Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T05:29:39.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Figures of Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2013

Nadine Boljkovac
Affiliation:
Brown University
Get access

Summary

The artist is a seer, a becomer.

(WIP: 171)

War nods off to sleep, but keeps one eye always open.

(NB)

Consciousness is only a dream with one's eyes open.

(SPP: 20)

First sight of the camp: it is another planet.

(NB)

‘NACHT, “nuit”, disaient-ils, c'est l'oubli. NEBEL, “brouillard”, c'est la fumée dans laquelle vous vous volatiserez tous – ihr werdet krepieren, “vous crèverez tous!”’ (Raskin 1987: 16). Against ‘night’ and ‘fog’, against the threat of forgetting humanity's capacity for mass extermination and dehumanisation, Resnais' 1955 Nuit et Brouillard forges. In search of life through the imperceptible, impossible sight of ‘another planet’ bent on shame and annihilation, Nuit et Brouillard confronts actual and virtual remains of the Holocaust as the film's audio-visual assemblages of relentless, painstaking movements, plaintive score and dispassionate voiceover profoundly violate our sight and means for sensory release from the affective violence, the ‘endless, uninterrupted fear …’ (NB). If, as Deleuze contends, ‘Resnais succeeds in showing, by means of things and victims, not only the functioning of the camp but also the mental functions, which are cold, diabolical, almost impossible to understand which preside over its organization’ (C2: 121), Nuit et Brouillard also undercuts these efficient murderous operations through piercing revelations of horrors that at once resist and disavow their very exposure: ‘no description, no image can reveal their true dimension’ (NB).

Type
Chapter
Information
Untimely Affects
Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema
, pp. 31 - 60
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×