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Loving/Thinking and the (French) New Wave: Cinema as is Philosophy


Soumitra Ghosha a Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA Online publication date: 18 August 2010

To cite this Article Ghosh, Soumitra(2010) 'Loving/Thinking and the (French) New Wave: Cinema as is Philosophy', The

European Legacy, 15: 5, 565 581 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2010.501659 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2010.501659

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The European Legacy, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 565581, 2010

Loving/Thinking and the (French) New Wave: Cinema as is Philosophy


SOUMITRA GHOSH

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ABSTRACT In recent years, there has been a resurgent interest in the philosophical dimension of cultural productscinema, in particular. Rather than analyzing the production, dissemination and reception of particular films through literary, cultural, sociological or psychological theories, one considers film as doing the work of theory/philosophy. This essay argues that cinemas possibility of being/becoming philosophy will emerge only if one remains open to the inconsistencies of the cinematic text, rather than seek to posit a mythical point of origin that reduces representation to its effective functionality, thereby announcing the death of thinking. Following the ways in which Adorno and Horkheimer indicate the deep ontological significance of the myth of origin involved in the logic of Enlightenment, this essay attempts to offer responsibility, vigilance and hesitation as alternative ways of engaging with thought. Cinema, this essay finally claims, can offer a model with which thinking, as philosophy proper, can be recovered from its mythical origin.

The object of philosophy is to create concepts that are always new. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?

CONTAMINATION: TO ARRIVE
We are considering a catchphrase coined by a newspaper, a sloganThe New Wave Arrives!that gleefully announces the name of a generation that is constituted as such in this direct address. We are considering this apostropheand here, we must write the catchphrase as Arrive! (The) New Wavewhich calls something by a name (i.e. New Wave), and under this name apparently a cinema comes into being that would compel Descartes to write his philosophy on film.1 One wonders if it is a question of beingnew, that is, the coming into being of something ex nihilo; or, one also wonders, if it is a question of renewal, which is the rejuvenation/re-discovery/re-description of something that had been. Hence, the matter/object of our consideration is a question of history, in

Oklahoma State University, Morrill Hall, Stillwater OK 74078, USA. Email: soumitra.ghosh@okstate.edu
ISSN 1084-8770 print/ISSN 1470-1316 online/10/05056517 2010 International Society for the Study of European Ideas DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2010.501659

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history; that is, the being-new within time, in a historically singular time. It is either a question that leads up to and calls forth that which has never been: hence, the New Wave; or, it is a question that calls forth, from that which has been, some element(s) that set(s) that which has been into action, in present tense. Hence, it is also a question of arrival in present indefinite (Arrives!); thus, a question of anticipation and of being always in anticipation ofthat is, a tentative arrival which has never ceased: hence, the New Wave. Our engagement is with the question of being-new, of being-moved, of beingfascinateda question of being in timein and of itself. Then we engage, in other words, with the central theme of Adorno and Horkheimers critique of mass culture as the culture industry: namely, the false identity of the general and the particular, which, under the aegis of the culture industry, subsumes the always-tentative insistence of the singular/particular because departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system.2 The arrival of the autonomous singularor the re-presentation of the singular only insofar as it follows the law of the general/genre, if one follows Adornothat the discourse surrounding the French New Wave so celebratesthen brings to the fore the question that has always been central to philosophynamely, what is? This question which thus constitutes philosophy cannot appear without its own history. It prompts us to ask, in a slightly different vein: what is (the nature of ) philosophy? Why philosophy? Why invoke philosophy alongside a certain movement, largely popularized by the commercial press, that became synonymous with certain stylistic and thematic unities of a group of cineaste3 who madebroadly speakinga particular kind of narrative cinema? What substantiates the coupling of that which, in its metaphysical form, has traditionally been the most suspicious of images and appearances (let us here recall Platos caves) with that to which images are central: namely, the cinema of the French New Wave? In defense of this apparent incommensurate union I will propose that cinema is, and always has been, philosophy. In particular, I will pose the ontological questionWhat is?with respect to both cinema and philosophy, and show that both are constituted by and of the passage of metaphors into contingent truthsparticularly where questions of historical narratives regarding cinematic/philosophical movements are concernedrather than foreclosing the heterogeneity of this passage into an ahistorical, immanent Truth. Using the historical discourse of the French New Wave as a primary example, I will consider the dubious Truth that the emergence of this movement marks a singular event, a clean break from the tradition of quality, and will propose that a tropological being-vigilant apropos such discourse better captures cinemas potential to be philosophy. Therefore, I will engage with Alexandre Astrucs manifesto for The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, to consider the ways in which this text realizes cinema as a form of philosophy, and philosophyin turnas a mode of cinema. Moreover, I will argue that if we confrontfollowing Adornos delineation of the unyielding metaphoricity of the direct relationship that cinema claims to have with truth, in Transparencies on Filmthe problem of the metaphorical nomination of new wave as a consistent movement, we will be able to better understand the way in which the particular trope that informs the basic notion of a French New Wave engages philosophys most central question: i.e. What is (the nature of ) philosophy?

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INFECTION ONE: TO SPREAD OUT,

TO

UNCONCEAL

Even before LExpress summoned the new generation of France in 1957 with the name New Wave, Michel Marie reminds us, Alexandre Astruc had already in 1948 heralded the arrival of a camera-stylo with which cinema can become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written languagein other words, a nouvelle vague in cinema. Although it is not our purpose to specifically critique Maries effort to write a history of the French New Wavefor in so doing Marie only joins other historians, such as James Monaco and Richard Nupert, who also offer versions of the history of the French New Wave that are, in their essence, similar to Maries undertakingwe need to point out (being always vigilant) that Maries teleological History declares February March 1959 as the Birthdate of the French New Wave. While setting up the limits and thereby a definitionof the French New Wave Marie writes that:
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In an effort to mark the boundaries of the terrain with a bit of precision and avoid any uncontrollable expansion of this historical movement, which risks including precursors like Le Silence de la Mer (Silence of the Sea, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1948) or post-New Wave films like Weekend (Godard, 1967), or even Godards later film entitled La Nouvelle Vague, we have to impose a few limits.4

Hence, if we are to follow Marie and his precise definition of the French New Wave, we will participate in an act of control to resist the uncontrollable expansionof what Marie does not spell outwithin the boundaries of a terrain. Let us, for the time being, agree that such a project sounds quite fascistic and that therefore (since one has to disengage from fascism, in my view) we do not want to participate in it. However, following this agreement that I propose (to you) in the form of an appeal, I find it binding upon myself to demonstrate that the limits enforced by Marie (so he can write a history of ) are analogous to what Derrida calls the forcible imposition of certain modes upon the demonstrativity of writing.5 My desire to demonstrate the function of force in the setting of limits is compelled in the name of responsibility and vigilance. It is for this responsibilityand I find that it is responsible to hesitate/stutterthat I want to make sure I am not forcing a certain mode of reading upon you; I want to make sure that when I make an appeal to you to commune with me in disengaging from the forcible imposition of limits in the writing of history, I am not employing those same limits in my discourse. Therefore, keeping in mind our tentative agreement, let us now consider the ways in which the question of (or the setting of) limit/horizon/margin relates to that which is thus marked/identified/enunciated as the (determinate) inside of (the limit/horizon/margin). Derrida, in his essay The Law of Genre directly addresses the function of the limiting force which is necessary for any stable, enunciated identification. The essay opens itself in the following way, whichwithout delaybegins to speak of the im/possibility of stable identification:
Genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix genres. I repeat: genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix them. Now suppose I let these utterances resonate all by themselves.6

Let us ponder these sentences before we follow the trajectory of Derridas argument regarding them. The foremost problem that we immediately encounter is

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the following: are these sentences, which appear to contain a speaking subject (I), addressed to us? Moreover, are these lines, properly speaking, an address at allthat is, do these lines demonstrate themselves to someone? We must note, however, that we can be fairly certain of what these lines are about: obviously (we think), the lines speak of genreas does the title which precedes themand therefore, the sentences are about genre. Howeverafter we primarily identify that which these lines are aboutdo we know the nature of this thing called genre that these lines so invoke? Hence, we are once again thrown off from the certainty that we had constituted for ourselves so that we can begin to read these lines. What does this meanyou will perhaps askwhy unnecessarily complicate something that is clearly comprehensible by and in itself, i.e. that these lines are about genre? And here I will have to agree with you; for it is out of the necessity (that which is not unnecessary) of not hesitating endlessly that we force the thing called genre to enunciate itself. I say force precisely becauseif these lines are indeed left by themselveswe have no way of knowing the nature of this thing called genre if we do not take recourse within the limits of a priori knowledge of what the word genre refers to. Hence, to be able to comprehend that which these lines are about, we must bring something foreign to ita set of rules, norms, conventions of signification that (stably) attach this word (genre) to a specific thing. It is this set of rules/laws that tell us all that we know about the word genre, and the word in itself does not speak at all. If the only relative certainty that we constituted about these lines is a forced certainty, and not something intrinsic to the word itself, consider how much force would be necessary for us to answer the questions with which we began reading these lines. Therefore, if we are to read these lines at all, we have to institute an injunction: we cannot let these utterances resonate all by themselves. What does all by themselves mean in this regard? Does this in any way resonate with our present concerni.e. the setting of limits (by Marie) in order to write a history of the French New Wave? Consider the following analogy: these lineswhen left by themselvesdestabilize, and along with that destabilize us, the readers; likewise, particular examples of the French New Wavewhen left by themselves in their particularitydestabilize the formation of a cohesive history. Therefore, if the particular examples/instances of the French New Wave are not set within clearly identifiable limits or norms of identification, we will have to hesitatein/with each instanceendlessly when we are confronted with the French New Wave. Recall our previous discussion of the only way in which we are able to constitute the minimum degree of certainty regarding the word genre: we did so by the forceful introduction of the a priori7 definition of the word in order to silence the heterogeneous voice in which the word threatened to speak itself. In our imposition of limits upon the word, we created a history of the word, and thereby we were able to glean a stable enunciation from it. Much in the same manner, the limits that Marie sets upon the French New Wave arrive in the form of an injunctionand injunctions, as we well know, must silence/efface the heterogeneity of possibilities. Thus, a history of the French New Wave written following the logic of this injunctioneven though such a history will claim to be inclusive and cohesivewill attempt to silence alternative/contesting manners in which such a history can be written. Yet, precisely because the writing of any cohesive, periodized history (of the French New Wave) must institute limiting force, the particular voices that are silenced in this way remain within the body of such a history as contagions. Thus, that which the imposed

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limit-points attempt to contain by declaring its beginning-middle-end, or birth-death, will haunt the limits in various re-incarnations; it will refuse to die. In order to arrive at a stable signification of the French New Wavebe it progressive or otherwiseone will need to forcefully posit limits/margins to it, so that the thing called the French New Wave becomes legible. These limitswhile they make the French New Wave legible in a particular waydepend on a certain injunction that says to the New Wave You will not be such and such. It is only upon this condition that the limits that are thus imposed allow that which is forced inside those margins to appear. In other words, the historically/demonstratively cohesive cominginto-being of the French New Wave as such is conditional upon the limits set upon it precisely the rhetoric of fascism that allows others to live but only on the terms that the fascists decide on.8 Perhaps now I am able to demonstrate to you that my appeal does not intend to force a particular reading upon youperhaps now we can reject the periodization/limiting of the French New Wave in favor of a hesitant/slow thinking of its nature. It is only through this careful/vigilant reading that we can arrivewithout doubt, perhapsat our understanding of the simultaneous realization of cinema and philosophy with one another.

INFECTION TWO: THE CARTESIAN PEN


In The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, Astruc identifies in cinema the potential to become a means of expression . . . in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions. No doubt, Astruc also points out that the new avant-garde, the new face of cinema is not really nouvelle, in that by becoming a means of expression of abstract thoughts, cinema is becoming like all the other arts [have been] before it.9 Rather than thinking cinema as a clean break from all other modes of expression, Astruc wants to say that the unconcealment of cinema lies in its becoming-language:
That is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of camera-stylo (camerapen). This metaphor has a very precise sense. By it I mean that the cinema will gradually break free from the tyranny of what is visual, from the image for its own sake, from the immediate and concrete demands of the narrative, to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language.10

We should not fail to notice that Astruc identifies la camera-stylo as a metaphor in a very precise sense, which is to say, it is the proper name, the exact designator of that which cinema, properly speaking, should do. Noticeably, this proper nounwhich is also a metaphoronce put into practice, will release cinema from the tyrannical image for its own sake so that it can become subtle as language. That is, cinema will no longer adorn itself uselessly; it will no longer remain mere rhetoric. Recall, following this rejection of mere rhetoric, through Derridas reminder to us in White Mythology of the distinction that Plato sets up:
If we followed this example [of Platos classification of metaphors according to their origin], we should find our criteria for the classification of philosophical metaphors in a secondary and derivative form of philosophical discourse . . . .This, no doubt, is a

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SOUMITRA GHOSH philosophical ideal, indeed, a Platonic one, generated by Platos ordering and distinguishing between philosophy or dialectic on the one hand, and rhetoric or sophistry on the other.11

Thus, as the camera-stylowhich is the precise metaphor for the languaging of cinemacinema will possess an exactitude/precision and an economy of expression from which its previous form is deprived. Following the Platonic logic then, the camera-stylo will be the most efficient tool with which to express an idea, just as the philosophic metaphor, according to Platos divisions, is the most efficient linguistic tool with which language expresses the idea contained in philosophy. However, in the case of the camera-styloas in the case of the philosophic metaphorthe idea that is expressed through language takes precedence over the manner/style of the language with which such ideas are expressed. Thus, the camera-stylo can turn cinema into a language precisely because its economy, its exactitude, relieves cinema from making visible its medium; i.e. the camera-stylo frees cinema from the tyranny of the visual. Clearlyas is the case of Platowe identify in Astruc a distinctive distrust of the image: the image, for Astruc, is that which overtly reminds us that cinema can express an idea only insofar as the image mediates such expression. Hence, when the image becomes visibleperhaps too visible, when the image is for its own sakeas image, we are confronted with the debilitating possibility that perhaps, if the image is left all by itself, it will hinder the expression of cohesive meaning/signification. Shall we recall, once again, what Derrida reminds us of leaving the utterances all by themselves in The Law of Genre? Consequently, Astruc does not want to leave the image as image, lest the image begins to speak itself in dangerous heteroglossia. It is therefore necessary for Astruc that cinema becomes a fully signified language, and that the camera becomes a pena discrete instrumentthat is always secondary to the writing of language. Therefore, through the camera-stylo, cinema will fulfill Aristotles dictum in the Poetics, where thought must be expressed in language (peri lexeos kai dianoias). In this way, thought (dianoia)which is no doubt the contentneeds a speaker, who, being in possession of language that designates (lexis), unconceals what is proper to that thought by giving it a name. It is not at all difficult to identify in this structure an argument in support of the auteurthe author, the artist whose personal and singular craft, that is to say, the authors signature cohesively binds a body of diverse works (films)that is far more philosophically rigorous than any offered by subsequent film theorists. In Astrucs formulation, the artist in whose hand the cameastylo belongs is indeed the auteur par excellence. However, the problem that makes the auteur possible in this way is the existence of the metaphor around which the lexical cohesion takes place. Derrida, in the same essay, alerts us to this central question:
Now discourse on metaphor belongs to a treatise peri lexeos. Lexis exists, and metaphor within it, to the extent that thought is not manifested of itself, to the extent that the sense of what is said or thought is not a phenomenon in itself. Dianoia as such has not yet any relation to metaphor. Metaphor exists only to the extent that someone is supposed to be manifesting by an utterance such-and-such a thought which remains in itself unobvious, hidden, or latent. Thought happens upon metaphor, or metaphor is the lot of thought at the moment at which a sense attempts to emerge of itself to say itself, to express itself, to bring itself into the light of language. Howeverand this is

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Loving/Thinking and the (French) New Wave: Cinema as is Philosophy our problemthe theory of metaphor remains a theory of sense and supposes a certain originating naturalness in this figure. How is this possible?12

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We will glean two issues from this rich text: first, the non-phenomenal status of thought that peri lexeos demands; and second, once thought is brought within a lexis via metaphor, the receding of the metaphoricity of the metaphor. These two issuestwo questions that remain unresolved as suchare central to our engagement, because they form the two legs upon which Platonic-Cartesian philosophy (which is nothing but philosophy as meta-physics) stands. Apropos the first issue, we will say that even though thought is supposedly the contentthat is, the purposeof lexis, we will rob thought of its heterogeneous history if we turn it into an abstraction that must depend on the prosthesis of its origin in lexis, in order to be enunciated. In this wayand here we recall Heideggers translation of theoriawe divorce the energia, the being-at-work, from thought: in other words, we are not thinking; rather we are thinking in. Which is to say, we are presupposing and accepting as a given that structure within which we can then thinkmuch like Maries project to dictate limits to the French New Wavein a certain predetermined way. In his essay entitled Philosophy as a Kind of Writing, Richard Rorty points out that such presupposition is essential to thinking philosophically, in the metaphysical vein:
Here is a way of looking at philosophy: from the beginning, philosophy has worried about the relation between thought and its object, representation and represented. The old problem about reference to the inexistent, for example, has been handled in various unsatisfactory ways because of a failure to distinguish properly philosophical questions about meaning and reference from extraneous questions motivated by scientific, ethical, and religious concerns. Once these questions are properly isolated, however, we can see philosophy as a field which has its center in a series of questions about the relations between words and the world. The recent purifying move from talk of ideas to talk of meanings had dissipated the epistemological skepticism which motivated much of past philosophy. This has left philosophy a more limited, but more selfconscious, rigorous, and coherent area of inquiry.13

The recent purifying move that Rorty refers toas he will point out later in the essayis that which breaks away from the tyranny of the visual to purify the relationship between representation and that which is represented in a hierarchical manner by continuously negating mediation: in other words, a move that takes thought and its representation beyond (meta-) physicality by abstracting thought. This move, to follow Rorty in his critique of metaphysics, makes possible the formation of philosophy as a disciplineas a coherent area of inquiry, without which one cannot, properly speaking, think philosophically. Such is the tyrannical history of metaphysics which, as Astruc points out, would be fully realizedsince Descartes would have been able to write his philosophy in itonce cinema becomes one with la camera-stylo. Apropos the second issue that we glean from Derridai.e. the receding of the metaphoricity of the metaphorwe will say that even though metaphor is fundamentally necessary to lexis, once in lexis (that is, once it is brought to bear in language) metaphor must efface itself in order that thought will become philosophical: that is, if we follow metaphysics. For metaphysics also demands that in philosophy lexisthat is, words properbears an immediate referentiality to the object that it represents: lexis must

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unconceal following a natural ( physis, Aristotle will call it) order. What does this natural order mean? Let us, once again, take recourse in Rorty:
For it is characteristic of the Kantian tradition that, no matter how much writing it does, it does not think that philosophy should be written, any more than science should be. Writing is an unfortunate necessity; what it really wanted is to show, to demonstrate, to point out, to exhibit, to make ones interlocutor stand at gaze before the world. The copy theory of ideas, the spectator theory of knowledge, the notion that understanding representation is the heart of philosophy, are expressions of this need to substitute an epiphany for a text, to see through representation. In a mature science, the words in which the investigator writes up his results should be as few and as transparent as possible.14

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If we replace Kantian with the more blanket term metaphysics we can better grasp the force of Rortys critique. Within metaphysics, there must remain a central Truth to discourse which representation must reveal. Once revealed, however, such a Truth overtakes the cumbersome, untrustworthy necessity of representation. The goal, in this paradigm, is finally to be able to represent/write directly onto the medium: Astrucs formulation of la camera-stylo undoubtedly upholds a similar idea:
What I am trying to say is that the cinema is now moving towards a form which is making it such a precise language that it will soon be possible to write ideas directly on film without even having to resort to those heavy associations of images that were the delight of the silent cinema.15

Sans the heavy association of images which evidently weighs down the subtlety and purity of abstract thought in cinematic representation, cinema can then become the philosophical medium par excellence: thus, one arrives at a clear definition of cinema as such. Cinema becomes metaphysics/philosophical, but thinkingtheoria, in Heideggers sensebecomes impossible. This then is the conundrum that Astrucs thinking brushes up against: on one hand, Astruc does not trust cinemas dependence on the heavy association of images because it will not allow the medium of expression to become transparent so that (philosophical) ideas can be expressed without any obstruction/ mediation; on the other hand, Astruc wants to claim that cinema (which is above all moving image) can give us direct access to the thing/experience. Hence, Astruc wants cinema to resembleas closely possiblethe structure of language, since for him (and here is where Astruc follows Descartes closely) language can establish a direct relationality between word and thing. For Astruc then, the becoming-language of cinema is heavily dependent on the advent of a specific, discrete technology of camerai.e. the 16 mm. camera with which Descartes would have written Discours de la Methods, according to Astruc. It is with camera-pen that the meaning . . . within the image itselfthat is, thoughtcan be written/represented as a relationship between one human being and another human being or certain objects which form part of his universe.16 Strikingly, Adornos engagement with the artistic possibility of cinema draws on a very similar formulation, whereby cinema can become art only by its objectifying recreation of [the subjective] type of experience.17 The subjective experience that cinema can thus objectifypresent to us in the object-form of the imageis marked by a certain discontinuity, according

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to Adorno. In other words, the subjective mode of experience does not constitute a representational totality; it does not become the Kantian sensus communis to form the legal injunction that genres are not to be mixed. Thus, the mode of subjective experience opens up a space for the heterogeneous to appearthe subjective mode accommodates the exceptional, the non-normative, the criminal as its constitutive element. Cinema, according to Adorno, retains its possibility of becoming the vehicle of thought (as opposed to the mummification of thinking in the culture industry) only when it presents the discontinuous as such:
It is in the discontinuity of their movement that the images of the interior monologue resemble the phenomenon of writing: the latter similarly moving before our eyes while fixed in its discrete signs. Such movement of interior images may be to film what the visible world is to painting or the acoustic world to music. As the objectifying recreation of this type of experience, film may become art. The technological medium par excellence is thus intimately related to the beauty of nature (tief verwandt dem Naturschonen).18

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Thus, for Adorno, what cinema brings to bear on the object form is the interior image rather than the experiential world itself. Ones subjective experience of the experiential world, Adorno points out, does not constitute a stable representational totality: each subjective experience is marked by its departure from any normative structure. However, each instance of subjective experience remains bound to/in its non-normative specificity: it is fixed in its discrete signs. Just as writing inscribes thought in specific discreteness, cinema inscribes the heterogeneity of subjective experience in the form of image-object. Since cinema is ultimately moving image, it can recreate the differential relationship between specific subjective experiences as a function of movement, and thereby can become a proper vehicle of thought. Yet, the fixity of the signor the specificity of the subjective experienceappears in the form of an injunction that tends to become a totalizing declarative regarding cinema: i.e. this is what cinema should be. Consider the striking similarity of this conundrum with Astrucs engagement with the linguistic potential of cinema:
Every film, because its primary function is to move, i.e. to take place in time, is a theorem. It is a series of images which, from one end to the other, have an inexorable logic (or better even, a dialectic) of their own. We have come to realize that the meaning which the silent cinema tried to give birth to through symbolic association exists within the image itself, in the development of the narrative, in every gesture of the characters, in every line of dialogue, in those camera movements which relate objects to objects and characters to objects. All thought, like all feeling, is a relationship between one human being and another human being or certain objects which form part of his universe. It is by clarifying these relationships, by making a tangible allusion, that the cinema can really make itself the vehicle of thought.19

The series of images that is cinema has to follow certain logic (however inexorable) in order to make itself the vehicle of thought. Cinema can become philosophical only insofar as it makes clarifying, tangible allusion to the specificity of the subjective experience. In other words, the becoming-language of cinema is bound by the laws of specific, tangible representation. Language, as the vehicle of thought and as the expression

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of experiencefor both Adorno and Astructhus brushes up against its own limits. Consequently, in order to address Adornos and Astrucs conundrum, we need to engage with the nature of language through Heideggers essay, as we promised before.

Infection Three: Metalanguage (of Metaphysics)


Heidegger, in his essay The Nature of Language, comments emphatically on the distinction between an experience with language and the ways in which one can gather information about language to argue that,
Of late, the scientific and philosophical investigation of languages is aiming ever more resolutely at the production of what is called metalanguage. Analytical philosophy, which is set on producing this super-language, is thus quite consistent when it considers itself metalinguistic. That sounds like metaphysicsnot only sounds like it, it is metaphysics. Metalinguistics is the metaphysics of the thoroughgoing technicalization of all languages into the sole operative instrument of interplanetary information.20

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This criticism of metalinguistics as the technicalization of all languages goes to the heart of the hypothesis that I engage with in this essay: namely, accepting a priori, or constructing a language that can transparently enunciateconvey, as the sole operativethe information/question-engendered-knowledge apparently contained in it must disregard (by going beyond, subsuming, hence meta-) that which is the particular nature of such a question. Hence, when one inquires regarding the relationship between the nature of philosophy and (the) language in which such a question is posed, one needs to be vigilant so as not to consider language in such a way that itby subsuming the particularity of this questionallows the question to appear unhesitatingly. It is precisely because of this cautionwhich Heidegger urges us not to throw to the windthat I want to consider language in its specificity; namely, the style/manner/pose that language assumes, only to efface such particularities (of language as language) in order to allow the question regarding the margin/horizon of all questions/knowledge to appear transparently, effectively. This vigilant attitude, as I see it, is another name for the responsibility which one must assume in order to place oneself against the totalization of philosophy by metaphysics, which can be operative only if the paradoxical horizon/ margin of all questions is avoidedthat is to say, metaphysics is only insofar as the nature of philosophy remains concealed. It is this nature of metaphysics that becomes clear in Heideggers analysis: metaphysics and metalinguistics are similar in that both attempt to produce a superlanguage of super-philosophy. In other words, then, metaphysics must disavow the insistence with which the question regarding the nature of philosophy recedes even/ especially when the horizon/margin of the exhaustive field of all questions is effectively enunciated, and thereby is folded back into the field of knowledge. Similarly, metalanguage must disavow the ways in which even the exhaustive philological study of the nature of language necessarily depends on language to enunciate such knowledge about language, while the language-ness of language continues to recede beyond the scope of such studies. Heidegger extensively addresses this disavowal necessary to the construction of a metalanguage and metaphysics in numerous instances.

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In The Nature of Language Heidegger continues his engagement with the distinction between the exhaustive study/information-gathering about language and the experience with language:
But scientific and philosophical information about language is one thing; an experience we undergo with language is another . . . . What is left for us to do is to point out ways that bring us face to face with a possibility of undergoing an experience with language. Such ways have long existed. But they are seldom used in such a manner that the possible experience with language is itself given voice and put into language. In experience that we undergo with language, language itself brings itself to language. One would think that this happens anyway, any time anyone speaks . . . . Any number of things are given voice in speaking, above all what we are speaking about . . . . [Yet,] only because in everyday speaking language does not bring itself to language but holds back, are we able to simply go ahead and speak a language.21
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I want to direct our attention to two significant points in this rich passage: first, Heidegger writes about an experience with language, rather than the exhaustive knowledge about language; second, Heidegger insists on the possible nature of such an experience with language, rather than insisting on the certainty of such an experience. In order to engage with the first point, we will need to consider the difference between with and about, primarily; however, we cannot avoid the distinction between information and experience either. To begin with, one can say that these prepositionsi.e. about and withindicate two distinct types of relationality: while the former keeps the relata distinctly separated, the later gestures toward a contiguous relationship. The distinctly separate relata that about denotes suggests the presence of a hierarchy: in the particular case that we are considering, it is the information that takes precedence over language by being about it. Hence, within this grammatical structure, language is an object about which onei.e. the subjectgathers information; language itself remains inactive in this operation. However, the later preposition, with, indicates no such unambiguous distinction between the relata. With suggests a togetherness that maintains (two) separate entitiesin that they (plural) are with one anotheryet insists on no specific hierarchy. Hence, in the case of our experience with language, the we can appear only when it is contiguous with languagethe active/passive distinction remains ambiguous in this regard. Moreover, in this particular case, the (being-) with of language and we indicate to a third locus where the two terms come together (be) in their ambiguous contiguity: this third place is the experience (with). The experience that engenders the contiguity of with not only brings the we and language together, Heidegger wants to say, but alsoand perhaps more significantly brings language to itself. This experience then does not belong solely to the we, the plural subject; rather, precisely because the (plural) subject is with language, it can share in the experience of language declaring itself to itself. Hence, the experience with language is not something that we, as subjects, possess: in fact, we can experience this experience only insofar as we are able to give up any such claim of ownership. Heideggers example is at once illuminating and problematic in this regard: indeed, when we speak in any language, that which we speak of becomes demonstrable/understandable only insofar as the medium which enunciates/demonstratesi.e. languagebecomes transparent, invisible, perhaps even deleted (if that is possible at all).

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An example might help to better elucidate this point: when someone speaks with an accentto the extent that the accent becomes intrusive, audibleabout/of something, we tend to encounter difficulty in understanding that which s/he is speaking of, precisely because (what appears to be) the obtrusive presence of the medium (i.e. language), accentuated by the accent, bars our access to the message/information of that speech-act. Yet, Heideggers example specifies everyday speaking language as that which allows us to engage in meaningful conversation by not bringing forth its own nature to itself. This specificity, although quite understandable on its own terms, gives rise to a problematic question: is Heidegger suggesting that there exist special (that which is not everyday speaking language) cases of language use where one can undergo an experience with language? The passage quoted above addresses this question in two ways: first, it seems that Heidegger suggests that there are indeed special cases where such an experience with becomes possible, only they are seldom used in such a manner, and second, that such experience with can only be tentativeit is in the realm of the possible, and not something certain. Now we can proceed to engage with the second point, namely, the experience with language, which Heidegger insists, is always a possible experience. Hence, we need to understand the difference between the possible and the certain, properly speaking. Obviously, that which is certain carries with it the guarantee that it will appear to us as such. The certain event, then, is something of/about which we possess enunciable knowledge; the event is certain only insofar as we can say that such and such are going to be the coordinates of this event. Hence, the certain event has to appear to us a priori otherwise we would not able to identify it (as certain) when we experience it. Therefore, it appears that the certain event/experience follows the grammatical law of the about: the certain provides us information about something. Ergo, the certain can only be insofar as our experience with language is notcertainty necessitates transparency of the medium, i.e. language. Whereas, that which is possible is such precisely because there is no guarantee of its occurrencewe do not, and cannot fully know the coordinates of the possible. The possible event is as such only insofar as the event/experience appears to us in the form of a promise, the realization of which is not contingent upon us. Now, a promise, properly speaking, is a promise only insofar as it hints at its future realization, and is not fully realized; i.e. carried out, demonstrated, or enunciated. It follows then that the possible experience with language can only be fleeting, hesitant/hesitating, tentative: it is seldom used in such a manner. Perhaps now we are beginning to realize the import of Heideggers assertion that everyday speaking language does not allow us an experience with language itself: the continuous presence of the everyday prevents this experience from taking place. However, this realization still does not fully alleviate the complicated possibility that there are certain special cases that are prone to allow us an experience with language, whereas everyday speaking language does not allow us to do so. For even in this qualified assertion there seems to remain the privileging of a special use of language, to which the everyday speaking language is not privy. If this is so, then the special use of language threatens to assume the place of metalanguage, the metaphysical stance of which seeks to subsume the particularity of an (singular) experience (with), as Heidegger himself warns us above. Heidegger will addressin the same essaythe special case (as I am calling it) in which we undergo an experience with language through his analysis of Stephan Georges

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poem, The Word. Preceding his extensive analysis of the poem, Heidegger writes the following:
But when does language speak itself as language? Curiously enough, when we cannot find the right word for something that concerns us, carries us away, oppresses or encourages us. Then we leave unspoken what we have in mind and, without rightly giving it thought, undergo moments in which language itself has distantly and fleetingly touched us with its essential being. But when the issue is to put into language something which has never yet been spoken, then everything depends on whether language gives or withholds the appropriate word. Such is the case of the poet.22

The two paragraphs seem to set up a contrast: in the first paragraph, Heidegger writes about the failure of language as language that allows us to undergo an experience with language; the second paragraph introduces the case of the poetic language where everything depends on the appropriate word. The final sentence is left in ambiguity: we do not know if Heidegger wants to say that the poet can find the right word in which language speaks itself as language. The assertion in the first paragraph is relatively easy to understand, following our previous discussion of the with and about in terms of the certain and the possible. It follows from the first paragraph that only when we leave unspoken that which we have in mindi.e. thoughtare we able to undergo an experience with language as language. We should not fail to notice that the unspoken is that which is left: hence, the unspoken can be thought of as a remainder/surplus of thought/thinking. Clearly, the residual status of the unspoken is analogous to the question regarding the nature of philosophy, which repeatedly brushes up against the paradoxical margin/horizon of the field of exhaustive question-engendered-knowledge. If we have to undergo an experience with language, we cannot enunciate (leave unspoken) our thought in its entirety; similarly, if we want to speak . . . concretely to the question what is philosophy? we are always left with an unyielding remainder that does not allow us to fully enunciate our knowledge/experience with philosophy. This analogous structure of the unspoken word and the conundrum of speaking . . . concretely with regard to the nature of philosophy helps us understand the import of Heideggers observation that analytical philosophy is set on producing this super-languagei.e. the metalanguage of metaphysics. In this waywhich is to say, by producing a metalanguage, in which no word is left unspokenmetaphysics (analytical philosophy, in Heideggers example) seeks to become/produce (in itself) a meta-philosophy that will successfully subsume/ collapse the paradoxical margin of all questions into its fold, thereby engendering the totality of question-engendered-knowledge. Hence, in the metalanguage of metaphysics (meta-philosophy) the obtrusion of language as itself will be deleted, leaving a language that will be completely invisible/transparent in its presentation of the matter of thought/ knowledge: we will know, with certainty, the nature of philosophy. Yet, as we have discussed previously following Heidegger, such a proposition can only be successful in the absence/silencing of thought, properly speaking: consistency in the field of knowledge can result only from the exclusion of at least one question (in the form of a remainder/surplus) from philosophy itself. Hence, the totalization of philosophy a la metaphysics appears to be an impossible task; yet, Heideggers ambiguous invocation of the case of the poet seems to suggest, albeit tentatively, a way in which such a project may be successful.

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In his detailed analysis of the poets language in Stephan Georges The Word, Heidegger points out the exact nature of the impossible task mentioned above. Explicating the last line of the poem (Where word breaks off no thing may be), Heidegger writes:
For this line makes the word of language, makes language itself bring itself to language, and says something about the relation between word and thing. The content of the final line can be transformed into a statement, thus: No thing is where the word breaks off. . . . No thing is where the word is lacking, that word which names the given thing.23

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Heidegger goes on to argue that the name here is to be understood not merely as a designation (i.e. proper naming); rather, the name is to be understood as the invocation of an absent presence, as in the expression in the name of God. The name in this case then, is more than signification; it is rather a command that brings into being, properly speaking, the thing which it thus names/interpellates. This is why Heidegger offers the following analysis of the relationship between the word (name) and the thing:
Thing is here understood in the traditional broad sense, as meaning anything that in any way is . . . . Only where the word for this thing has been found is the thing a thing. Only thus is it. Accordingly we must stress as follows: no thing is where the word, that is, the name is lacking. The word alone gives being to the thing.24

Yet, the complication remains in that if it is necessary for there to be a name (or necessary to name) for anything to bei.e. come into being in our experience/knowledgein what ways can we name that which remains beyond the margin/horizon of all questions? That is, how can we name the nature of philosophy, through and by a word of languagehow can we enunciate that which seems to be beyond enunciation? Poetic language, so far at least, has not provided us with a specific way in which this project can be undertaken. So far the poet has only been able to suggest that the breaking off/absence of words can bring into being only no thing. How then are we to undergo an experience with either (the nature of) language or with (the nature of ) philosophy, without resorting to the subsuming gesture of metaphysics (meta-philosophy)? Heidegger will attempt another answer to these questions, which will direct usin the next sectionto his discussion of the nature of metaphysics in terms of this no-thing, precisely. Taking into account the penultimate line of the poem (So I renounced and sadly see:), Heidegger writes:
Do the words after the colon say what the substance of the renunciation is? Does the poet renounce the fact that no thing may be where the words break off? Exactly the opposite . . . . The last line . . . could then still have another meaning than that of a statement and affirmation put in indirect discourse, which says that no thing is where the word is lacking. What follows the colon does not name what the poet renounces; rather, it names the realm into which the renunciation must enter; it names the call to enter into that relation between thing and word which has now been experienced . . . . What does renunciation mean? It is equivalent to abdication. Here the root word is the Latin dicere, to say, the Greek deiknumi, to show, point out, indicate. In his renunciation, the poet abdicates his former relation to the word.25

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Thus, what the poet gives up, renounces, also says, shows, points out (dicere . . . deiknumi) a relationality between word and thing, between enunciation and enunciated, that is not predicated upon the prepositional relation denoted by about; rather, this renunciation opens up a realm where the two relata might appear with one another. Hence, it is through this mode of abdication, which no thing brings into being, that we will perhaps be able to undergo an experience with the nature of philosophy and the nature of language. Abdication (or no-thing), in this precise sense can perhaps stand against the effacement/deletion of thinking/thought that metaphysics (meta-philosophy) seems to insist on.

ATTENUATION: TO DECLINE/VIRULENCE/TO ARRIVE AGAIN


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Heideggers engagement with the possibility of the poetic language to let us undergo an experience with language brings him to an understanding of the incapability of metaphysics; likewise, Astrucs engagement with the possibility of the camera-stylo to write ideas directly on film will lead us to reconsider the relationality between the image and the thing. Since we have identifiedin Astrucs formulation, as well as in metaphysicsthe central conundrum around which our thinking regarding the relationality between representation (word) and thought (thing) has revolved so far, now we need to consider the similarities/differences between the two kinds of representation that we seem to have encountered: namely, image and word. In this endeavor, we will take into account Heideggers analysis of the poets abdication, precisely because in abdication we say/show/point out/indicate. What can abdication, in this very precise sense, tell us about the relation between image and word? Indeed, as the common sense goesword must say, that is, enunciate. However, against this obvious understanding we will pose the Heideggerian problematic that, when word says it says somethingword cannot say nothing. Hence, the enunciating word presupposes the presence of thing. Consequently, wordinsofar as it enunciatesis already predicated upon thing: the relationality between word and thing is predicative, hierarchical. Hence we say, when word says, it says something. If we remind ourselves of Derridas analysis of the law of genre, word can signify/say only when it functions within a set of a priori rules, but word cannot speak when we let thing resonate all by [itself]. In contrast, we now need to ask, can image say/show/point out/indicate? To repeat our obviousness, we stateimage must show, that is, point out this or that to us. Let us once again follow the Heideggerian logic in this regard and ask: what does image show/ point out? Is it not obvious that insofar as image shows, it must show something? Image, in this sense, cannot show us nothing. Recall Astrucs claim here: with the camera-stylo, we will be able to point out/show (write, Astruc says) ideas directly on film. The crucial question at this point would becan idea be nothing? If we refer ourselves back to Heideggers analysis of the failure of intellect to think nothing, we will see the margin against which the images capacity brushes up. Granted, image can show us the figure of an idea, but precisely when such an idea seeks to include that which is beyond iti.e. the thinking of the nature of thinkingimage can no longer show. Hence, it will be impossiblein the metaphysical sense of demonstrating, showing, saying without

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mediationfor image to present the central question of philosophy: i.e. what is (the nature of ) . . . ? ` What then is the significance of cinema vis-a-vis philosophy? Am I unable to make good on my hypothesis that cinema can realize philosophy? Perhaps it is not so: I will remind you of the principles that I invoked in the beginning of this essay. These principles are: responsibility, vigilance, and hesitation. My responsibility is responsible to hesitation; for it is in hesitation that we can be vigilant. My vigilance is vigilant toward any claim whatsoever that says one can do away with mediation, in whatever form. For doing away with mediation means doing away with language as language. Effacing language as languageas Heidegger would have us remembermeans producing a meta-language that enforces its own law, and runs the risk of effacing the unyielding particularity of our experience with language. Furthermore, this production of the metaphysical metalanguage gives birth to a meta-philosophy that posits an a priori answer to philosophys central question about itself, and thereby it concludes philosophy. But we do not want to conclude; because to conclude in philosophy is to conclude philosophy itself, and with it to conclude thinking proper. Cinema, then, will not allow us to do thatcinema urges us to think, re-think, and think yet again.

NOTES
1. Alexandre Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, in The New Wave: Critical Landmarks, ed. Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Graham (New York: Mcmillan, 1968), 19. 2. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 12029. 3. Not only a cinephile but also one who is involved in making cinema. 4. Michel Marie, The French New Wave: An Artistic School (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 13. 5. Jacques Derrida, Is There a Philosophical Language? in Points. . . Interviews (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 219. 6. Jacques Derrida, The Law of Genre, Critical Inquiry 7.1 (1980): 55. 7. My understanding of a priori is more closely aligned with Derridas differential treatment of the question of origin, or the condition of possibility of definition as such, than with Kants definition. Whereas Kants conception of a prioriwhether synthetic or puremarks it as a point of origin that is in the object of knowledge, Derrida considers a priori as a deferred origin that cannot be fully presented as the cause of the object of knowledge. 8. Adorno and Horkheimers engagement with the way in which the culture industry conceals the dictatorial function of ideology informs my critique of the existing scholarship on the history of the French New Wave. Even though the culture industry attempts to present itself as non-ideological, it is in deadly earnest in its imposition of limits as the condition of the appearance of that which is thus circumscribed, as exemplified in the joke from Hitlers Germany that Adorno and Horkheimer recall: No one must go hungry or thirsty; if anyone does, hes for the concentration camp! (149). This paradoxical statement captures the nature of the culture industry for Adorno in Transparencies on Film, where he points out that the culture industry excludes everything but the predigested and the already integrated, just as the cosmetic trade eliminates facial wrinkles (199). Derridas analysis of the laws of genre properly highlights the paradoxical relationality of the margin and the marginalized that is latent in Adornos examples. Evidently, if one breaks the law by going hungry or thirsty i.e. if one assumes marginalization as an act of protestsuch deviation is generically

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.


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18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

circumscribed within law as an already integrated instance of exception, with its proper place in the concentration camp. The instance of deviationthe criminal tentativeness within the laws of genreis necessary for the body of the law to constitute itself. Similarly, facial wrinkles are fundamentally necessary for the cosmetic trade as that which the trade exists to exclude/eliminate. Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, 1718. Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, 18. Jacques Derrida, White Mythology, New Literary History 6.1 (1974): 23. Derrida, White Mythology, 32. Richard Rorty, Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida, New Literary History 10.1 (1978): 142. Rorty, Philosophy as a Kind of Writing, 145. Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, 2021. Ibid. Theodor Adorno and Thomas Y. Levin, Transparencies on Film, New German Critique 24/25 (198182): 201. Ibid. Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo, 20. Martin Heidegger, The Nature of Language, in On The Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 58. Heidegger, The Nature of Language, 59. Ibid. Heidegger, The Nature of Language, 6061. Heidegger, The Nature of Language, 62. Heidegger, The Nature of Language, 6465.

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