Here are some comments I offered by way of an introduction to a screening of 'The Ister' at Brighton, June 2006 as part of the Critical Positions festival organised by Melanie Absolon and Michael Sippings - www.criticalpositions.org

On reflection - and having now seen the film again - I think my judgement regarding the film's attention to matters ecological was too harsh. I think there's much more subtlety in Stiegler's remarks about our relationship to 'Techne' than I was at first prepared to give him credit for.

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Faced with the task of introducing this magnificent leviathan of a work, I am daunted.

Not the least because, at the beginning of 'The Ister', there is a sort of warning for anyone who undertakes to ‘introduce’ the work. At least there is, in as much as one might see a parallel with Heidegger’s concern in the face of Holderlin’s hymn-poem 'The Ister' which give this work its name. In those prefatory remarks, Heidegger emphasizes the role of his discourse ‘about’ Holderlin as an ‘accompaniment’; he says that his remarks ‘call [things] to our attention’, and give ‘pause for reflection’. What he seems to be refusing is the idea of ‘commentary’ as translation, or even, ‘reading’. Perhaps because, as Derrida later argues, ‘translation’ is impossible (though you can always try), and yet it is a temptation for one engaged in such a task as I am today.

By way of avoiding that temptation to ‘translate’ and its pitfalls, I am rather, going to look at things that are cued by the film but are otherwise largely absent: inscribed absences if you like; the film’s lapses of attention, - or to use an image from another deconstructionist – Paul de Man - ‘blind spots’.

In many ways, this is not just about being forewarned by Heidegger, but also, about taking a ‘Critical Position’ – or a particular critical position - in relation to The Ister – much as I would also like to call your attention to things that are there in the work. And to do so, is in no way to suggest that 'The Ister' does not also ‘take’ a Critical Position… […]

I have two (and a PS) and I think they are film’s most important blind spots

So: to the first suggested absence:

And as it’s an easy point, though no less important for that – I’ll be brief:

1.

There are – perhaps, various questions that the film asks – and they are grand ones:

‘What is “The West”’? And ‘when did it begin?’ (‘Where are its foundations?’) These questions are brought to the fore, reflexively – deconstructively - by Jean-Luc Nancy. There is also the question of ‘what is man’? which Bernard Stiegler responds to in the opening chapter. (‘Man has no qualities. Man acquires qualities through the adoption of prostheses. Man is a technical being’.) Perhaps because ‘the question of man’ is referred to Greek mythology, it seems that not only is the question of man that of ‘European’ man, but also of European men. Hence my point: there are few women in this film. At the level of its authorship it is exclusive: First there is Holderlin. Then Heidegger on Holderlin. Then Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe variously on Heidegger (and others, e.g. Husserl, and Holderlin – again…) Via the score, there is also Wagner, Bruckner and Schumann as musical Europeans (or more specifically, Germans). Then again, there is David Barison, and Daniel Ross - Australian though they may be.

Women appear in the work only peripherally – notable examples of their marginality include an Agnes [?] who was drowned in the Danube for alleged witchcraft and an off-stage Hélene Luc-Nancy who is only made known to us as a collector of souvenir model-buildings.

This is a telling touch: woman, as ‘not-prosthetic-man’ relates to his prostheses via the fetish, which presumably, allow her to mediate her lack. I’m going to refrain from comment on 'The Ister’s' phallogocentric Europe (a Europe of the word, and of man, and hence, of men’s words) - if only, for the time being, because it can be related, perhaps, to another absence that the film cues:

Much of the work is concerned with the idea of ‘Techne’ – the Greek word for ‘technology’ – I’ve already noted Stiegler’s contribution here. One should not, of course overlook the visual narrative which, as much as it depicts a pastoral Danube – the Danube of lyric poetry - also depicts an industrialized river. So what is the blind spot here?

2.

Taking the myth of Prometheus, and the gift of fire to man to speak of the birth of technology, Stiegler reads ‘technology’ as that which enables man to have a past.

Technology, Stiegler argues, is that which enables man to transmit his individual memory. For as he notes, pre-technical man has only two memories: genetic memory, in the form of DNA, and individual memory (one’s recollection of what has happened to oneself, which is lost by the species when the individual dies.) With man’s ability to make prostheses, a third memory comes into being as individual memory is transmissible - as it is reified in culture. As Stiegler concludes ‘technics is memory support’.

However, as the latter half of the twentieth century has increasingly acknowledged, and this millennium, technology has other, far less ‘supportive’ effects. ‘The Ister’ addresses some of these, and one it could not avoid, given the involvement of Heidegger. I’m referring here, of course, to Heidegger’s notorious remarks on factory production in which he likens the Holocaust to ‘industrial agriculture’.

(It is Lacoue-Labarthe who, in 'The Ister', calls these remarks of Heidegger’s to our attention – contending, in stark disagreement with their author, that the Holocaust is ‘outside history’. And note, as he does so, the extraordinary trope of the ‘caesura’ – a breaking / braking of breath – which he uses to describe the Holocaust as a ‘rupture’ with – or from - other ‘factory production’ and which skillfully interweaves the politics of history and lyric poetry, given that ‘the breath’ is the medium of the latter.)

With a new and different breath (struggling to avoid anything remotely like Heidegger’s equivalence) – I turn to an effect of ‘Techne’ that 'The Ister' chooses not to see – except from some passing ‘shots’ and perhaps, obliquely, in some of Stiegler’s remarks on ‘the adoption of time’. The Ister’s blindspot here can be simply named: ‘The West’s ecocide’. For a film made in 2004, and which follows the course of Europe’s ‘greatest waterway’, this is an oversight indeed.

The question for me is then: what can be understand by these two exclusions? There are many ways in which they could come together: for example: one could ask: would ‘technical’ woman have produced the same environmental crisis that we now face?

For me, the most productive way of responding to these absences 'The Ister' inscribes is to site them in the context of my enthusiasm for the work. On the one hand the intellectual history that The Ister invokes is one that I ‘know’ – as in ‘recognize’, and one that I revel in – at least as a forum for debate. On the other hand it excludes me and ignores certain passions and concerns. This is the question that the film perhaps asks best - to all of us: how are you this European, or these Europeans?

3.

As a sort of PS, I can’t help thinking that had Derrida been present in the film, that my ‘critical position’ would have been rather different. But much as he is represented by his disciplines and associates, he is absent – though alive at the time of the film’s production.

At the screening of the film in London, I asked David Barison why Derrida was so conspicuously absent. His reply was: ‘Derrida? That was way too scary.’

Last modified: 20.07.06 by neil