Les Carabiniers (Again!)
I find it more than a little disconcerting that the students of this class, as a whole, fail to comment on or allude to the blog posts of other students. Here, of course, I mean to implicate myself as much as my fellow classmates. Instead of utilizing the innovative and highly interactive nature of new media technology, we allow various interesting digital opportunities to surpass us. Every time that we create a post without a single link or fail to reference another blog thread or conversation we, quite simply, fail. We fail each other as fellow students working towards a collective goal (film education), and as students of a particular technological context: the digital. This is to say that part of this course’s inherent objective is to learn of and from the very complex technologies that we use on a daily basis. Professor Shaviro wanted us to develop a web presence, not to perpetuate the dominant ideology/tenants of print media but to learn of the interesting opportunities that the highly social method of blogging presents the user.
Following this observation it ultimately seems appropriate to address a reading of Godard’s Les Carabiniers that I find a little problematic. Though I agree with many of Andre Seewood’s previous posts, I find that his response to Les Carabiniers, though initially interesting and fairly accurate, really loses ground in the final paragraphs. Here, Andre argues that Godard’s film misses the mark by nearly twenty years because it fails to reconcile a certain loss of material substance. In Andre’s terms, although wars of the past were concerned with various appropriations (i.e. coming into possession of a people or a specific locale), more contemporary conflicts are predominantly ideological:
“In fact, the dropping of atomic weapons upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed war from its ancient starting point of appropriation and transformed war into ideological conflicts as demonstrated by the Cold War, the Korean War, the Franco-Indochina War, the Algerian War, the Vietnam War and our current war against terrorism. Although land and materials certainly are a part of the reasoning for wars in general, after 1945 ideology plays a greater role in the reasoning for war. Thus, LES CARABINIERS is an absurdist anti-war film that was already 20 years too late when in it was released in 1963.”
Essentially, Andre argues that a more general transformation occurred with regard for the very causality of conflict. This is to say that although certain material interests or motivations still exist in current contexts, contemporary military expenditures are more ideological. Though I am interested in this observation, I am not really sure that such an assessment is really warranted. Quite simply, hasn’t there always been both an invested ideological and material interest in any form of conflict? Furthermore, why is it that one must read one cause (ideological) as the succinct denial of the other (material)? Ideology never really excludes the material or materialism. In fact, one might argue that ideology is intimately connected to the material, even to the extent that ideology actually manifests in and from material(ism).
Even on the grounds of Andre’s reasoning with regard to Les Carabiniers, I find his follow through to be a little dissatisfactory. Here, Andre insists that the film remains ignorant of the general transformation that occurred in 1945. In his reading, the film operates solely on the ideal of material appropriation. In essence, the film fails because it ties the purpose for conflict strictly to the material. For Andre, the goods that are promised to Michel – Ange and Ulysses evidence Godard’s interest in the material as opposed to the ideological. Though there is room to read that Godard is interested in material pursuits, I don’t know that this actually denies the ideological. What Andre forgets, even in the midst of his discourse on the issue, is that an image of the possession is quite different than the possession itself. For further evidence of this one need look no further than Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Echographies of Television and Beller’s The Cinematic Mode of Production. In Derrida’s terms, the image is a ghost that proves a certain existence. Here, of course, one would have to read a certain connection between ideology and image. Of course, in order for Andre’s post to be successful, Andre should have already questioned the relationship between ideology and the physical (trace or not). In Beller’s terms, everything is a ghost even before the image. In very Marxist fashion, everything has a price and thus, is already spectral.
As may have already become evident, I am criticizing Andre’s analysis on a number of grounds:
1). I am not particularly fond of his distinction between wars of material appropriation and wars of ideological conflict. I’m not even sure that one could argue that such a transformation occurred in 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bomb. Although I often hear the argument that the bomb “sent a message,” I’m not persuaded that this is the earliest of such moments.
2). the second issue relates to Andre’s attempt to divorce the ideological from the material. As I stated previously, the ideological is always related to (perhaps even dependent on) the material. If one wants to read the dropping of the atomic bomb as transformative (esp. ideologically) one would still have to grapple with the very physical processes that occurred during certain developmental stages (i.e. the building and testing of the bomb), at the time of its usage, and the devastating effects that were wrought on the city of Hiroshima for years afterword. Ideology can only ever manifest from the material. Of course, the way that Andre phrases his argument encourages me to reconsider Brian Rotman’s formulations concerning mind and body, especially his argument that we misinterpret mind as being divorced from body.
3). Andre read s the postcards as being representative of material appropriation, while disregarding the difference between an object and an image of an object. Although I think Godard is using the postcard as kind of a gesture towards ridiculousness, I’m still interested in his attentiveness to the image of an object as opposed to the object itself. Here, I am more interested in reading into the spectral and mediation than Andre’s critique that Godard’s film absences the ideological. Returning to Baudrillard’s discussion of the Gulf War, one would have to seriously consider what an image of war means as a form of mediation.
More later…
Now that the semester is coming to a close I finally have time to respond to your comments about my blog on Godard’s Les Carabiniers. Although I completely agree with you that as a class we should have commented or alluded to the posts of other classmates, after reading your comments about my post I see that this lack of interest might have been a blessing in disguise. You have deliberately made a straw man argument out of my original thesis for your own intellectual benefit. You have distorted my argument to a degree that I would never endorse and in doing so you have participated in the kind of intellectual dishonesty that I find repugnate. Since there was only about five of us actually discussing the films (and that’s including Prof. Shaviro)we had a responsiblity to maintain some kind of intellecual decorum that would invite the other twenty or so students to share their opinions. In other words, couldn’t we have just agreed to disagree on this film? I mean, you understand some of my points and I understand some of your points- I don’t think we need to be intellectually dishonest and participate in some kind of critical zero-sum game for our own vanity. But other than this small bone of contention- I enjoyed reading your posts and your perceptive and intriguing comments about the films and our blogs…
Andre,
Now this is a pretty audacious response for several reasons. First, with regard for your posts, I allude to your work most often not because I am inherently and perpetually dissatisfied with your discourse, but because you are one of very few students that I can trust to provide interesting and thorough insight. Note that I allude to this everytime that I reference one of your readings. This is to say, that I often turn to your discussion first because of the level of enjoyment that I get from some of your contributions. Also, if I’m not entirely mistaken, I’ve backed up your analysis a couple of times in class as well. If anything, I thought there was something that I might learn from a more thorough consideration of your work.
Second, there is a very big difference between misinterpretation and misrepresentation. You accuse me of the latter without giving me any real indication of what specific problems face my reading of your work. I would be particularly careful what accussations you make about “academic dishonesty,” because those that cannot be backed up can become quite problematic. If I have somehow made a “strawman” out of your thesis I apologize.
In an effort to make my reading of your text more lucid, I provide a brief defense of my breakdown.
(Following the numbers delineated above)
1. I simply state that I am dissatisfied with the interpretive framework that you’ve set up (appropriative vs. ideological) -I don’t know how I’m misinterpreting this considering you state quite directly –
“although land and materials certainly are a part of the reasoning for wars in general, after 1945 ideology plays a greater role in the reasoning for war. Thus, LES CARABINIERS is an absurdist anti-war film that was already 20 years too late when in it was released in 1963.”
Note the shift from material acquisition to ideology.
2. I argue that I’m not interested in divorcing the material from the visual. This argument simply piggy-backs on the last one I made.
In your work you separate ideological conflict from that of appropriation. You suggest that appropriational conflict is really a feature of past wars. As I am rereading your post, I realize again that throughout its entirety you give no indication of these two types of conflict being related. This is where I go off on what you might refer to as a “rant.” Simply stated, I’m not interested in divorcing the two. Perhaps, you are not even interested in this move either, but your post suggests otherwise.
3. The third point is really less a criticism of your text as an indication that I’m interested in reading the difference between image and the object represented. For me, this all comes back to Derrida and Marx’s theory of the spectre.
Other than that, I’m not sure how much else I could possibly lay-out or justify. Instead of leveling attacks at one another, I would be interested in providing additional justification for my reading in person. This would be the difference between talking respectfully face to face, and crafting rather insulting messages on each other’s blogs. When I stated that I was interested in opening up discourse I intended for it to be mutually beneficial. Here, I find it interesting that you wait to the end of the semester to comment on my work, if only to make remarks that should really go in my “spam que.”
Frankly, for someone as knowledgeable as yourself, I’m really quite surprised that you are the one to make this move. If you are particularly dissatisfied with my reading of your work, that is something I can accept. Here though, I think you might provide a better defense of why it is that you are upset.
Also, and most importantly, if “intellectual decorum” is of particular interest, doesn’t this necessitate some respectful engagement on your behalf? Or, are you excluded from the very standards you’ve set?
What I intended my blog to do this semester was to open up pathways for discussion. Unfortunately, what happened this semester is that a student showed interest in another student’s blog, decided to discuss the other student’s work on his blog, and was summarily chastised for partaking of this act. Of course, if I had agreed with you, this would be an entirely different situation. I am convinced that at the end of the “intellectual” day, Andre Seewood is less interested in “decorum” than ruthlessly antagonizing those that openly disagree with his work. Perhaps Andre, the best course of immediate action, would be for you to look up some of the very terms that you used in your response. I’m beginning to think you have very little understanding of what terms like “intellectual decorum” mean.
Thanks Andre, I really appreciate being called vane, and intellectually dishonest. Someone disagreed with you…get over it.
I agree with you… I don’t have a probelm with someone disagreeing with me… But I still think that you changed and extended my argument in my original post to an argument that I was not making… I also apologize for my accusations of “intellectual dishonesty”… And I don’t want to engage in trading insults on each others blogs… I only waited to make a reponse to your post because of my work load this semester. But I will say that I am not attempting to divorce the ideological from the material in my discussion of Les Carabiniers.