrary since many engage all three positions; however, I have staged it this way since some lean more to one position than another. My own encounter in the introduction is also not ‘evenly’ balanced for those who care to read it. The last encounter of the collection is purposefully left open. Within it sits a lone essay by my colleague and friend Jason Wallin. Should you read it, you will know why. Each author in this collection has staged their own production, and has taken their own stance in relation to these three figures. It is best that they speak for themselves. My introduction that follows is of a much dif- ferent order. The collection starts with Lacanian encounters, beginning with a stunning essay by Hanjo Berressem, “Light, Camera, Action! The Luminous Worlds of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze.” Hanjo meticu- lously explores the way light has been theorized by Lacan and Deleuze, as well as Fritz Heider. This is an underdeveloped area in cinematic theory. Hanjo’s extraordinary ability to cut through, what are always difficult theo- retical conceptualizations, maintains that film studies still need to develop an optical epistemology and an optical ontology. His essay is meant as a prolegomenon to such a project. Next is Frida Beckman’s “Hearing Voices: Schizoanalysis and the Voice as Image in the Cinema of David Lynch,” which explores the voice as theorized by both Lacan and Deluze in David Lynch’s famous Mulholland Drive, which Todd MacGowan has also analyzed. Although we have fre- quented the same conferences together, I have not met Frida personally. I am so grateful she was willing to contribute to this collection. Her work is truly ‘breathtaking.’ Readers will find simply a superb exploration as to how Lacan and Deleuze taken side-by-side can increase the reverberation of our sensitivity to filmic sound. Her essay reminds me of the same care that Mladen Dolar takes in his exploration in A Voice and Nothing More. Here Frida, in my estimation, is able to add a dimension that even Dolar has not yet adequately thought through. Closing this section is Meera Lee’s stunning exploration of the infa- mous South Korean director, Kim Ki-duc’s film Time. “Encore: Trauma and Counter-memory in Kim Ki-duk’s Time” is a tour de force of theoretical agility when it comes to the contortions of the time-image. Meera is able to tease out the contemporary questions of identity, memory, trauma, and especially love in the way they reverberate through the National ‘soul|seoul’ of South Korea. It should be noted that all three authors engage Žižek in their conversations. Section II, the encounters with Deleuze, first draws on two of my friends who have both edited an extremely influential book, Lacan and Contemporary Film. I will be the first to admit that I tried to persuade PREFACE xiii them through my commentary of the ‘evil’ of their ways, but they wouldn’t crack! Todd McGowan’s essay, “Antagonism or Multiplicity: The Struggle between Psychoanalysis and Deleuze in Godard’s Cinema,” is exemplary of the intended spirit of this collection.