Godard and his language

With Pasts cited by JLGfifth volume in the series The Eye of HistoryG. Didi-Huberman continues a reflection that he has been leading for several years and as many books on “ photographic conditions of the visibility of history XX^e century » (When images take a position. The eye of history, 12009, p. 46). The subject of this volume is the view on history that Jean-Luc Godard develops in his films, articles and interviews. The book does not cover the entire work, but is interested in Godard’s use of images that are not his: the analysis thus focuses particularly on the History(s) of cinema (1998), The Old Place (1998) and Our Music (2004). G. Didi-Huberman wonders how the montage of archive images, art and films woven with a selection of texts allows Godard to construct a discourse on history. Parallel to the analysis of the form of the enunciation, the position of the enunciator is questioned, that is to say the posture that Godard takes in his films. The originality of G. Didi-Huberman’s book lies in this approach: if Godard makes judgments about history in his montages, what authority does he claim to do so? ?

Editing texts, editing images

The book is divided into six chapters and as many paradoxes. From the beginning of the book, the author in fact poses the ambiguity of the Godardian method. It is a question of language and the practice of literary and textual quotations: for Didi-Huberman, Godard’s use of quotation is at the same time a “ gesture of respect ” And “ a disrespectful posture » (p. 15). Indeed, to cite is to honor the words of recognized authors, but it also means to relativize their position of authority: thus, in a text from 1966 (“ Balthazar’s will “, Cinema notebooksno. 177, 1966), Godard places Merleau-Ponty’s words in the mouth of Bresson’s donkey. For Godard, to quote is not to speak with one’s own words, but with those of the other ; it is also imposing a reference which keeps those who receive it in respect. If the quotation depersonalizes the person who uses it, it also places the person who uses it in the position of the sovereign operator who imposes it thanks to a “ call for authority » (p. 26). What’s more, at the speed with which Godard practices it, the quote tends to break “ the shared game of interlocution » (p. 20), which is aggravated by the fact that the “ language game » which often accompanies it poses a state of affairs « indisputable “, “ position of the artist’s undivided sovereignty » (p. 27). Let us emphasize here that on the question of textual quotations, G. Didi-Huberman is not particularly original: the influence of situationist practice could have been put forward. Despite his criticism of the position of authority inherent in the practice of quotation, the author recognizes that the fact of isolating a sentence from the body of a text makes us understand it differently.

It is the same in the editing of images: by tearing the image from its narrative context, the filmmaker shows us something that “ we don’t see in the movies » (p. 45) ; by putting it together with other images, it evokes new associations of ideas. But if Godard uses a modality of poetic montage, the “ manhole connection “, he also practices a sort of combative montage, the “ rifle mount » of the Maoist years. Such a montage brutally poses a truth: thus this shot of an Israeli child and the Zionist image that is attached to it to imply that every little Israeli is a potential Zionist (in the “ Manifest » of 70). According to Didi-Huberman, the great paradox of Godard’s editing practice lies in the use of a “ dislocated language » and a wealth of images for “ produce slogans, sharp shapes and images without discussion » (p. 54). And this paradox poses a problem on an ethical and political level as soon as “ hazardous amalgams » have a polemical aim, as in the case of the montage we have just talked about.

History and cinema

The third and fourth chapters question Godard’s view of history and some of his political positions. ; more precisely, G. Didi-Huberman mainly addresses the question of the Nazi camps and the Israeli question. The point here is not to comment on the meaning of Godard’s sweeping judgments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its relationship to the Shoah, but to question “ his procedures rather than his opinion » (p. 98), to analyze their formal effectiveness (the practice of editing) and the position of authority that the filmmaker attributes to himself. First of all, there is this strange game of substitution between Godard and the cinema: working at the Swiss Red Cross, his family was not aware of the massacre of Jews during the war (they did not talk about it to young Godard), she is guilty of not having wanted to see ; so it is with cinema. We must then judge cinema through history: “ it’s about thinking about cinema as it will be confused by the storyjudged by her » (p. 57). In the History(s) of cinemait is the story that questions cinema (“ you didn’t see, you didn’t want to see “), just as cinema questions history (on wars, capitalism). The virtuoso editing of Stories thus summons a vast community of images, “ of all eras, all populations, all the cruelties of war and all the beauties of art “, maximum openness which nevertheless tightens on subjectivity “ the loneliest » of the filmmaker (p. 78). The lyricism of Story(s) and the oracle posture that Godard takes there would they not express something like “ the story is me » ? (ibid.). Would the filmmaker assume a transcendent position from which the truth of the story could be decreed? ? According to Didi-Huberman, such authority is expressed in montages which assert an indisputable fact. Thus, for him, an image of the Nazi camps always calls for an image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a beautiful analysis, Didi-Huberman shows that in Our music (2004) the poetic « manhole connection » becomes very problematic in the opposition of images of two bodies of prisoners from Nazi camps: one image shows an exhausted man looking upwards, the other, a man with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. In the first image, the word “ Jewish “, on the second, “ Muslim »: it is implied here that the first awaits the advent of Israel, while the second (a Palestinian) is abandoned by everyone. Doubtful and extremely simplistic, this case of binary editing expresses, according to Didi-Huberman, Godard’s politics: a way of judging, of deciding through editing, a politics of division (p. 115). For the author “ a politics of division “, it is the simplification of the political debate in a binary position, positing good and evil: this simplification of the debate corresponds to what he calls “ closed assembly », juxtaposition of images which imposes such unproven theses on the viewer.

Philosopher or poet ?

The last two chapters (5 and 6) deal with the question of the authority which allows Godard to make such peremptory judgments. It is rightly recalled that the filmmaker seems “ represent alone all the authority of cinema “, as if his films meant to us “ Me, cinema, I speak » (pp. 123-124). As if, between Bazin and Badiou, Godard took seriously the hypothesis of cinema “ ontological art ” And “ generic synthesis of the arts » (p. 125). Then the merits of the author’s position of authority would be none other than the authority of the truth. Strange disposition of a filmmaker who also wants to be a critic ; it is as if Godard wanted to play on all sides, using both the language of the poet to assert truths without explaining them and that of the philosopher to authorize himself as an art with a seriousness worthy of reasoned discourse. According to Didi-Huberman, this would be Godard’s divided consciousness: his claim to be a poet and a philosopher.

Such a position would not pose so much of a problem if Godard’s position of authority did not reach us. so often so authoritarian » (p. 143). Indeed, the practice of editing and Godardian quotation is not modest, there is in it something like “ A pathos pure visionary vibration » (p. 150). In this he is close to an author he esteems, Malraux, with a use of quotation where the cited author is denied by the one who quotes him (in the sense that he erases its presence), far from much more approachable modest works of Benjamin in philosophy and Farocki in cinema (p. 151). Godard’s editing too often attempts to “ impress » the spectator, thus dispossessing him of the capacity to think, while Farocki’s montage restores to the spectator the image he offers him, gives it to him as food for thought. His oracle posture, authority and “ authoritarianism “, Godard would therefore hold it “ since the legitimization of pure genius literary », hence his admiration for Malraux, Michelet and Hugo (ibid.). Didi-Huberman rightly brings Godard closer to German Romanticism, legitimation by pure genius therefore, but also the presence of a conception of imagination as “ productive force », of a thought of the fragment, of a valorization of the contradiction (Witz) and a “ immediate theorization of any aesthetic form » (p. 165). But for German romantics, the projection (Witz) had to rub shoulders with the “ naive poetry », precisely what Pasolini in a superb text (quoted on page 185) deplores the absence of in Godard’s work (absence of popular poetry). This is ultimately what Didi-Huberman criticizes Godard – of act smart : “ As naive poetry generally fails him, he uses and abuses expletive formulas: he denies a lot without completely denying » (p. 198).

G. Didi-Huberman delivers an erudite study, full of references that we have not all mentioned, from Hegel to Warhol via Lacan, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Warburg. Note, however, that it is a bit of a shame to limit Godard’s interpretation of history to the controversial question of the relationship between the camps and Israel. Indeed, its political and historical positions are much more varied ; for example, it would have been interesting to discuss Godard’s theses on the media and the role of the image in the century. Especially since Godard worked in television, even in advertising: it seems to us that here too the author’s relationship with history is at stake. It would also have been interesting to address the question of Godard’s Marxism and his commitment to the dynamics of the Dziga Vertov Group (1968-1972): criticism of the illusion of militancy in art, analysis of the conditions of film production, pedagogy of the image, here again the filmmaker’s ideas on history are expressed (which cannot be reduced to “ rifle mount “).