Download “DENATURALISING THE VISUAL”: THE ESSAY FILM AS

“DENATURALISING THE VISUAL”:
THE ESSAY FILM AS POLITICAL THINKING IN IMAGES
Philipp Jeandrée, Department of Politics, Goldsmiths, University of London
Introduction: Image making as a mode of political thinking
The central aim of this paper is to undertake a theoretical investigation into the
relationship between political thinking and the generation of visual artistic imagery with
particular focus on essayistic filmmaking. The paper consists of three main parts
corresponding to three central issues. The first part makes a rather general attempt to
illuminate the concept of the image in the context of political theory. Here I suggest that
the recognition of image making as a political research tool requires a more nuanced
concept of the notion of the image that shifts its focus from ‘representation’ to
‘presentation’. Subsequently, the second part suggests how (artistic) image making can
be conceptualised as a mode of visual political thinking through the engagement with
contingency. In the third part, I will then illustrate my theoretical claims by discussing
essayistic filmmaking as a form of cinematic thinking that blurs the boundaries between
political theory and aesthetic practice. Before I start my discussion of the political
qualities of essayistic film making, however, a few general remarks regarding the
relationship between artistic image making and political thinking are in order.
In this context, political thinking denotes an ongoing intellectual process and a
communicative endeavour that constantly seeks to negotiate the legitimacy of social
practices and political order. The processual character of political thinking, which
cannot be solely confined to the medium of language, is based on the assumption that
all social constellations are contingent, which means that they could just as well be
otherwise. Consequently, if the acknowledgement of contingency is the general
precondition for political thinking, then political thinking in images is characterised by
the visual reflection of the contingent nature of the social world. But how is this
processual and contingent character of ‘the political’ presented in visual practices and
how can the creation of images be understood as a distinct form of visual political
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thinking? Or to put it differently: what constitutes the political dimension of the image
and to what extent does image making qualify as a political act?
An answer to these questions can be found in the analysis of visual artworks that
are not regarded as isolated creations but as aesthetic practices embedded in broader
political discourses and philosophical developments. That is to say that artistic image
making is considered not simply as a form of illustration and aesthetic reflection of
these developments but rather as social performances and intellectual acts which
contribute to them. This is by no means a novel understanding of art. In general,
however, political research has not paid much attention to this performative and active
notion of visual art and traditionally situates aesthetic practice firmly outside the
disciplinary boundaries of political philosophy. That is why the present paper makes a
case for a more consolidated approach to modern political thinking that not only
includes image making but also acknowledges the power of cinematic art to transform
the ways in which ‘the political’ is conceived. Therefore I will argue that artistic visual
practices not only illustrate epistemological shifts in political thinking but also
constitute effective means of political agency and a distinct form of political thought.
These assumptions lead directly to two core aims of the following investigation.
The first one is to consolidate the political relevance of the image by establishing the
visual arts as an insightful object for politico-theoretical research. The second one is to
recognise artistic image making as a form of political thinking and critical enquiry in its
own right. That means that the acknowledgement of the epistemological capacity of
image making offers a fruitful expansion of the methodological toolbox of political
theory as an academic discipline. The realm of the visual does not only open up an
expanded understanding of the political but also new forms of critique and resistance to
dominant forms of representing the world. The present paper suggests that the political
potential of visual artistic practices emerges from its ability to question the
naturalisation of visual forms of depiction and to acknowledge the subjective,
speculative and imaginary dimensions of social knowledge production.
So far, however, the canon of political science as an academic discipline still
remains predominantly resistant to aesthetic practices as potent and insightful research
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methods. In order to understand the political implications of visual representation and
the intellectual potential of the image for political thought a more systematic political
understanding of the image is needed. Even though the so called “iconic turn”1 made
some impact on the social sciences, so far no attempt has been made to formulate
criteria that help to define the political in visual terms. The reason for this is that most
art historical accounts on the relationship between aesthetics and politics lack a coherent
and systematic notion of ‘the political’ and most accounts of the relationship between
images and political theory focus on non-material images such as metaphors and
rhetorical tropes.2 This paper thus makes an attempt to rehabilitate the use of visual
images for political theory and argues that visual aesthetic practices have to be
considered effective means of political reflection. Therefore, the present study focuses
on essayistic filmmaking as a form of political thinking in images emphasising the
ontological, speculative and imaginative implications of artistic image strategies as a
form of political reasoning. In this regard a case will be made to rethink the disciplinary
boundaries between art and politics as modes of critical enquiry and interrogation by
problematising a merely scientific approach to political thinking that founds its
epistemological validity exclusively on empirical evidence.
It will therefore come as no surprise that an early impulse for this paper was
provided by the field of visual studies rather than the traditionally image-indifferent
political sciences or political philosophy. The intellectual programme for a political
image theory has effectively been formulated almost twenty years ago by W. J. T.
Mitchell. In his seminal work Picture Theory (1994) Mitchell states: “What we need is a
critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil and that is
capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.”3 And
elsewhere he writes: “The political task of visual culture is to perform critique without
the comforts of iconoclasm.”4 Although those statements do not offer any new
theoretical insights they still provide an important starting point for the present
investigations into the possibilities of a political understanding of the image. If we are to
follow Mitchell and perform a political critique of visual cultures which is not to be an
iconoclastic act then we have to understand the image as an intrinsically political
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medium of which ‘intentions’ can be revealed through attentive and observant ways of
seeing and through socio-historical as well as conceptual contextualisation.
Thus the leading question is not how political critique can be performed against
the image but through the image. Political critique through the image encompasses
alternative forms of visibility that challenge the apparent self-evidence of the image
through strategies of de-naturalisation and de-familiarisation. In this regard a political
critique of ‘visual culture’ involves new ways of looking at and presenting the world.
Furthermore, the nucleus of a political critique which is centred on the image lies in its
ability to present and see the image as image. What might appear to be tautological
already hints at the images’ greatest source of power and political efficacy. This political
efficacy of the image unfolds its potential far beyond the conventional field of
institutional or juridical concepts of ‘the political‘ and reaches into the realm of social
epistemology. Probably the greatest power of the image and therefore of its political
relevance lies in what art historian Norman Bryson has called with Edmund Husserl
“the natural attitude” which is the assumption of the image’s “self-effacing in the
representation or reduplication of things.”5 A political critique through the image must
therefore be performed by opposing three central principles of the ‘natural attitude’ as
outlined by Bryson: first, by opposing the absence of the dimension of history
indicating that the visual experience is universal and transhistorical; second, by
opposing the dualism between a pre-existing outside world and a passive and specular
consciousness; and third, an understanding of the image as a model of communication
where “the content of the image is alleged to antedate its physical exteriorisation”6 .
Political critique performed through the image has then to be considered as
political thinking in images where the image is not perceived as self-effacing but as a
discernible and visible form of political knowledge. In this regard, the creation and
perception of images are not only considered passive activities which simply illustrate
intellectual developments but rather a social performance generating distinct forms of
meaning. Thus, artistic image making is a political expression in its own right that
stands not isolated from other forms of cultural expressions but is embedded in wider
socio-historical discourses. Unlike many other media, however, the image tends towards
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self-obliteration in the sense that its material, formal, historical and social particularities
are often subordinated to an alleged universality of optical perception. The present
argument does not intend to relativise the ocular-physical conditions of visual
perception but puts these conditions in relation to cultural and historical developments.
The political critique of the image therefore applies to the assumption of a naturalisation
of the image, the (visual) self-evidence of social practices and consequently a
legitimation of social realities that exist prior to any modes of (re-)presentation.
In order to elucidate and emphasise the political dimension of the de-naturalising
critique of aesthetic representation a brief clarification of the implications of the term
‘naturalisation’ is needed. I will therefore return to Bryson’s notion of the “natural
attitude” as mentioned above. The concept and critique of the ‘natural attitude’ is of
particular importance for the following argument since it reaches out to the wider fields
of discourse criticism where it reveals some important aspects of its political
dimensions. In the following discussion I equate ‘natural attitude’ with the term ‘doxa’
which Roland Barthes has aptly described as “the Voice of Nature”.7 More instructive
though is Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of the term because it shows that in the context
of political thought doxa has to be understood as the theoretical opponent of the concept
of contingency. Bourdieu writes: “Every established order tends to produce (to very
different degrees and with very different means) the naturalization of its own
arbitrariness.”8 Therefore the ideal doxic state is achieved when “the natural and social
world appears as self-evident.”9
The denaturalising and defamiliarising critique as the political potential of
aesthetic presentations has thus to demonstrate not only the arbitrariness of all forms of
social order but also hint at the universe of possible things that can be thought.
However, even though the following argument agrees with the political efficacy of the
de-naturalising critique of aesthetic self-reflexivity it is not intended to perpetuate a
discourse on ideological criticism. Neither is a criticism intended, which, in its own
mistrust towards the visual and its suspicion towards the hidden workings of power
behind every mode of representation, seems to fall prey to an almost equally ideological
demonisation of the image.
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Thus my suggestion here is that one possibility of a political critique of the image
through the image is a form of visual depiction indicating that there is no such thing as
‘natural’ social constellations and that political realities come into existence by way of
society’s self-description. In the following, I will argue that a political critique of the
image can be performed through the depiction of contingency - the rendering of the idea
that things could be otherwise and that dominant forms of representing the world can be
challenged. The understanding of the social world as contingent implies the
acknowledgement of a ‘metaphysical groundlessness’ that means that the legitimacy of
any social order can no longer be derived from ‘outside’ society’s discursive practices.
The depiction of contingency describes a relationship between form and content that
questions the ‘natural attitude’ in terms of the representation of the human world. It
draws attention to the fact that the visual image functions as a reification of abstract
concepts of social order such as sovereignty, democracy and territoriality. In sum,
political images are those images that reveal themselves as images corresponding to
what W. T. J. Mitchell has called “metapictures”, which are “pictures that show
themselves in order to know themselves.”10 However, self-knowledge in the political
context has to mean knowledge of the contingent social constellations the image is part
of and has emerged from. The self-knowing image as a mode of political thinking has to
reflect its own processual character and its discursive function in the perpetual
negotiations of the legitimacy of social practices. Before I continue my discussion on
cinematic reasoning and political thinking in images an essential if somewhat general
question needs to be addressed: how is the term image to be understood in the context
of political thought?
Part I: What is an image and what do images do?
The history of western political thought is notoriously characterised by a general
skepticism towards the social role of images and the visual arts. Traditionally, visual
perception and depiction are associated with deception, emotion and irrationality.
Hence, the image seems to be a medium that cannot be trusted and that has potentially
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negative effects for any political community. Furthermore, the alleged illusionary and
unreal character of the image is contrasted with the spoken and written word as the sole
harbour of rationality and intellect. In the Republic Plato famously argues that, as a
mimetic medium, the image is unreal, tells us nothing about life and appeals to the
lower, less rational part of human nature. Ever since, Plato’s interpretation of the image
as an obstacle to a ‘rational truth’ has played a decisive role not only for political
thought but for Western epistemology in general. Consequently, the Platonic legacy has
to be considered as being essential for the profound scepticism of political philosophy
towards the visual. The effects of that legacy can be found in a variety of modern
political texts reaching from Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believes that the enjoyment of
fine art will eventually lead to idleness, moral confusion and may even undermine
patriotism, to Jürgen Habermas who interprets the increase of visual media as a decisive
indicator for the decay of the public sphere in the 20th century.
Those canonical positions of political thought, however, demonstrate a rather
limited understanding of the visual that ignores the capacity of the image to generate
distinct forms of meaning and to express modes of thinking that consider
phenomenological, cognitive and affective elements as essential for making sense of the
social world. Furthermore, political theory traditionally shows an understanding of the
visual that denies the image any potential for critical political deliberation and, on the
contrary, sees the realm of the visual as threat to public life and political agency. What is
needed, therefore, is a more nuanced understanding of the political potential of the
image and the genuine recognition of visual aesthetic practices as a distinct form of
political thinking. All too often political thought and visual image production are still
rendered as two completely separate and opposed social activities. Habermas’ concerns
in particular refer to an ever increasing distribution of visual images through the mass
media that are no longer perceived as unique illustrations but rather as parts of broader
social discourses following the logic of what might be called visual rhetoric.11
In the present context, the term ‘visual rhetoric’ refers to a synergetic
arrangement of various images with the intention to trigger a certain - often affective public response. It is this affective response that evoked suspicion towards images in the
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public realm amongst many political thinkers who saw visual rhetoric as incompatible
with the rational and deliberative basis on which democracy is allegedly founded. As
shown above, the image in a political context is often considered as deceptive,
emotional and irrational in opposition to the truthful, reasonable and rational character
of the logos. This dichotomy between the ‘rational logos’ and ‘irrational icon’ shall be
problematised in the subsequent discussion since this dichotomy fails to recognise the
distinctive capacity of the image to create meaning and it rests on the assumption that
image production is clearly distinguishable from any other practice of world-making language in particular. Unfortunately, this is not the place to engage in an in-depth
discussion about the relationship between image and language, the visual and the verbal
forms of meaning production. However, it is important to think about the concept of the
image in the context of political thought and to problematise it by not taking it as
something given.
A broader academic interest in the nature of the image and its implications for
the production of social meaning was triggered by the recognition of the fast progress
and proliferation of communication technologies facilitating the visual selfrepresentation of society through popular culture, art practice and mass media in a
historically unparalleled manner. This perceived ubiquity of visual images eventually
culminated in the proclamation of a paradigm shift in the humanities for which W. J. T.
Mitchell has coined the term “iconic turn” in 1994. 12 Following Richard Rorty’s
linguistic turn13, Mitchell declared the image to be the next object of philosophical
concern in the humanities “and in the sphere of public culture.” The pictorial turn is
defined by Mitchell as “the realization that while the problem of pictorial representation
has always been with us, it presses inescapably now, and with unprecedented force, on
every level of culture, from the most refined philosophical speculations to the most
vulgar productions of the mass media.”14
The pictorial or iconic turn thus attempts to raise conceptual awareness for a
changed cultural landscape where the image has allegedly taken over from language as
the main structuring agent of social realities and constitutes now the predominant
signification system for social meaning. Over ten years later Mitchell modifies his
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argument by stating that the importance of the visual image is by no means a
contemporary phenomenon. Mitchell writes: “The pictorial or visual turn, then, is not
unique to our time. It is a repeated narrative figure that takes on a very specific form
today, but which seems to be available in its schematic form in an innumerable variety
of circumstances.”15 Thus, it is rather the contemporary variety of images that makes the
visual so important for the social production of meaning and that ultimately asks for a
broader academic engagement (including the social sciences).
In this respect, any investigation into the political dimension of the image points
inevitably at a fundamental deficit of the social sciences in general and political theory
in particular. This deficit is the lack of any substantial concept of the image. This is not
to say, that there exists a general agreement upon what is understood by the term
‘image’ in other disciplines that have traditionally specialised in the analysis of the
visual such as art history, film studies, architecture, etc. In the broad field of the so
called ‘visual studies’ the issue of what constitutes an image remains an open question
and the definitions on offer range from images as models, symbols and sign systems to
resemblances, appearances and ideas, to name but a few. Also the relationship between
the visual and the aural, and the afore mentioned interplay between images, sounds and
texts are of great importance in this context. However, the objective here is obviously
not to present any ultimate new definitions but rather to further problematise the term
‘image’ that is all too often taken as a given concept.
This is particularly interesting in the context of the social sciences and political
theory which try to distance themselves so decisively from the field of the aesthetic and
the visual without making much effort to delineate the phenomenon they are up against.
Thus it remains somewhat unclear what the political sciences (as well as political
theory) understand by the term ‘image’. What is it about the image the social sciences
are so skeptical of? What exactly makes the image politically so effective and powerful?
What are the particular properties of the image that make it seem to appeal to the ‘lower
senses‘ and thus render the image detrimental to the ‘rationality’ of the logos? One can
argue that this persistent dichotomy between the rational and the irrational in correlation
with the logos and the icon, which informs much of the political discourse of the visual,
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already reflects the rudimentary and narrow understanding of the image and its relation
to intellect and language. Thus, an effective investigation into the political dimension of
the image has to start with an examination of how images create meaning and how this
pictorial form of meaning shapes the way we think of our social lives. The lack of a
consensus regarding any clear conceptualisation of the image does not mean that there
have been no efforts to do so. On the contrary. The multi-disciplinary attempts and
offers to conceptualise the image and to design specific ‘image theories’ are as multifaceted as bewildering. It is far beyond the scope of this paper to provide a
comprehensive overview of the various existing image theories. Neither would it be
useful in order to illuminate the relationship between political thinking and visual art.
However, attention should be drawn to at least one important recent publication.
James Elkins and Maja Naef have edited a compendium which insightfully documents
the current state of discourse around the question of “what is an image?”.16 The
transcribed conversations are helpful for the present study since they touch upon the
political dimension of the image by questioning the binary approach of rational vs.
irrational, icon vs. logos, showing vs. saying, which still dominates most political
understanding of the visual. In regard to the ontological status of the image, art historian
Gottfried Boehm rightly comments: “I don’t agree with the idea that there is an
irrational content or background in images that cannot be explained or must be
accepted. From a methodological perspective, it’s a false conception, because it posits
that there is irrationality, which is then followed by a rationality. This opposition is not
the state of the art in an intellectual discussion. Sorry.”17
Unfortunately, this
understanding still seems to be the state of the art in most social scientific debates about
the visual.
In order to get a better comprehension of the role images play for political
thought the crucial question is not only “what is an image?” but also “what do images
do?”. James Elkins and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have related these questions to the
Platonic and Aristotelian tradition of thought respectively. Whereas the first question
reflects Plato’s profound scepticism towards the visual, a theory of knowledge that
draws its notion of the image mainly from painting, the latter reflects Aristotle’s rather
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positive community building notion of the image drawn from theatre. David Downing
and Susan Bazargan have pointed out that these two accounts of the image, a skeptical
one derived from Plato’s politics and a more assertive one derived from Aristotle’s
poetics, constitute the oppositional system of Western metaphysics. “That is, if ‘image’
followed the lead of Aristotelian poetics towards a formalistic, ahistorical ‘image’ of
truth and beauty, ‘ideology’ most often named the historical configurations and
particular beliefs which the ‘truth’ of abstract images had to overcome in the move
toward a transcendent reality.”18
This description of the dichotomy between an ideological image that conceals a
hidden truth and an ahistorical image that harbours the potential for a transcendental
truth, polemical as it may be, points at the core problem of the relationship between the
ontological and political status of the image. Here, a set of new questions arise: can this
opposition between the Platonic question of ‘what is an image?’ and the Aristotelian
question of ‘what do images do?’ be considered as completely separate? How can we
ask what images do without knowing what they are? Can we approach the political
dimension of the image without interrogating its ontological status, that is without
understanding its specific nature or ‘being’?
Even if a clear cut separation between the ontological and political dimension is
difficult, let us approach these questions from an ontological angle first. The emphasis
on the ontological status of the image is important in order to recognise the mediumspecific properties of the image. That means, as Keith Moxey has pointed out, “paying
heed to that which cannot be read, to that which exceeds the possibilities of a semiotic
interpretation, to that which defies understanding on the basis of convention, and to that
which we can never define, (...).”19 In this regard the question after the ontological
status of the image, one that focuses on the nature and structure of the medium, also has
important implications for its political dimension. Moxley summarises the debate about
the political dimension of the image informed by the ideological criticisms of the British
cultural studies tradition. “It is the content of the visual object, its role within schemes
of cultural and political ideology that is deemed more meaningful than the nature of the
medium.”20
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This argument, which differentiates the ontological from the political status of the
image by considering the former as presentation and the latter as representation, needs
to be put into perspective. If the visual object is considered as an expression of political
thought through the depiction of contingency then the material structure of the work, its
form as it were, has political implications as well. It is not only the aspect of
representation but also the aspect of presentation that bestows political meaning to the
visual object. In this regard, the argument that the political dimension of the image can
be defined through the depiction of contingency is not so much interested in any
ideological agenda ‘behind‘ the appearance of the image in the tradition of the cultural
studies (image as representation) but rather in the political implications presented by the
images themselves (image as presentation), that is by their object specific structure.
Therefore, the present paper locates the political dimension of the image not solely on
the side of the beholder but also on the material properties of the visual object.
Therefore, from the question ‘what is an image?’ with the tentative answer ‘a
presentation‘, follows the subsequent question ‘what do images do?’. For this question
the tentative answer is: images shape and express thought; images are no isolated
phenomena but potentially embedded in wider socio-cultural discourses; images are
effective in the context of other cultural phenomena and practices such as text and
language. In this regard the political dimension of the image also includes an
ontological core.21 The question of ‘being’ is here transformed into ‘being in the world’
in an almost Heideggerian sense by which the ‘being’ of the image is defined by its
relationship to the (material) world in which it is immersed. Thus, the question of “what
do images do?” is, to a certain extent, reflected in the discursive analysis of the image as
part of a visual rhetoric (as described above), that is part of its own cultural agenda. To
link the questions “what do images do” and “what is an image?” allows for a more
assertive approach towards the visual that takes into account the potential of images to
reflect, create, and critique social relations. If images are understood as presentations
expressing thoughts that are always embedded in wider socio-epistemological
discourses we have to clarify now how political critique and enquiry can be expressed
visually.
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Part II: Depicting contingency as visual political act
As suggested above, the key concept of this paper, against which the political
implications of the visual are defined, is the notion of contingency. The political
potential of images, as the central hypothesis, emerges from the capacity to depict and/
or embody contingency. According to the Oxford English Dictionary contingency refers
to “the condition of being free from predetermining necessity in regard to existence or
action” and “the being open to the play of chance, or of free will.” Also, the term
contingency refers to “the quality or condition of being subject to chance and change, or
of being at the mercy of accidents.” Thus the notion of contingency has two main
implications: it reflects both a feeling of uncertainty as well as a sense of possibility.
Of particular significance for the present question is that both implications
(uncertainty and possibility) have a close intertwined historical and a conceptual
dimension. The historical dimension of contingency characterises an epochal change
which marks off the modern period from premodern times. That means that it defines a
time of eroding traditions when the idea of a static transcendent hierarchy has lost its
power to ultimately justify social order and political legitimation. Only the crumbling of
traditional forms of governance (monarchy) could clear the way for new attempts of
immanent social organisation and legitimisation (democracy). In other words, the social
acknowledgement of contingency is a paradigmatically modern phenomenon. However,
the conceptual dimension of contingency also has a temporal dimension that is directed
towards the future; it refers to events that may or may not happen in a time to come.
Contingency describes an undetermined capacity to act with potentially open outcomes
and thus implies the possibility to shape and influence future events. It designates a
situation where unexpected things can happen. Through this interrelation of presence
and future, the notion of contingency does not simply describe a world of actualised
realities but also a world of potentialities and not (yet) actualised events. Hence, the
notion of contingency is an indicative concept of the modern democratic possibility
(and necessity) of (social) change thus laying the ground for any emancipatory political
agency. The concept of contingency functions as an indicator of the absence of any
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ultimate social certainties and ultimately as the basis for politics itself. Jacques Rancière
writes aptly: “The foundation of politics is [...] the lack of foundation, the sheer
contingency of any social order.”22
In this regard, the political relevance of the experience of contingency does not
emerge from the question as to whether or not social affairs are contingent but from the
way contingency is dealt with. As Judith Butler has pointed out: “And the point is not to
do away with foundations, or even to champion a position that goes under the name of
antifoundationalism and the skeptical problematic it engenders. Rather, the task is to
interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes, and what
precisely it excludes or forecloses.”23
Thus the political implications of the term contingency are twofold: the first one
being its totalitarian suppression and denial as a state of uncertainty that has to be
overcome and mastered; the second one being a sense of possibility that opens up new
opportunities for agency and transformation and that, following Butler, is “the very
precondition of a politically engaged critique.”24
Furthermore, the notion of contingency has to be understood as “the key
operational term within the theoretical paradigm of post-foundationalism”25 constituting
the intellectual horizon for the definition of ‘the political’. It needs to pointed out that
‘the political’ here is not characterised by a normative dimension but rather by an
ontological one. That is to say that the so called “post-foundational” tradition 26 as
characterised by Oliver Marchart defines the political through its conditions of
possibility. The central question is not what qualifies as good or bad politics but what
conditions have to be fulfilled in order to enable political agency in the first place. In the
following this condition will be characterised through the notion of contingency - the
absence of any predetermined necessity in regard to existence and action. The concept
of contingency designates the absence of any ultimate epistemological certainties on
which modern society could be founded. Therefore, the ‘groundlessness’ of society
requires a constant negotiation of its order, legitimation and appearance. This process of
constant negotiation is understood as the political. Hence, I argue that visualising the
contingent ground of society, depicting the absence of any fixed social epistemology
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and showing a sense of possibility regarding alternative forms of representation
qualifies images as political. The moment of contingency, however, appears in various
conceptual guises such as event, decision, historicity, division or antagonism. All these
figures of contingency, which Oliver Marchart has subsumed under the term “the postfoundational tropology of groundlessness”27, are not simply linguistic tropes but just as
much ‘visual turns of expression’ indicating the missing foundations of society. In this
respect, political thinking in images revolves around the ultimate impossibility of
depicting society as totality or actuality. The political image does not only depict
contingency in the sense of displaying or showing that things could be otherwise but
also through its embodiment. The often ambiguous meaning of the image is highly
dependent on the context in which it is shown and on other ‘texts’ that surround it and
that help the viewer to make sense of it. Artistic image strategies, which are directed
against official or authoritative forms of representation, deliberately deploy this
semantic ambiguity of the image in order to resist a naturalisation of the visual and to
indicate that the dominant forms of representing the world are open to challenge and
contestation.
Against this background, essayistic filmmaking offers a form of political enquiry
that contrasts the image-skeptical attitude of traditional Western political thought and
suggests a form of multidimensional thinking that is a communicative act between
filmmaker and spectator, subjective experience and public domain. The essay film
proposes a form of cinematic thinking that does not disparage the image as an inactive
medium of deception, affection and ideology but understands image making as a
distinct method for knowledge production and political criticism. By visually
contemplating “the condition of being free from predetermining necessity in regard to
existence or action” the essay film challenges conventions of visual representation and
epistemological assumptions regarding seeing and understanding the world. As a case
study I will discuss the films of German filmmaker Harun Farocki whose cinematic
work offers modes of political thinking in images that investigates in different ways the
role of the visual in contemporary times and uses filmmaking as a form of political
activism and critical enquiry in images.28
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Part III: The essay film as political thinking in images
So far I have suggested that the political dimension of image making can be
conceptualised through the depiction of contingency as a move to denaturalise vision
and to destabilise image based meaning. In the last part of this paper I will discuss
essayistic practices of filmmaking which use moving images as a mode of political
enquiry through a dialogical relationship between author and spectator. Essayistic film
making is thus not only a visual aesthetic practice but also an epistemological project
that conflates modes of thinking about the world with modes of describing it visually.
Despite the increasing use of the term ‘essay film’ it is probably right to say that
it is not a coherent genre with clearly defined criteria but rather a cinematic practice that
evades rigid categorisation. Laura Rascaroli convincingly suggests that the overarching
characteristic of the essay film is its hybrid nature and in-between status that connects
fiction and non-fiction cinema.29 However, two important features stand out and that is
reflectiveness and subjectivity. This means that the essay film takes as a starting point
for its enquiry and critical investigation the subjective experience of the filmmaker and
simultaneously questions the objectifying authority of both enquiring subject and
cinematic technology.
The origin of the literary form of the essay can be traced back to 16th century
France. The term ‘essay’ refers to a tradition of personal reflection and investigation
prominently represented in the work of Michel de Montaigne. In the French tradition
essayer means ‘to assay’, ‘to weigh’, as well as ‘to attempt’, suggesting a surveilling,
evaluative, and speculative exploration. In a Montaignian sense the term ‘essay’ means
thus a testing of ideas and to fathom one’s own subjectivity against the backdrop of
social observations. The essay film as distinct cinematographic practice emerged at the
beginning of the 1980s and continued the literary tradition with audio-visual means.30
The essayistic emphasis on subjective experience, or rather the problematisation of it, is
a key element not only in the literary essay but also in its visual counterpart. This
problematisation is visually reflected in the renegotiation of representational
assumptions regarding objectivity and epistemology. On this basis we can characterise
16
the essay film with Timothy Corrigan as “(1) a testing of expressive subjectivity
through (2) experiential encounters in a public arena, (3) the product of which becomes
the figuration of thinking or thought as a cinematic address and a spectatorial
response.”31
What is important here is that through this subjective and reflective practice, the
authorial voice of the essay film addresses the spectator directly and attempts to
establish a dialogue. Therefore Rascaroli rightly emphasises that “the ‘I’ of the essay
film always clearly and strongly implicates a ‘you’.”32 By engaging the spectator in a
multilayered dialogue comprising visual, textual and aural elements, the essay film
unfolds its political dimension through a conversation between a subject and a public
arena. As Thimothy Corrigan puts it: “The essay presses itself as a dialogic and
reflective communal experience, stretched between the intimate other of self and the
public Other that surrounds a self.”33 The political dimension of the essay film as
political thinking in images has thus dialogical, aesthetic and epistemological elements.
The essayistic arrangement of images, sound and text reflect a form of thinking that
diverts from conventional methodological forms of scientific investigation. In regard to
the literary essay this point was clearly formulated by Theodor Adorno who emphasised
the essay’s quality of “immanent critique” and its heretic nature that defies any
methodological orthodoxy. Adorno writes: “The essay’s innermost formal law is heresy.
Through violations of the orthodoxy of thought, something in the object becomes
visible which it is orthodoxy’s secret and objective aim to keep invisible.”34
As argued above, it is the orthodoxy of thought that attempts to enclose the
experience of contingency and to hide its contingent character behind the alleged selfevidence of its appearance. Therefore, the political quality of depicting contingency
emerges from the challenging of any ultimate authority of representation through
debunking the myth of documentary objectivity. Rascaroli writes: “The accomplished
essay film confounds issues of authority; and it is precisely because of its liberal stance
that it it particularly relevant today, when the radical problematisation of the existence
of objective permanent, fixed viewpoints on the world has produced the decline of
grand narratives and of the social persuasiveness of the myths of objectivity and
17
authority.”35
Rascaroli’s argument, which essentially denotes the cinematic
acknowledgement of contingency, ties in with an observation that Richard Rorty has
made more than two decades ago when he describes “freedom as the recognition of
contingency” and this recognition of contingency as “the chief virtue of the members of
a liberal society”.36
In this sense, the essayistic almost invariably practices a distinct form of politics
by denoting a form of political thinking that constantly negotiates the position of a
subject within a public domain ultimately stipulating the conditions for the social
practices it encounters. “In essay films, the subversion of a coherent subjectivity within
the public experience of the everyday may not always be an easily decipherable and
clear politics but is, perhaps always, a politics whose core is ideological instability.”37
The strength of the essay film is its ability to subvert systemic thought, totalities of truth
and the jargon of authenticity. Thus essayistic political thinking in images corresponds
to Adorno’s critique of the methodological reduction of reason to scientism and
instrumentality. Adorno writes: “In the realm of thought it is virtually the essay alone
that has successfully raised doubts about the absolute privilege of method. The essay
allows for the consciousness of non-identity, without expressing it directly; it is radical
in its non-radicalism, in refraining from any reduction to a principle, in its accentuation
of the partial against the total, in its fragmentary character.”38
As discussed above, the depiction of contingency is a key element for political
thinking in images since the concept of contingency offers an analytic barrier towards
any doxic form of ‘naturalisation’. Therefore, the challenging the seemingly selfevidence of the social world and its visual presentations, that is the denaturalisation of
the visual, is the central political endeavour of the essay film. In the last section of this
paper I will discuss the work of German filmmaker Harun Farocki as political thinking
in images though cinematic montage. For Farocki the medium film functions as an
instrument of knowledge that can be used to show a reality which has always been more
than the merely visible. It shows that reality is composed of different layers and
perspectives which contain fictional and imaginary components as well as simple
actualities. If we accept the essay film as a research tool for a better understanding of
18
the visible we have to clarify what kind of knowledge it seeks to produce and what
methods it deploys. And ultimately, does Farocki’s method of visual enquiry qualify as a
form of ‘radical’ research into the visible?
The cinema of Harun Farocki: radical research into the visible?
In regard to Farocki’s biography a certain proximity to radical practices does not come
as a surprise. In 1969 Farocki was expelled from the Deutsche Film- und
Fernsehakademie in Berlin as a consequence of his political activism alongside fellow
film students Hartmut Bitomsky and Holger Meins. The latter subsequently abandoned
filmmaking and became a founding member of the left-wing terror group Red Army
Faction (RAF) and died on hunger strike in prison in 1974. Even though Farocki’s
radicalism did not materialise in guerrilla warfare, his early student films proceeded
from a “guerrilla thinking” which was informed by political antagonism and
aesthetically inspired by Situationism, the French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard in
particular), and Direct Cinema. Against this background, Farocki has developed a
cinematic language that provides the formal tools for critical research into the visible
and a reevaluation of the relationship between political thinking and image making. I
will illustrate my previous theoretical claims regarding the political implications of the
depiction of contingency and the denaturalisation of the visual by example of Farocki’s
early film Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and his more recent installation Eye/Machine
(2001-2003).
Inextinguishable Fire (1969)
Farocki’s first film after he graduated from film school is a reflection on the political
implications of the image and has to be considered as an attempt to develop a critique of
the visual that is immanent to the image. Inextinguishable Fire is directed against the
seemingly evidence of the visible and expresses scepticism towards a juxtaposition of
seeing and understanding. The title Inextinguishable Fire refers to the horrors and
19
suffering that resulted from the strategic use of napalm during the Vietnam war.
Moreover, Farocki is concerned with the possibility and meaningfulness of the visual
depiction of suffering. In this regard, the film is not only a critique of war but just as
much of its depiction in the mass media and the general assumption that it is reasonable
and enlightening to show images of burnt and mutilated bodies. The beginning of the
film shows Farocki in a plain room wearing a dark suit and sitting at a desk (fig.1). He
is reading out the witness report of a Vietnamese civilian who has experienced and
survived a napalm attack of his village. Then Farocki looks straight into the camera and
thinks aloud about the educational and informative effectiveness of images. He asks:
Fig. 1: Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire (1969)
“How can we show you napalm in action? And how can we show you the injuries
caused by napalm? If we show you pictures of napalm burns, you will close your eyes.
First you will close your eyes to the pictures. Then you will close your eyes to the
memories. Then you will close your eyes to the facts. Then you will close your eyes to
the entire context.”
From this perspective, to show an image of the consequences of napalm would
constitute a negation of the image within the image which would ultimately lead to a
negation of the memory and perception of the wider context. Exposition and obliteration
20
of the image would thus coincide. Farocki, however, chooses a rather metaphorical or
metonymical strategy. Instead of showing images of victims of the napalm attack he
addresses the act of showing itself using his own body. By extinguishing a cigarette on
Fig. 2: Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire (1969)
his forearm he problematises the enlightening use of images without denying their
general epistemological potential (fig. 2). In spite of the fact that seeing does not
necessarily equal understanding, Farocki’s critique of images does not include every
image. Farocki produces alternative images that play with the expectations of the
onlooker and simultaneously introduce a different element of physical reality. Even
though the injury Farocki inflicts on himself is incomparably lesser than the burn of
napalm (Farocki explains that a cigarette burns at approximately 400 °C whereas
napalm burns at 3000 °C), it suffices to trigger a contemplation of the epistemological
limits of the visible. Its radical critique and physical commitment, its “combination of
action, passion and thought”, situates Inextinguishable Fire in the context of political
activism and has raised the question whether Farocki is an “action artist or activist.”39
More than three decades later, the cinematic work of Harun Farocki has still to
be understood as a critical enquiry into the visible and the political use of images.
21
However, the tone of interrogation has changed from “taking a stance in the public
realm” through a bodily intervention as shown in Inextinguishable Fire to more
complex arrangements of visual thought. I will illustrate this shift by example of
Farocki’s installation Eye/Machine.
Eye/Machine (2001-2003)
Similar to Inextinguishable Fire, Eye/Machine also investigates the relation between
seeing and understanding, vision and knowledge. In the three part video installation
Eye/Machine, made between 2001 and 2003, Farocki explores the complicity between
visual technology, industrial production processes and modern warfare. Eye/Machine
focuses on so called “operational images” which are the product of intelligent machines
capable of performing tasks automatically and relatively independently of human
control (fig. 3). Operational images are images that are part of a technical operation.
They are products of visual tracking technologies designed to operate without human
intervention and thus creating new visual spaces for non-human vision. The installation
combines footage from production processes, aerial surveillance images, army
instruction videos and historical propaganda films. The material is presented on two
screens with on-screen commentary (fig. 4).
The conceptual approach of his work is reflected in its artistic form which has
changed from linear cinematic film to multidimensional audio-visual installation. The
questions of what constitutes an image, what does it show and what are its material and
social conditions correspond to the investigations into the visible described in
Inextinguishable Fire. Crucial for his analysis in Eye/Machine, however, is the use of
images in modern warfare. Farocki shows the use of vision guided machines in both
industrial production processes and military aviation. Whereas the former one increases
the effectiveness of fully-automatised industrial production processes, the later one
suggests an increased precision in the detection and destruction of military targets (fig.
5). Farocki’s dialectic between the productive and destructive force of vision revolves
around the German notion of Aufklärung which means ‘enlightenment’ as well as
22
Fig. 3: Harun Farocki, Eye/Machine (2001)
‘reconnaissance’. In the light of a new technology-based regime of vision both terms
have gained new meaning as illustrated by the use of missile combined cameras which
not only find their own target but also document its destruction. In this regard, the
instrumental images placed on the heads of so called ‘intelligent weapons’ in the first
Gulf War seem to indicate not only a new stage in the history of vision and visual
representation but also an image regime that might be able to exist without human
agency. This changed regime of vision is simultaneously reflected in a distinct
cinematography which constantly reflects the conditions of its own possibility under the
omen of the automatic use of images. Similar to Inextinguishable Fire the crucial
question remains what do images show?
Eye/Machine cannot ultimately answer this question but it creates a visual space
where this question can be addressed. Again, the notion of ‘Aufklärung’ is key here.
What is the role of the image in times of advanced optical technologies? Do images still
have an enlightening function in a humanist tradition which takes man as the departing
point for all epistemological endeavours? Or has the use of images simply become part
of an industrial-military complex based on visual surveillance and machine vision?
More importantly than any attempt to answer these questions, Farocki’s installation,
displayed as a split screen structure, creates a different kind of machine vision and a
23
Fig. 4: Installation shot Eye/Machine, Raven Row Gallery, London, 2009. Harun Farocki. Against
What? Against Whom?
new infrastructure for a cinematic practice that simultaneously presents and destabilises
image-based information. Thus Farocki presents a method for critically investigating the
political dimension of the visible that features three key aspects.
The first aspect is Farocki’s interest in alternative forms of visual knowledge production
expressed in a scepticism towards the seeming self-evidence of the visible. Thus, the
crucial question here is: what do images show and how can their (re-)arrangements and
Fig. 5: Harun Farocki, Eye/Machine (2001)
24
juxtapositions be used to produce new or changed forms of meaning? The political
positions Farocki develops in his films not only emerge from a decentralisation and
destabilisation of meaning, a visual contemplation on contingency as it were, but also
from a subversive use of images. This notion of subversion, or détournement in the
Situationist tradition, becomes effective in Farocki’s use of archive material, found
footage and sequences from technological films and documentaries which he de- and recontextualises in order to criticise the social and material conditions they represent.
Second, Farocki’s essayistic filmmaking does not separate political thought from
political action therefore presenting an aesthetic conflation of theory and practice. This
conflation is also prominent in Farocki’s work which offers a two-fold and oscillating
view on the examined object and the procedures of examination. The essay film as
political theory in images denotes a practice which swings back and forth between
perception and conception, between concrete object and abstract generalisation.
Simultaneously, this oscillation is declared an explicit topic of the work. In cinematic
practice, theory is not something that is externally applied but rather something that is
developed through images. The essay film becomes a contribution to a theoretical
discourse based on the autonomy of the visual that demonstrates that theoretical
thinking does not necessarily have to choose a written or oral form of communication
but can articulate itself in the medium of film. For Farocki the main form of this
theoretical articulation is the filmic montage through which different types of images
become interrelated, comment on and interrupt each other, and eventually construct a
new “fluid material multiplicity”.
The third important aspect of essayistic filmmaking can be found in the critical
reflection of methodology which effectively results from the conflation of theory and
practice. That means that the focus is not only on the outcome of a critical investigation
but just as much on its theoretical processes and aesthetic methods. Thus any form of
visual essayistic research already includes a level of self-analysis expressing an
awareness of how the object of investigation informs its own methods of research. This
critical and reflective position towards one’s own “orthodoxy of thought” that Adorno
has defined as one of the core features of essayistic reasoning also involves a departure
25
from a merely linear and teleological way of thinking. Adorno writes: “Thought does
not progress in a single direction; instead, the moments are interwoven as in a carpet.
The fruitfulness of the thoughts depends on the density of the texture. The thinker does
not actually think but rather makes himself into an arena for intellectual experience,
without unraveling it.”40
The multi-medial character of essayistic film making opens up such a space
where visual, aural and textual elements offer a description of the social world which is
not only based on subjective experience but furthermore declare emotional, imaginative
and speculative exchanges between an ‘I’ and a ‘you’ as essential components of
political knowledge. Especially in his video installations Farocki’s approach trades his
early activist fervour for a more complex form of political thought through images. His
early use of visual metaphors did not only make something visible but it also made
things uncanny and unfamiliar and thus allowed Farocki to reclaim a legitimate place
for art and aesthetic practice.
This simultaneous multi-dimensional mode of political thinking seems to
correspond to William Connolly’s project of the new pluralism which “aims to
overcome closure in political theory that exclude possibilities for thinking critically
about existing political constellations and the multiple ways in which they can be
reconfigured. The new pluralism insists uncompromisingly on including theories and
practices from outside the well-governed territory of established political theory and
political practice.”41
The essay film as a political thinking in images is at the same time an aesthetic
practice and a visual form of theory from outside established practices of political
thinking. The political quality of the essay film results from its contemplation and
pondering on the notion of contingency as a destabilisation of image-based meaning.
Harun Farocki himself has called this process of destabilisation an “impulse to avoid
naturalising the image” and to offer a perpetual uncertainty not only in regard to the
indexicality of the image but also in regard to the possibilities of its material and social
conditions.
26
Conclusion
As discussed above, the cinematic work of Harun Farocki proposes a form of visual
practice that conflates theory and practice, critical thought and interventionist action in
an attempt to render visible the invisible social practices of our everyday lives.
Essayistic filmmaking thus offers an understanding of the image that acknowledges the
critical potential of image making that goes beyond the iconoclastic attitude of
traditional political thought. That is not to say that one has to refrain from any critical
attitude toward the visual. On the contrary. The essay film presents a critical
investigation into the visible through the juxtaposition and montage of different types of
images. In this way, images do not show a given, pre-existing reality but rather
construct a specific appearance of the social world that is inevitably part of broader
technological regimes of vision. As shown above, the essay film as a form of political
thinking in images emphasises in an almost phenomenological way the subjective
starting point of any intellectual and perceptive endeavour. Pointing at the contingent
nature of all social constellations including its aesthetic and visual configuration
becomes its political strength.
Politics is thus not understood as firm positioning but as a destabilising move
towards dominant forms of presenting the world. Recognising visual-aesthetic practices
in general and filmmaking in particular as effective modes of political enquiry offers a
concept of political thinking that does not dismiss subjective and speculative approaches
to politics as unorthodox and irrelevant, and hence as unfit for serious political debate.
Instead, political thinking in images acknowledges aesthetic, visual and imaginative
elements as constitutive for our understanding of the social world and its
epistemological conditions.
27
Notes
1
The concept of the “iconic” or “pictorial” turn will be discussed in greater detail in the following
paragraphs.
2 For a comprehensive collection of essays on the impact of metaphors on political thinking see Terrell
Carver and Jernej Pikalo (eds.), Political Language and Metaphor: Interpreting and Changing the World
(London: Routledge, 2008); for the role of metaphors in political rhetoric see Jonathan Charteris-Black,
Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2005).
3 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 2f.
4 W. J. T. Mitchell, What do pictures want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), 344.
5 Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983),
p. 4f.
6 ibid., p. 12.
7 Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes By Roland Barthes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977),
p. 47.
8 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977),
p. 164.
9 ibid.
10 For the concept of “metapictures” see W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994). p. 35f.
11 The term ‘visual rhetoric’ is by no means limited to media images and “refers to a large body of visual
and material practices, from architecture to cartography and from interior design to public memorials.”
John Louis Lucaites and Robert Hariman, “Visual Rhetoric, Photojournalism, and Democratic Public
Culture”, Rhetoric Review, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (Spring 2001), pp. 37-42, p. 37. For a semiotic approach see
Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image”, in Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977), pp.
32-51.
12 A similar observation was made by German art historian Gottfried Boehm who at the same time
introduced the concept of the iconic turn (ikonische Wende) in his seminal essay “Die Wiederkehr der
Bilder” (“The Return of Images”) in Gottfried Boehm (ed.), Was ist ein Bild? (München: Fink, 1994), p.
13.
13 “The picture of ancient and medieval philosophy as concerned with things, the philosophy of the
seventeenth through the nineteenth century as concerned with ideas, and the enlightened contemporary
philosophical scene with words has considerable plausibility.” Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 263.
14 W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Visual and Verbal Representation (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1994), p. 16.
15 W.J.T. Mitchell, What do Pictures want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), p. 348.
16 See James Elkins and Maja Naef (eds.), The Stone Art Theory Institutes Volume 2: What is an image?
(University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011). Each book of this series is based on a
weeklong event held in Chicago where a group of distinguished specialists in the field meet in closed
seminars. The recorded and edited conversations of these seminars and panel discussions build the basis
for the published volumes.
17 ibid., p. 42.
18 David B. Downing and Susan Bazargan, “Image and Ideology: Some Preliminary Histories and
Polemics” in David B. Downing and Susan Bazargan (eds.), Image and Ideology in Modern/Postmodern
Discourse (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 4.
19 Keith Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn”, in Journal of Visual Cultures, Vol. 7, No. 2, August
2008, p. 132.
20 ibid., p. 141.
28
21
Marie-José Mondzain makes a similar attempt to conceptualise politics and the image together. In a
recent essay she states: “My aim here is not to explain, but simply to understand what an image is and to
understand its relation to violence (...).” Thus Mondzain also links the question of what is an image to the
question of what do images do, links their ontological and political dimension. See Marie-José Mondzain,
“Can Images Kill?” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2009), p. 22.
22 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 16.
23 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism’” in Judith
Butler and Joan W. Scott (eds.), Feminists Theorize the Political (New York; London, 1992), p. 7.
24 ibid., p. 6f.
25 Oliver Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou
and Laclau (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 26.
26 The “post-foundational” tradition acknowledges contingency as the essential characteristic of modern
political thought as discussed for instance in the work of J.G.A Pollock and Kari Palonen. See J.G.A.
Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) and Kari Palonen, Das ‘Webersche Moment’: Zur
Kontingenz des Politischen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998).
27 Oliver Marchart: Post-Foundational Political Thought, p. 2.
28 For the different modes of visual enquiry see Ursula Biemann (ed.), Stuff it: The Video Essay in the
Digital Age (Vienna: Springer, 2003); Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image” in e-flux, no. 10,
November 2009; Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun (eds.), Harun Farocki: Against what? Against whom?
(London: Koenig Books, 2010). Of particular interest is here also the work of Volker Pantenburg who
interprets Farocki’s films as visual theory. See Volker Pantenburg, Film als Theorie: Bildforschung bei
Harun Farocki und Jean-Luc Godard (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2006).
29 Laura Rascaroli, The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film (London: Wallflower
Press, 2009), p. 21f.
30 Traditional essayistic approaches to filmmaking are often associated with members of the French New
Wave such as Agnès Varda, Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard but comprise now a huge variety of
filmmakers and cinematic styles.
31 Timothy Corrigan, The Essay Film, p. 30.
32 ibid., p. 34.
33 Timothy Corrigan, The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), p. 55.
34 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form”, in Notes to Literature: Volume One, ed. Rolf Tiedemann,
trans. Sherry Weber Nicholson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 23.
35 Laura Rascaroli, The Personal Camera, p. 38f.
36 See Richard Rorty, Contingency, irony, and solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
pp. 45f., here p. 46.
37 ibid., p. 33.
38 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form”, p. 9.
39 Christa Blümlinger, “Slowly Forming a Thought While Working on Images”, in Thomas Elsaesser
(ed.), Harun Farocki: Working on the Sightlines (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004),
p. 164.
40 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form”, p. 13.
41 David Campbell and David Schoolman (eds.), The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the
Contemporary Global Condition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 1.
29