Manchester University Press
4 Condemned to oblivion
Abstract
In this essay, Claire Denis’ science-fiction film High Life (2018) is studied through the lens of Max Silverman’s notion of concentrationary cinema as well as through the aesthetics of the science-fiction sublime. Questions of representation, or rather, the way that science fiction confronts the problem of representing that which is unrepresentable – from the myriad human atrocities of the modern era to the contemporary anxiety of impending (potential) human annihilation – are explored alongside those issues confronted by attempts to use Holocaust representation as a method of critique. Extrapolating from the precariousness and pessimism of the tumultuous present, High Life explores and ultimately rejects the possibility, save annihilation, of any kind of redemption in humanity’s future, suggestive of Silverman’s thoughts on destruction as a desirable release from prolonged torture. To watch this film is to immerse oneself in a portrayal of the not-so-distant future that is as nightmarish as it is serene. Employing techniques in a dreamlike narrative structure characteristic of Silverman’s concentrationary cinema – including radical montage, disorienting flashbacks and temporal discontinuity – Denis draws on the impossible limitlessness of space juxtaposed with the terror of confinement to craft an oneiric aesthetic meditation on the sublime that is also a nightmarish visceral study of the violence and trauma characteristic of the post-industrial human experience. High Life is an allegorisation of the collective traumas of modernity, if not of the Nazi concentration camp more specifically, which becomes a defining symbol for representations of the traumas of the modern world – traumas that may otherwise remain unrepresentable.
Abstract
In this essay, Claire Denis’ science-fiction film High Life (2018) is studied through the lens of Max Silverman’s notion of concentrationary cinema as well as through the aesthetics of the science-fiction sublime. Questions of representation, or rather, the way that science fiction confronts the problem of representing that which is unrepresentable – from the myriad human atrocities of the modern era to the contemporary anxiety of impending (potential) human annihilation – are explored alongside those issues confronted by attempts to use Holocaust representation as a method of critique. Extrapolating from the precariousness and pessimism of the tumultuous present, High Life explores and ultimately rejects the possibility, save annihilation, of any kind of redemption in humanity’s future, suggestive of Silverman’s thoughts on destruction as a desirable release from prolonged torture. To watch this film is to immerse oneself in a portrayal of the not-so-distant future that is as nightmarish as it is serene. Employing techniques in a dreamlike narrative structure characteristic of Silverman’s concentrationary cinema – including radical montage, disorienting flashbacks and temporal discontinuity – Denis draws on the impossible limitlessness of space juxtaposed with the terror of confinement to craft an oneiric aesthetic meditation on the sublime that is also a nightmarish visceral study of the violence and trauma characteristic of the post-industrial human experience. High Life is an allegorisation of the collective traumas of modernity, if not of the Nazi concentration camp more specifically, which becomes a defining symbol for representations of the traumas of the modern world – traumas that may otherwise remain unrepresentable.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
