"Havoc of matter", détournement in the films of Debord, Rouch, Godard
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The dissertation addresses the significance of the practice of détournement in the films of Guy Debord, Jean Rouch, and Jean-Luc Godard. The purpose is threefold: to see détournement 1) as part of a re-conceptualization of montage after World War II; 2) as a critique of the reification of political representation during les trentes glorieuses, the so-called Golden Age of capitalism from 1950's to the 1970's; 3) as a method for the (de)construction of subjectivities. For Debord and the Situtionist International [SI], détournement was a re-conceptualization and radicalization of montage -- a method of appropriating an image, of turning it away and leading it astray from its seemingly natural, normal use. Emphasizing various contemporaneous critiques of the relation between power, knowledge, and subjection/subjectivation (especially, the critiques of Debord, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze), I argue for the practice of cinematic détournement as a deconstruction of the image that not only dissociates it from its source, but also dissociates our habituated modes of perception and experience, action and reaction, of relating to the world and to oneself -- especially those modes through which one constitutes and recognizes oneself as a subject. The dissertation underscores the affective force of such dissociations, especially its implications for the struggles against subjection/subjectivation, that is, the struggles against a form of power in which procedures of subjection become ever more implicated with the processes of subjectivation. Particularly, I point to how détournement is deployed in attempts to respond to the unsettling, disjunctive encounter with the new political subjectivity of the colonized subject in France of the 1950's, 60's -- not only in relation to the struggles for decolonization (for example, the Algerian War, an especially significant example for France at this moment), but also in relation to the struggles against "the colonization of everyday life" (for example, the SI's call to address the problem of the quality of life, of "happiness, " during the period of an aggressive, at times violent, form of state-led modernization). In short, the dissertation aligns the practice of cinematic détournement with a method of analysis that seeks to deconstruct the habituated truths about one's relation to oneself and others (particularly, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and Jean Laplanche). And it addresses the significance of this method in the films of not only Debord but also his contemporaries, Rouch (cinéma-vérité) and Godard (French new wave, Dziga Vertov group) -- two of the foremost practitioners of a new mode of filmmaking that unsettles the dichotomy between documentary and fiction, objective and subjective, true and false, and poses the question of how truth is articulated, imposed, enacted upon and for whom.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Yoon, Soyoung |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History |
| Primary advisor | Levi, Pavle |
| Thesis advisor | Levi, Pavle |
| Thesis advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Ma, Jean, 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | McDonough, Tom, 1969- |
| Advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Advisor | Ma, Jean, 1972- |
| Advisor | McDonough, Tom, 1969- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Soyoung Yoon. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2010. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Soyoung Yoon
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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