Reading of Jean Epstein's theory of Cinema

7/18/2019 Reading of Jean Epstein's theory of Cinema

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Redefining personhood: an animistic

reading of Jean Epstein’s theory of cinema

University of Amsterdam

Research Master Media Studies

Graduate School of Humanities

Bogna M Konior

student number: 10394664

e-mail: [email protected]

27.06.2014

Supervisor: dr. Abraham Geil

Second reader: prof. dr. Patricia Pisters

Third reader: prof. dr. Jeroen de Kloet

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/[email protected]



Bogna Konior Redefining personhood 2

Contents

Introduction 3 A conversation with the forgotten part 1 – introducing Jean Epstein . . . . . . . 3

A conversation with the forgotten part 2 – introducing animism . . . . . . . . . 5Structuring the revival – chapter breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1 How film theory can benefit from anthropology: André Bazin and JeanEpstein 91.1 The persistence of Bazin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.2 Bazinism and Epsteinism: methodological perils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.3 Literal or metaphoric: Bazin’s Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2 How Jean Epstein’s theory can benefit from anthropology: photogénieand animism 15

2.1 The two specifications of photogénie – mobility and personality . . . . . . 162.2 Redefining personhood in Epstein’s theory and in “new animism” . . . . . 18

3 How we confuse 'life' with 'soul': vitalism and animism 203.1 A rare enigma? Epstein’s influences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.2 Vitalism: from scientific doctrine to dogma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.3 Cinematic vitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.4 Primitive modernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243.5 Vitalist aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263.6 Vitalism and animism in Epstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4 How to break free from the tyranny of metaphors: taking animism se-riously 294.1 Metaphors of vision: the revelationist tradition in early film theory . . . . 294.2 Demystifying Epstein: misconceptions and metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . 314.3 The question of our ontologies: naturalism versus animism . . . . . . . . . 334.4 The personality of objects (2nd specification of photogénie) . . . . . . . . . 354.5 The difference between seeing and knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384.6 Cinema: a lesson of egotism in reverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5 Broadening the animistic horizon – towards an animistic theory of cin-

ema 425.1 Relational cinema: cinema as animism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

6 Conclusion 45

Appendices 48

Appendix A The Lives and Souls of Objects 48




Introduction

A conversation with the forgotten part 1 – introducing Jean

Epstein

For the cinephile, Jean Epstein’s (1897-1948) name stands for early cinema masterpieces,

such as his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1928). Only

in the recent decades, have Epstein’s theoretical and literary texts awoken the curiosity

of film scholars. The interest in Epstein’s writing is not only on the rise: it is undergo-

ing a reneissance. The revival of Epstein's theoretical work started with the publications

in the British journal Afterimage and a retrospective at New York’s City’s Anthology Film

Archive, followed by David Bordwell’s dissertation on French Impressionism (1974) to one

by Stuart Liebman (1980), and a publication by Richard Abel on French cinema from 1987.

This revival only intensified over the following decades, culminating in Sarah Keller’s and

Jason N. Paul’s (2012) collection of critical essays and new translations of Epstein’s work

published by the University of Amsterdam Press, as well as another retrospective at New

York’s City’s Anthology Film Archive (2011-2012), followed by a recent release of an Ep-

stein collection by Potemkine Films in France.

Current engagements with Epstein posit importantquestionsforthose of us whoareguided

by other theorists or philosophers in our own work: as the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and

Felix Guattari state in What is Philosophy (1994), “to think, to perform philosophy, one

needs conceptual personae, or more simply, philosophical friends” (qtd. in Rodowick xiv).

Among the many methods we chose to approach influential figures with, two seem to be

the most popular. The first is to decode: what did Epstein mean? How can we gain a

fuller, better understanding of his work? Which strands of his work seem to overpower

others? What is the essence of his theory, and how can we complicate our understanding

of it? These are the questions that, among others, motivate the current Epstein renais-

sance: they illuminate his work in a manner that constitutes a productive re-evaluationthat deepens our insight. The other method is to create: as Deleuze and Guattari advise, a

philosopher needs philosophical friends who aid conceptual support in thecreation of new

concepts – the chief task of philosophy (“What is Philosophy?” 2). Such is the relation be-

tween this thesis and the work of Jean Epstein. The argument is indebted to the adoption

of “animism” in his theory. In fact, it is through my research on animism that I’ve found

the work of Epstein, not the other way around. I’ve found out that Epstein’s film theory

is rich and fascinating in its own right, and incredibly complex. All the more because the

distinction between Epstein’s theoretical work and practical filmmaking is fluid – both areproving grounds for his ideas, what results in a rather experimental film theory. In a fore-

word to a collection of essays with a similar intent to mine, part-decoding, part-creation,




Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze’s Film-Philosophy (2010), D.N. Rodowick opens with the

following statement:

Cinema no doubt was birthed in time in that no one in 1895 could have imag-

ined that it would develop as an art, much less a philosophical machine. As

Deleuze writes of cinema’s origins, “the essence of a thing never emerges at its

beginning, but only in the middle, in the course of its development when its

powers are affirmed”. Only retrospectively do we recognize the emergence of

the new. (xiii, italics BK)

Cinema creates its conditions of emergence retrospectively. This thesis proposes a possi-

bility of a (re)emergence: an interpretative strategy inspired by, if not completely faithful

to Epstein’s work. Instead of decoding and reclaiming Epstein for contemporary film the-

ory, I take Epstein’s intriguing theoretical oeuvre as my starting point, in order to high-

light the unnoticed presence of animism within the existing film theory, as well as to draw

a map of possibilities for future animistic theories of cinema. My work is then a practice

of 'anamnesis'. In Plato, 'anamnesis' is an epistemological theory stating that humans can

retrieve knowledge from their past incarnations ( Phadeo), while in Christianity 'anamne-

sis' is the part of the liturgy where one can enter the remembrance of Christ’s deeds on

Earth: “[…] this do in remembrance of me” (King James Bible Luke 22:19; Corinthians

11:24-25). The philosophy publisher re.press continuously releases new anthologies and

book as a part of their 'anamnesis' series that they define as such:

Anamnesis means remembrance or reminiscence, the collection and re-collection

of what has been lost, forgotten, or effaced. It is therefore a matter of the very

old, of what has made us who we are. But anamnesis is also a work that trans-

forms its subject, always producing something new. To recollect the old, to

produce the new: that is the task of Anamnesis1.

To recollect the forgotten, both animism and Epstein’s theory, is the first step to creating

the new: an animistic theory of cinema.

The recent collection of translations and critical essays (Keller and Paul, 2012) devoted to

exploring Epstein’s work, first of its kind in English, introduces him as one of the trag-

ically forgotten classical film theorists, whose work is of a standard comparable to film

theory’s canonical texts. The “reclaiming” that the collection undertakes is threefold, as it

highlights Epstein’sposition in three importantdebates: on medium specificity, cinemaas

art, and the intersection of technology and modernity. Due to his engagement with these

debates, and the ability to reach beyond them into the concerns of film studies today, Ep-stein’s work is even “more relevant now than ever” (Gunning 13). Gunning deplores the

1http://re-press.org/category/series/anamnesis/

http://re-press.org/category/series/anamnesis/




fact that Epstein’s theoretical writing is often overshadowed by hisartistic output, and that

he is often “dismissed as a visionary, a poet, a mystic who naïvely sees cinema as offering

an almost millennial promise” (13). The general tendency of the anthology is to reclaim

Epstein for film studies, as a prominent theorist, unjustly neglected. The collection alsotakes a historicist approach, highlighting Epstein’s position against the backdrop of his

own times, as if reclaiming him would open up a whole new land of thinking about cin-

ema, along with Epstein’s influences, colleagues, and discourses that were important at

the time. Epstein was primarily concerned with whether these new technologies of com-

munication, art, and narrative that cinema introduced could “offer a way to rethink man’s

relation to his environment rather than an increased access to the ever-the-same” (Gun-

ning 14). Can they sharpen not only our senses, but our relation to the world? These

questions will never cease to demand and produce new answers.

My questions are similar, yet my approach is different. Gunning’s attentive introduction

hints at animism quite a few times, without ever making a decisive step in its direction:

“For Epstein [...] cinema offered a way for human perception to penetrate into the very life

of matter”; “matter itself may have a sentient and animate dimension”; “[cinema] captures

a universal vibration shared by the soul of things”; “cinema as a way of sharpening and

intensifying not only our senses, but our complex relation to the world ” (Gunning 14-20,

italics BK). Even for such a perceptive reader as Gunning, animism remains an undetected

reference. It is not as much that Gunning ignores animism on purpose, but animism itself

has been deleted from our intellectual and cultural sphere.

A conversation with the forgotten part 2 – introducing animism

What is animism, and what is the reason of its decline from a foundational anthropological

term to a position of invisibility at best, and mockery at worst? Anthropology textbooks

often follow Edward Tylor, the author of the ground-breaking study Primitive Culture

(1871). In his definition, one that contemporary anthropology labels as “old animism”:“[Animism is] a belief that inside ordinary visible, tangible bodies there is a normally in-

visible being: the soul” (Harris2 1983:186). Singular strands of contemporary anthropol-

ogy (and now also philosophy and art) contest this definition, explaining that Tylor’s is

but a projection of the modern definition of personhood onto social structures of ‘primi-

tive’ cultures. An increasing number of anthropological publications aims at undoing the

judgment, and the harm that volumes of classical, Western anthropology caused. For

Graham Harvey, the author of a compendium Animism: Respecting the Living World

(2005), animism is foremost a social, materialist practice, which allows humans to re-2Marvin Harris’s book „Cultural Anthropology” continues to be one of the most popular anthropology

textbooks – the newest, 7th edition was published in 2006.




spectfully relate to non-humans of the world, and is expressed in relations: ”Animists are

people who recognize, that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human,

and that life is always lived in relationship with others” (2005:xi). In his forthcoming

book, Cannibal Metaphysics (2014)a Braziliananthropologist and nowalso a philosopherEduardo Viveiros de Castro envisions anthropology’s new task: “Anthropology is ready to

fully assume its new mission of being the theory/practice of the permanent decolonization

of thought3”. Proving the intersection between anthropology and philosophy, De Castro

discusses how the book’s first intended title was Anti-Narcissus: Anthropology as Mi-

nor Science as a homage to Deleuze and Guattari’s radical philosophy book Anti-Oedipus:

Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972). For de Castro, ontological systems like animism

are themselves complete modes of thought and practice that do not need to be explained

by Western and/or modern anthropologists to the people who carry them out: “the source

of the most interesting concepts, problems, entities and agents introduced into anthropo-

logical theory is in the imaginative power of the societies – people and collectives – that

it proposes to explain4”. The Australian anthropologist Michael Taussig also expresses a

similar belief in his influential study The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South Amer-

ica (1988), where indigenous peoples are portrayed not as the objects of analysis, but

systematic thinkers producing cultural and social critique, through practice and theory.

When discussing the Polynesian concept of “life forces” Peter Mataira stresses that in-

digenous and modern concepts should weight equally for the reader: “these are key terms

in the expression of the social interconnectedness [...] They do not imply anything more –

or less – mystical than power in Foucault’s writings” (qtd. in Harvey 129). Far from “a be-

lief”, animism is foremost a social practice, one through which we can re-relate to objects

through a recognition of their personhood. Contemporary art does not resists the appeal

of animism, especially in its redefinition of the object-person dynamics. Anselm Franke,

the curator of the 2012 exhibition Animism explains:

In animism, you have a different relationship to things, to nature; you don’t

treat them as just “dead matter” that is indifferent to humans. Therefore, it is

also about borders: it’s about drawing certain distinctions differently, and this

concerns literally everything: everyday experience just as much as the defini-

tion of what is a ‘subject’, a ‘self’, or a ‘legal person’. Then, when other peo-

ple make those distinctions in a different way, you call them ‘pre-modern’. So

modernity is always about borders, and what we were trying to do is develop

a curatorial ‘frame’ that de-colonizes the imagination, and shows how these

borders are implemented and policed, but also how they can be conceived dif-

ferently 5.

3De Castro’s book is to be published in December, 2014. A short excerpt can be accessed here: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/cannibal-metaphysics-amerindian-perspectivism

4ibid.5 Accessed at 20/05/2014: http://www.vopmagazine.com/2012tb/

http://www.vopmagazine.com/2012tb/

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/cannibal-metaphysics-amerindian-perspectivism

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/cannibal-metaphysics-amerindian-perspectivism




This is precisely what cinemaasanimism is in Epstein’s theory, too – a recognition of a per-

sonhood of objects, and a de-centralizing of theanthropocentric, egotist hierarchy through

cinema. The most welcome development to accompany the current Epstein revival in the

West would be an opening of cinema to animism. Not least because the current scholarly and popular interest in post-humanism demands a theoretical basis that would go beyond

cinema as a representation of the post-human or nonhuman condition, fulfilled in an end-

less stream of cyborg, sci-fi, vampire, zombie, and monster images. If we are to speak of a

post-human condition in a modern, technological world, we must turn to animism, and its

powerful stance against anthropocentrism. This means not only the anthropocentrism of

representation, which haunts the majority of cinema, but of our theories, too. Animism,

far before the modern, Western society developed its claim of human uniqueness, func-

tioned as another way of relating to the world, not based on human exceptionality. Yet, as

the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers perceptively observes, the matter of

animism tends to bring the word ‘really’ into the conversation – as in, is cinema really an-

imistic? Does Epstein really believe there is an interiority to objects that is revealed by the

lens of the camera? What does he really mean when he states that “one of the great pow-

ers of cinema is animism” (289) or “cinema, like all languages, is animistic, it attributes

a semblance of life to the objects it defines” (295)? The incredulous really, as a chorus,

emerges on various occasions throughout this thesis. Sometimes I confront it openly, at

times not, but it is one of my main goals to detach animism from this prejudice of placing

it solely within an idealistic, spiritual realm.

Structuring the revival – chapter breakdown

In Chapter One, “How film theory can benefit from anthropology: André Bazin and Jean

Epstein” I respond to an immediate impulse, one shared by quite a few contemporary Ep-

stein researchers, to compare his newly revived theory of cinema to that of the legendary

film critic and theorist, André Bazin, whose name is often synonymous with “the ontology

of cinema”. Along with the current revolution in Bazin studies, which contests a simpli-

fied reading of Bazin’s eloquent writing, comes a warning. I show that the mistreatment

of anthropological and religious strands of Bazin’s thought is now under scrutiny, as are

the reasons for it: the influence of Bazin’s Christianity on his theory was often perceived

to be naïve and embarrassing, it did not behoove a serious thinker. It seems that animism,

although (contrary to popular belief) not a religion, suffers a similar ideological judgment.

In an effort to save Epstein’s animism from neglect, I plead to treat animism, and the an-

thropological dimensions of his writing with the same estimation the rest of his film theory

receives.




In Chapter Two, “How Jean Epstein’s theory can benefit from anthropology: photogénie

and animism” I introduce Epstein’s theory of cinema, a wild, expressive, and passion-

ate exploration that nevertheless possesses a stylistic and formal rigor of thought, also

present in Epstein’s films. I pay particular attention to the infamous, elusive concept thatis responsible both for Epstein’s past fame in France, and his neglect afterwards: the pho-

togénie. There are many existing interpretations of photogénie: it equals that which is

inherently cinematic; it’s the aesthetic of French Impressionism; the enigmatic mobility

of cinema; and finally, the one that is closest to animism, it’s cinema’s ability to recognize

the personhood of objects. I do not believe there is one reading of photogénie more correct

than the others. Yet, photogénie is the point of entry, the rabbit hole anyone who engages

with Epstein’s work needs to fall down early on. Although there are animistic dimensions

to photogénie, the presence of animism in Epstein’s theory reaches beyond it.

In Chapter Three, “How we confuse ‘life’ with ‘soul’: vitalism and animism” I explore the

cultural and intellectual entanglements of Epstein’s animism. The recent attempts to re-

claim Epstein for film theory portray him as a tragically forgotten theorist, to the extent

that not only his theory, but his influences, times and life must be reclaimed along with his

work. Only partially following this thread, I pay attention both to Epstein’s possible influ-

ences, as well as the unique element of his theory that is his engagement with animism.

The most important discourse that might have influenced Epstein is vitalism: a now dis-

approved scientific doctrine, but very popular during the first half of the twentieth century

in France, vitalism can easily be confused with (old) animism. The main assumption of

vitalism is that living organisms are fundamentally different from their dead counterparts,

for they are animated by a life force (vide Bergson’s élan vital¸ important for film studies in

its influence on Gilles Deleuze). Against the backdrop of ‘primitive modernism’ in France

during the 1920s, I trace how those two discourses: vitalism on life, and animism on soul,

intersect in Epstein’s theory.

In Chapter Four, “How to break free from the tyranny of metaphors: taking animism se-

riously” I confront the accusations of animism’s idealistic and metaphorical nature, by

defending Epstein against the criticism of Malcolm Turvey’s book Doubting Vision: Film

and the Revelationist Tradition (2008). Turvey posits that Epstein misuses perceptual

concepts, and thus unnecessarily mystifies his theory with ornate metaphors – such as

cinema as animism, or the personhood of objects. I refer to the work of the contempo-

rary, prominent anthropologist Philippe Descola in order to lay bare both Turvey’s mis-

understanding of both Epstein’s animism, as well as his disregard for animism at large.

By making animism the ontological point of focus, I contest Turvey’s reading of animism

as yet another confused metaphor in Epstein, and I criticize the dismissal of animism as a

metaphor in general.




And finally in Chapter Five, “Broadening the animistic horizon: towards an animistic

theory of cinema” I focus on the revival of animism in contemporary anthropology and

philosophy. I introduce, in greater detail, the way in which the old, Tylorian definitionof animism is contested, and how animism is reclaimed as a relational ontology, a de-

centralized, non-hierarchical systemof relations between humansand nonhumans. I have

already shown the relevance of animism to Epstein’s film theory: here I intend to broaden

the animistic horizon. I gesture towards an animistic theory of cinema, focused on a redef-

inition of personhood rooted in anti-anthropocentrism. I speculate whether the current

revival of animism in anthropology, philosophy, and art could be paralleled by a similar

peak of interest within film studies. What would an animistic ontology of cinema be? I

refer to work of film theorists, anthropologist, and philosophers who guide me in conceiv-

ing this ontology. As an extension of this speculative chapter, I also include an Appendix,

my own art project on the personhood of objects.

1. How film theory can benefit from anthropology:

André Bazin and Jean Epstein

1.1 The persistence of Bazin

For many of the scholars contributing to the Epstein renaissance, comparing him to other

influential figures in film theory is an immediate impulse. André Bazin’s (1918-1958) work

is a recurring motif for many of the contributing scholars to the recent Epstein anthology

(2012). An imaginative writer in his own right and the key theoretician of the French

New Wave, Bazin’s work structured thinking about cinema’s ontology for decades. His

essays, collected in the posthumously published two volumes of What is Cinema? (1958-

1962) became synonymous with an exploration of cinema’s relation to reality, expressed

in cinema’s ability to represent it. As Thomas Elsaesser states, “Bazin can be considered

the alpha and omega of modern film theory, because he stands at its beginning, while he

may well preside over its (temporary) end, and perhaps even rebirth” (8). With Bazin as a

convenient, if not obligatory foil, Epstein’s work is elevated to the status of an intelligible

and influential film theory, rather than just an appendix to his artistic work. Richard Abel,

a scholar instrumental in the current renewal of interest in Epstein, attributes value to his

work by comparing it to that of Bazin:

At stake is the recovery and resituating of Epstein’s writing as the most original,

erudite, and poetic of French theoretical texts in the 1920s, the most sophisti-cated prior to that of André Bazin, whose own writings owe an unacknowledged

debt to his precursor (411).




Keller and Paul oppose the two theorists, suggesting that Bazin’s work, although by now

classic, pales in comparison with thepassionate, revolutionary impulses in Epstein: “Bazin

comes off as a rather more of a classicist, with Epstein more attuned to the transgressive

impulse” (268). Stuart Liebman goes as far as to suggest that “Bazin’s emergence as themost important critic of the generation following Epstein may explain in part Epstein’s

marginalization in French film circles” (291). On the other hand, Ludovic Cortade argues

that in some respects Epstein anticipates Bazin: “Bazin is not only Bergsonian, he is also

Epsteinian6" (173). The emerging consensus is that Epstein’s position in the film theory

canon should be as prominent as that of Bazin as “it constitutes an essential foundation

to the history of French film criticism that mainstream Anglophone studies customarily

assigns to Andre Bazin” (Keller and Paul 265).

Incidentally, the revival of interest in Epstein’s work matches the reawakening of scholarly

interest in Bazin’s, what culminated in the publication of an acclaimed new translation

of Bazin’s seminal essays by Timothy Barnard (2009) as well as the anthology Opening

Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife (2011), with contributions from a number

of leading film theorists. Reclaiming Bazin is different from reclaiming Epstein. Bazin’s

and Epstein’s critical fortunes diverge, and the respective reclaimings call for a mobiliza-

tion of contrasting resources. Reclaiming Epstein aims at producing an intelligible and

coherent film theory that could become synonymous with his name. The aim of the Bazin

collection is to productively destroy the legend, to reclaim the man himself, along with the

subtleties and ambiguities that arenecessarily related to thesheer volumeof hiswork. Un-

like there-discovery of Epstein that forces hisexperimental, contradictory, and sometimes

bewildering film theory into a reasoned system, the Bazin anthology seeks to complicate

the oversimplified readings of Bazin that flooded film theory after Bazin’s status became

canonical. In an interview with the online film magazine Offscreen Barnard states that the

new Bazin translations should be “a catalyst for a new approach to the field [instead of]

just a means of disseminating work already being done7".

1.2 Bazinism and Epsteinism: methodological perils

The new wave of engagement with Bazin’s work sheds a different light on comparisons

so easily drawn between him and Epstein. At least two important warnings emerge: first

is to not reduce a theorist’s work to an “ism”: Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, the co-editor of

6The argument relates to Epstein’s investigations of 'duration' in cinema, especially slow-motion.7The interview can be accessed at: http://www.offscreen.com/index.php/pages/essays/timothy_

barnard/ and is a highly recommended read. Barnard discusses how he picked the essays for his transla-

tion (of over 2,600 Bazin authored), what he thinks of Bazin’s work in general, and the dramatic differences between his and the previous translation of Hugh Gray (1960), since Barnard translation is perceived to bemore faithful to Bazin’s original than its predecessor (see: http://www.caboosebooks.net/what-is-cinema).Plus, delightful Bazin-related anecdotes!

http://www.caboosebooks.net/what-is-cinema

http://www.offscreen.com/index.php/pages/essays/timothy_barnard/

http://www.offscreen.com/index.php/pages/essays/timothy_barnard/




the book and an authority in France on Bazin, coins the term “bazinism” to describe this

“convenient short-hand, a kind of vocalized automatic memory” that characterizes the im-

providence in approaching the “breadth and erudition” of Bazin’s work (xiv-xv). Those

who seek understanding, need to sacrifice the notion of simplicity, in order to avoid theperils of “bazinism” (or not yet existing “epsteinism”). A reduction of a theorist to a series

of concepts allows their easy management - such is the first step to what Dudley Andrew,

the co-editor of the new Bazin collection, calls the “battle of the titans” (ix). In Bazin’s

case, he was often painted as a symbol of realism and auteurism, while his “opponent”,

Sergei Eisenstein, stood for the Soviet montage theory. A similar intention is at work in a

few new Epstein essays that seek to compare him to Bazin. Such a dramatic staging pro-

duces a coherent meaning attached to each of the theorists, however, it not only neglects

the complexity of their work, but also halts a continuously fresh critical engagement.

The second warning is related to the aim of this thesis. Although Bazin and Epstein have

already been compared and contrasted, a similarity that has not been fully singled out

is that of the anthropological trends in their work. A particularly welcomed strategy in

the current Bazin anthology is the anthropological method – especially the anthropology

of religion, given Bazin’s Christian background. An attentive approach to his work’s re-

ligious background and its ramifications is also the goal of a forthcoming University of

Amsterdam publication: The Miracle of Realism: André Bazin and the Cosmology of

Film (Vinzenz Hediger 2014). Crucially, this is the kind of academic attention that Ep-

stein’s work has not received yet, as many of the recent readings of Epstein render his

appropriation of animism as purely metaphoric, detached from its anthropological, cul-

tural, and philosophical lineage. This lack of attention to the anthropological orientation

in Bazin’s work should serve as a warning to those of us re-reading Epstein through the

lens of animism. Perhaps by assigning to animism the importance it really has in Epstein’s

“cosmology”, we can anticipate some of the trends that will define future research.

Before pointing to new directions, we must reevaluate the old ones. One of the first im-

pulses that lead my obligatory meditation on the relation of Epstein to Bazin is that of

life and death, based on the classic reading of Bazin’s seminal essay “The Ontology of the

Photographic Image” (1945). A textbook interpretation could unveil in the following way:

Bazin portrays cinema as the art of reality. Through creating a representation of life, the

camera, for the first time in the history of mankind, enables a “mechanical reproduction in

which there is no human agency at work” (6). Due to this automatisation, the camera gains

credibility to (re)present objects as they are: “Photography transfers reality from the ob-

ject depicted to ist reproduction” (8). Secondly, painting is for Bazin the point of reference

for conceiving the ontology of cinema. Painting8 is the direct predecessor of photography

8The essay was actually commissioned for an anthology on the history of art – Bazin’s references to paint-




and consequently cinema; one in a long line of fulfilling humanity’s obsession with cre-

ating a perfect reproduction of reality. Its failure at this task is central to understanding

Bazin’s ontology – a painting, even seemingly realist, always bears the burden of visible

human touch: the brush of a stroke, wet paint drying on a canvas, the burden of time. A painting’s realism is only an illusion. In photography, and cinema as its extension, Bazin

sees the exemption of plastic arts from “their obsession with resemblance” (6). The ad-

vancement of photography explains the crisis in painting around the middle of the last

century 9 (7). Unlike painting, photography escapes the handicap of subjectivity. Of all

arts, only photography thrives on human absence during the creative process – photogra-

phy evaporates the appearance of human touch, replacing it by an automatic creation of a

realistic representation of the world. The opening sentence of the essay states: “if we were

to psychoanalyse the visual arts, the practice of embalming might be seen as fundamental

to their birth” (3). “A mummy complex” is at the basis of cinema, a desire for immortality,

for snatching life out of the deadly passage of time. Here emerges another immediate rea-

son for comparing Epstein and Bazin – while for Epstein cinema is the animating art of

life, Bazin likens it to a victory over death, related to the embalming “mummy complex”.

In this reading, as if in a “battle of the titans”, Bazin champions the cinema of the dead,

advocates cinema as the mechanical art of stagnation, a mummification. Epstein, on the

other hand, paints cinema as the art of life, infused with an animating force. But isn’t a

victory over death the victory of life? In the end, Bazin states: “To make fast bodily ap-

pearance is to snatch it from the course of time, to stow it in the hold of life” (3). The battle

is destined to an unpredictable finale in which Bazin and Epstein intersect in surprising

ways. Both the concept of death (mummification) in Bazin, and life (animism) in Epstein,

can lend itself to a complex reading through decoding their anthropological origins.

1.3 Literal or metaphoric: Bazin’s Christianity

The truly exciting battle between life and death happens in the background. As Thomas

Elsaesser says, “Every new film theory may be a funeral as much as a birth announcement”

(4). His astute essay places Bazin among other theorists when he recalls various “deaths”

ing might be simply conforming to this particular format.9Indeed, the rapid development of abstract and symbolic painting (1903-1913) parallels early years of

cinema’s growth – Delauny, Kandinsky, and Mondrian produced historically significant abstract works be-tween 1910 and 1913. Nevertheless, it is exactly during the 1910-1920s that the avant-garde in cinema was blossoming as well. Gunning notices that the Impressionist (or the Symbolists), along with Epstein, oftenproduced highly abstract work, in which “the films did maintain a powerful link to the painter’s obsession with vision under varying circumstances of light and atmosphere” (Gunning 15) . The Impressionists’ films were far from accepting the traditionally understood Bazanian representational prerogative. Instead, they were experimenting with human perception and pushing it out of its limits. Epstein himself notices the co-relation between photography’s realism and abstract art: “Painting today is freeing itself from many of itsrepresentational and narrative concerns”(Epstein 293); however he is quick to place this event in a differentcontext. The high art of painting, he claims, is “colour taking on life” (ibid.), what immediately highlightsart’s animating powers.




or “crises” of cinema:

In fact – if we think of Arnheim, Balázs, Kraucauer, Bazin, Metz, Heath, Daney,

Mulvey, and Deleuze – is not film theory the product of different crises that

cinemahas undergone, such as the coming of sound, the traumaof fascism, and

the ubiquity of television, not to mention the crisis of patriarchy highlighted by

feminism? (4)

He further refers to changes in film culture such as the death of the studio system in the

‘50s, the decay of cinephilia in the ‘70s, and the “digital divide” of present times. Curiously,

the post-colonial “Manifesto for a Third Cinema” (Solanas and Getino 1969) or the per-

vasive Euro/Westocentrism is not counted among those crises. Epstein’s own animistic

answer to cinema as the triumph of mechanic modernity also disappears in this recollec-

tion of film history. The cultural linage Elsaesser presents is that of Western, modern film

theory. To the contrary, an art-anthropological contextualization of Bazin’s essays shows

his engagement with realms as diverse as “Egyptian mummies, the Shroud of Turin, and

the memorializing function of early photographs” in addition to “ancient burial customs,

embalming, plaster models, death masks…” (Elssaeser 9). Joubert-Laurencin also briefly

assumes an anthropological position when he states that the relation between Bazin and

the French New Wave resembles the rite of passage in the culture of the Pueblos Indians,

where the ritual is the message, the signifying function itself is the content (xv).

The linking of Bazin to “a rite of passage” is uncommon. Yet, Bazin’s reference to the cin-

ema as “the Shroud of Turin” was often taken as literal due to his devout Catholicism,

as well as his engagement with “the liberal strain of Catholic thought” (Rosen 107). The

Shroud is an index of Christ’s face, an imprint, rather than a representation or a copy. It

is not “empty”, but filled with the ontologically Real presence of Christ. Like the Veil of

Veronica, the Shroud is an acheiropoieta, an icon created by divinity, without human in-

tervention, similar to the way in which the camera performs a “mechanical reproduction

in which there is no human agency at work” (Bazin 6). As if in a moment of sacred tran-

substantiation, the filmic image is what it represents. Elsaesser explains that this earned

Bazin a bad, “Catholic” reputation, and the prominent French magazine Positif despised

Bazin as naïve, especially in the light of the development of psychoanalysis, structuralism

and linguistics (9). The proximity of Bazin’s texts to the otology of Western Christianity

allowed quite a few theorists, to their own displeasure, to understand Bazin literally:

Bazin’s ontology was described as naïvely mistaken, essentialist, and idealist.

Such labels coalesced with the suspicion that his theories are grounded in a reli-

gious outlook, for Bazin’s interest in a certain strain of liberal Catholic thought

[…] was well-known. (Rosen 107-108)




The mummy complex, on the other hand, remains a metaphor: cinema does not embalm

reality in a material way, the image is a mummy only from a psychoanalytical point of

view, a desire “stemming from the death of the unconscious” (Rosen 109), a drive for im-

mortality through an image. Angela Della Vacche goes a bit further to suggest that “themummy complex” is essentially a spatial metaphor and should be read with the consider-

ation of the mummy’s position within a pyramid, as a contrast to the famous “Plato’s cave”

(Della Vache 143). Yet, it is not a popular choice to accuse Bazin of secretly nurturing an

ancient Egyptian worldview – not only due to the fact that Bazin was openly Christian, but

also because this particular cosmology is so far removed from the Western, modern envi-

ronment of film theory. Richard Linklater’s acclaimed philosophical film by the title of,

incidentally, Waking Life (2001) serves as another example. In this scene, the filmmaker

Caveh Zahedi explains Bazin’s devotion to the Catholic God, but what he unintentionally

describes is a concept far removed from the structure of modern, Western Christianity:

Cinema in its essence is about an introduction to reality. It's just that reality is

actually reproduced […] So for Bazin, what the ontology of film has to do with

is also what photography has to do with, except it has this dimension of time to

it, and this greater realism to it. So it's about that guy, at that moment, in that

space. And you know, Bazin is a Christian, so he believes that God obviously

ended up being everything, and for him reality and God are the same. So what

film is actually capturingis like God incarnate, creating. Andthis very moment,God is manifesting as this. […] So film is actually like a record of God, or the

face of God, or the ever changing face of God10.

Curiously, Zahedi unwaveringly describes pantheism instead of Christianity. The most in-

fluentialcirculation of pantheismin thehistory of Western philosophy is found in Spinoza,

in the 1675 book Ethics. Although Spinoza never uses the word pantheism (his book is a

monist response to Descartes’ dualism), the German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker

considers it a translation of the Hindu non-dualist philosophy ( Advaita) to the terrain of

Western philosophy (32). Pantheism, at its simplest, is the belief that God is immanent,and the totality of nature is equal to divinity. There is no anthropomorphic God in pan-

theism – reality and God are indistinguishable. In 1600 Giordano Bruno was burned alive

by the Catholic Church for claiming that God was immanent. Nowadays, pantheism is

unofficially presumed to be the basis of all pagan religions and often confused with an-

imism. When the characters of Waking Life claim: “Bazin is a Christian, so he believes

that God obviously ended up being everything, and for him reality and God are the same”,

10In Christianity, God resides in a dimension separate from reality, to which we transcend after death.Bazin struggled with illness his whole life and died at a young age of forty of leukemia. His ontology of cin-ema might be influenced by his fascination with eternal life: “It is no longer a question of the individual'ssurvival, but more generally of creating an ideal universe in the image of reality, endowed with an indepen-dent temporal destiny" (Bazin 4). In this way, his ontology of cinema that creates an ideal world withoutdeath, is a reflection of the Christian idea of heaven, where time also ceases to exist and threaten.




they make a categorical mistake. In fact, according to this reading, Bazin is a pantheist,

and should applaud Epstein’s statement: “[Through cinema] an astonishing pantheism is

reborn in the world, and fills it until it bursts” (289).

Although I am not arguing that Bazin’s theory is pantheistic, it seems that non-modern

discourses can have an unstated influence on film theory. Such is the case of animism in

the work of Jean Epstein. Perhaps quite a few scholars want to spare Epstein the fate of

Bazin, mercifully ignoring those impulses in his work that are “animistic” or “polytheist”,

rather decoding them as metaphors of Epstein’s aesthetics preferences or simply exam-

ples of his vivid writing style. Then again, animism can seem to be so far removed from

our own environment that it can be but a metaphor. What could it be otherwise? Philippe

Descola informs that “for anthropology, no ontology is better or more truthful than theother”, they all weight equally in the eyes of an anthropologist ("The Ecology of Others"

66). The tension between Bazin’s and Epstein’s work stems from (among others) the de-

grees of assimilations of their “metaphors” into the Western, modern discourse of film

theory. Although animism, unlike Christianity, is not a religion, its presence in Epstein’s

writing is so pronounced, that it should receive the same attention religious thought de-

serves in Bazin. Whether a decisive influence or just a strand of thought, they should not be

overlooked because of the relation they hold, or used to hold, to our own milieus. Bazin’s

Christianity might have rang too close to home, while Epstein’s animism rings so far away,

we might not hear it.

2. How Jean Epstein’s theory can benefit from an-

thropology: photogénie and animism

Photogénie is Epstein’s most discussed concept. Although he did not invent the term, “he

expanded and elaborated on it productively, and in Anglophone cinema studies, he is the

source on the matter to which most texts turn” (Keller 25). The term itself was introduced by Louis Delluc in his 1920 article of the same title, where he argues that moving images

can render an object or a character in an expressive way: “Explanations here are out of

place”, he adds (qtd. in Aitken 83). Photogénie, the magic touch of cinema, was at the

centre of the debate in early cinema studies in France, yet its influence was later over-

shadowed by the prominence of Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and the Soviet mon-

tage theory (Gunning 15). Epstein’s own summoning of photogénie remains elusive and

open to various interpretations. The most popular reading of photogénie renders it as

an argument for cinema’s unique nature (medium specificity) or an aesthetic connectedto Epstein’s own films. Naturally, to complicate things further, Epstein himself has an

ambiguous attitude towards the most ambiguous of his concepts. In “The Photogenic El-




ement” (1926) he states: “With the notion of photogénie, the concept of cinema as an art

was born”, while only six paragraphs later, when describing the workings of photogénie

he announces: “Already this is more than an art” (300-301). Although photogénie never

vanishes from Epstein’s oeuvre, it’s presence is especially pronounced in his early essays.The canonical definition originates in the 192411 essay “On Certain Characteristics of the

Photogénie, where he defines it by two specifications.

2.1 The two specifications of photogénie – mobility and person-

ality

Epstein indeed armours his essays with photogénie as a weapon in the ruthless debate on

cinema as art. The majority of early film theorists up to the 1960s voiced their opinion on

the subject. Before that, the term “cinéma d’art” was coined in France in 1908 in order to

broaden the appeal of cinema to include the middle class. In its early years cinema was

considered an entertainment for the poor and uneducated (Hayward 27). Epstein is well

aware of this debate and comments on it in his late essay “The Cinema of the Devil” (1947):

Up to the years 1910 and 1915, going to the cinema constituted a somehow

shameful, almost debasing act […] Since then, the spectacle of cinema has un-

doubtedly earned a few titles in nobility and snobbishness. (318)

Although in this late essay Epstein’s changing attitude towards praising cinema as art can

already be detected, in “On Certain Characteristics of the Photogénie" (1924) he chooses

to equalize cinema and art, a position that will become increasingly complex throughout

his texts, as will the concept of photogénie:

The cinema seems to me like two Siamese twins joined together at the stomach,

in other words by the baser necessities of life [...] The first of these brothers is

the art of cinema, the second is the film industry [...] I shall venture to speak

to you only of the art of cinema. The art of cinema has been called photogénie.

(293)

The most direct definition Epstein gives right after is that he “would describe as photo-

genic any aspect of things, beings, or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic

reproduction” (293). Other aspects are not photogenic, and hence not cinematic. How do

we define those aspects? “I fear the response I have to offer is [...] premature”, Epstein

states, as cinema is such a young art, or “less than an art”, maybe “a telepathy of the eye”

(293)? The first encounter with photogénie is surely puzzling, but Epstein concludes that

so far, “we have discovered [through photogénie] the cinematic property of things” (294).He then outlines the two specifications of photogénie.

11First version delivered in 1923 at the Salon d’Automne.




The first specification of photogénie is related to the inherent mobility of the world that

the camera can reveal. “Only mobile aspects of things and souls may see their moral value

increased by filmicrepresentation”, be animated by thepower of thecamera(Epstein 294).Mobility is here understood in its widest sense, as all four dimensions perceptible to the

mind: three dimensions of space and an additional dimension of time, perhaps the most

significant of all, as cinema – in opposition to painting or photography - can operate within

it. In “The Cinema of the Devil” (1947), Epstein expands on the concept of mobility in

relation to photogénie:

Thanks to the photogénie of movement, the cinematograph shows us that form

is only one unsettled state of a fundamentally mobile condition, and that move-

ment, being universal and variably variable, makes every form inconstant, in-consistent, fluid. (322)

In the opening of “The Cinema of the Devil” (1947), Epstein coins a tale of a cinemato-

graph, torn between God and Satan. Ultimately, it sides with Satan since “photogénie, as

a fundamental rule [...] services the forces of transgression and revolt” (Epstein in Keller

23). Satan serves here as a metaphor of mobility as change, an avoidance of permanency.

Through photogénie, cinema reveals the revolt at its heart, it lays bare a world in which,

as if in a satanic alternative to perceivable reality, nothing is stable and mobility is contin-

uous.

The second specification of photogénie is related to the enigmatic “personal character” of

things, and is the entry point for the discussion of animism in Epstein’s theory. Building

on the first assumption of photogénie, Epstein explains that “only mobile and personal as-

pects of things, beings and souls may be photogenic, that is, acquire a higher moral value

through filmic reproduction” (294). For Epstein, personality is the spirit visible in things

and people that is only made evident through photogénie. On screen, a revolver is not a

revolver anymore, but a mischievous symbol of murder or an agent of revenge, or death

(295). Personality here equals character, dramatic and narrative meaning. Through pho-

togénie, objects or landscapes can claim a significance equal to that of human characters

in film, a spiritedness that can be uncovered through cinema.

Epstein finishes his early essay by taking an auteurist turn, concluding that – while this

is not a specification - photogénie can only fully manifest itself in the hands of the most

skilled filmmakers, not “one of the four of four hundred directors devoid of personality

whom God sent to plague the cinema as he once sent the locusts into Egypt” (296). In

their hands, close-ups become of importance, objects acquire personality and narrative

meaning. Yet, photogénie is more than another addition to the auteur theory. Epstein




spent a portion of his early career in film accompanying his idol Abel Gance on set. “On

Certain Characteristics of Photogénie" testifies to Epstein’s adoration of his favourite di-

rectors, and is marked by more than a hint of romantic idolizations of a young apprentice,

as well as his fascination with cinema as poetry (296). With time, Epstein shifts the focusto the ontology of filmmaking, and photogénie becomes the quality of the lens itself (296).

2.2 Redefining personhood in Epstein’s theory and in “new an-

imism”

Yet, even in this early text, Epstein already describes cinema as animistic. Before outlining

the second specification of photogénie, he states that: “like all languages, cinema is ani-

mistic [...] it attributes a semblance of life to the objects it defines [...] the more primitive

a language, the more marked this animistic tendency 12" (295).

This photogenic animism is scarcely discussed in the context of actual animism. Animism

is easy to dismiss as one among Epstein’s many poetic metaphors – the least of it cinema

as Satan's invention in “The Cinema of the Devil” (1947). Epstein compares cinema to “the

hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt”, a code impossible to understand or even a “telepathy of the

eye”, a “challenge to the logic of the Universe” (293). Yet, his thoughts resonate deeply

with the revival of animism in contemporary anthropology when he states:

The cinema thus grants to the most frozen appearances of things and beings

the greatest gift in the face of death: life. And it confers this life in its high-

est guise: personality. Personality goes beyond intelligence. Personality is the

spirit visible in things and people, their heredity made evident, their past be-

come unforgettable, their future already present. Every aspect of the world

which the cinema confers life is elevated only if it possesses a personality of its

own. The is the second specification [...] of photogénie. (295, italics BK)

Any aspect of the world can be elevated through photogénie as long as it possesses a per-

sonality of its own. Cinema does not impose a personality on an object for the duration

of filming and screening, but instead reveals the character of objects already present in it.

The attention to personhood is what makes Epstein’s film theory profoundly animistic, in

line with the understanding that contemporary anthropology has of animism now. The

most intriguing aspect of animism is its anti-hierarchic definition of personhood, yet it is

only recently that anthropology has correctly identified it. The most influential rendition

of animism appears in Edward Tylor’s seminal anthropological work Primitive Culture

12Epstein also adds that cinema is “polytheistic and theogonic” (295) but these ontologies do not recur asoften as animism does, although an assessment of their significance would be a welcomed development forfuture research.




(1871), where animism is an epistemological mistake – a “belief” that souls reside in non-

humans (objects, animals, rivers, stories). Fuelling the logic of progress as erasure, Tylor

states that animism is “an infant philosophy of mankind [...] that extends the notion of

vitality to what modern science only recognises as lifeless things” although he also under-stands how “everyone who has ever dreamt a dream, has seen the phantoms of objects as

well as of persons” (478). Yet, contemporary anthropology understands that animism is

not based on attributing anthropomorphic personhood to inanimate beings, but on a di-

vergent definition of personhood altogether: “Persons are volitional, relational, cultural

and social beings. They demonstrate intentionality and agency with varying degrees of au-

tonomy and freedom” (Harvey xvii). In his essay “Ojibwe Ontology, Behaviour, and World

View” (1960), Irving Hallowell, one of the first anthropologists to see the faults in Tylor’s

definition, observes how animism was practiced among the Ojibwe, during his fieldwork

in the Lake Winnipeg area in the 1930s. He notices that in the Ojibwe language there is no

distinction between “human” and “nonhuman”, what is also noticeable in the way Ojibwe

rituals and everyday practices are carried out. There is no gender pronoun – in fact, the

only distinction exists between “animate” and “inanimate”. Crucially, this distinction is

not fixed, the pronoun can change on the basis of a relation with the object/person that

is spoken about or to. Rocks lying around the river might be spoken of as inanimate in

a sentence, however, rocks that we carry to build our houses with would be spoken of as

animate, as at that moment, we develop a relation to them. “We do not personify other

entities and then socialize with them, but personify them as, when and because we so-

cialize with them13" (Bird-David 177). Animism, far from a “belief” or a religion, as Tylor

interprets it, it is a social practice: a system of relations between humans and nonhumans

that is not believed in, but experienced. In Epstein’s essays, cinema and animism open

up similar dimensions, in which a relational practice (of filming or watching) can reveal

the personhood of objects: “[To discover that everything is] suffused with an aura of per-

sonal identity – that is the great joy of cinema [...] In order to grow and unite, rocks make

beautifully steady gestures as if they were meeting beloved memories” (289). In “The Cin-

ema Seen From Etna” (1926), his second book devoted exclusively to cinema, Epstein’sunderstanding of what animism is, precedes animism’s own revival in contemporary an-

thropology:

One of the greatest powers of cinema is its animism. On screen, nature is never

inanimate. Objects take on airs. Trees gesticulate. Mountains, just like Etna,

convey meaning. Every prop becomes a character[...] Thegrass in themeadow

is a smiling, feminine genie. Anemones full of rhythm and personality evolve

with the majesty of planets. A hand is separated from a man, lives on its own,

13The very material and lived relation that animistic have with nonhumans, is the reason why animism isthe meeting ground between various neo-pagan, eco-criticism and environmental movements. See Harvey 2005 for reading suggestions, or Abram’s "Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology” (2010)




suffers and rejoices alone [...] Is such freedom, such a soul, more epiphenom-

enal than the one we claim to be our own? (290)

3. How we confuse 'life' with 'soul': vitalism and an-

imism

3.1 A rare enigma? Epstein’s influences

Epstein is perhaps the only Western film theorist who envisions such an intimate connec-

tion between cinema and animism, but to paint his portrait as that of a rare enigma, a

neglected eccentric, a “mystic who sees cinema as offering an almost millennial promise”

(Gunning 13) would be a disservice tomany other film theorists who never shied away fromembracing cinema’s mystical powers. For example, Epstein is not alone in describing cin-

ema as a “primordial” or “pictorial” language: in the 1910s the Dadaists filmmaker and

painter Hans Richter saw in cinema a fulfillment of the quest for a universal language,

one that communicates both human and non-human life. Although the prominence of

animism in Epstein’s theory is unique – “cinema is a language, and like all language, it is

animistic” (295), other early film theorists eagerly reach into the realm of the “primitive”

in their meditations on cinema. Béla Balázs stated that cinema captured the “expressive

movement, the gesture, that is the aboriginal mother-tongue of the human race” (qtd. inPollmann 42). Ancient Egypt is an inspiration for both Epstein (cinema as “a pictorial

language, like the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt” 293) and Bazin (the mummy complex).

Vachel Lindsay, the early American film theorist also likened cinema to hieroglyphs (Poll-

mann 38). For Benjamin, “runs and hieroglyphs indicate the passing of a certain type

of mimesis, from occult practices to written language” (ibid). Clearly, Epstein’s work is

entangled in a variety of historical, cultural, and intellectual knots that have influenced

him through their proximity to animism. Admittedly, Epstein’s work, central to this the-

sis in its relation to animism, acquires a certain timelessness through its evocation of it.

Though historically rooted in the anthropology of religion, animism can be uprooted from

its chronological and spatial ties when understood as an ontology; an uprooting that is

already in progress through the work of contemporary anthropologists and philosophers.

Nevertheless, Epstein’s theory is also a stream in a historically specific river, and as such

is not unrelated to various strands of thought present in his milieu.

3.2 Vitalism: from scientific doctrine to dogma

Of all the of ideas that could have shaped Epstein’s animistic film theory, it is inevitable toconsider vitalism: a now disproved scientific doctrine that maintains living organisms are

fundamentally different from nonliving organisms due to the existence of a non-physical




element, one infusing them with life. The first usage of the term “animism” in 1708 was

inherently vitalist in its orientation - animism was originally a term coined to distinguish

living matter from its nonliving counterpart. Georg Stahl’s elegant if now easily falsifi-

able theory asserts that living matter contains a certain amount of “anima” (from Latin- the animating principle, life, soul but also wind, breath, a current of air) as opposed to

nonliving matter that is filled with “phlogiston” (from ancient Greek - burning up, flame).

Unlike anima, an element evocative of air and wind, phlogiston is fire-like. Matter that

is dominated by phlogiston would oxidize easily, ergo it should be detected during com-

bustion. Strenghtening this vitalist definition of animism, the Soviet montage theorist

Sergei Eisenstein makes a connection between fire and animism in his essay on Walt Dis-

ney cartoons. For Eisenstein, the cartoons are carried out by a method of animism as fire

(a reversal of Stahl’s conception), the liberty to create infinite movement and forms. Of

course, Eisenstein’s mobilization of the term is rooted it the verb “to animate” and its re-

lation to the genre of “animation”, rather than animism in any of its incarnations. In this

way Eisenstein echoes the vitalist, ancient Greek philosopher, chemist and poet Empe-

docles, who argued that living matter must be animated by “a subtle fire existing from all

eternity and present in airand allmatter” (Haller 81-88). In Stahl’s theory, however, living

matter is full of air-like anima, while the fire-like, dead matter has none (Harvey 4). This

entanglement between animism and vitalism had little influence on subsequent uses and

interpretations of animism, as animists do not distinguish between alive and dead matter

on the basis of hypothetical scientific qualities. Nevertheless, numerous scientists, artists,

and philosophers, many of whom were a direct influence on Epstein, found vitalism to be

an immense attraction. Animism and vitalism, although both present in Epstein’s theory,

are not synonymous, although there are considerable overlaps between them, given their

engagement with the notion of life. Vitalism is an important part of Epstein’s intellectual

and cultural background, while animism is his own, distinct, and consciously articulated

theory of cinema. Not only they are different in Epstein’s theory, but essentially so. Vi-

talism is primarily concerned with the essence and nature of life. Animism in its former

anthropological incarnation focuses on religion and spirituality, while its current rebirthreveals its potential as an ontology of multiplicity and relationality, aimed at redefining

personhood.

Ernst Mayr expresses a still prevalent opinion on vitalism in his 1988 book Toward a new

philosophy of biology: observation of an evolutionist : “Vitalism has become so disrep-

utable a belief in the last fifty years that no biologist alive today would want to be clas-

sified as a vitalist” (13). Dismissive claims such as that of Mayr make apparent the ide-

ological judgment that vitalism suffered. Not only inside, but also outside sciences andacademia, both vitalism and animism are positioned as pre-modern, anti-modern or epis-

temological failures on the road to modernity: “many cultural historians have discussed




vitalism and life-philosophy from a narrow, teleological-historical perspective, as pre- and

anti-modern” (Pollmann 30). However, only a few decades before that, vitalism was the

idea on everyone’s lips - from one of the fathers of modern chemistry Jöns Berzelius, who

argued for an existence of a regulating force within all living matter, to the philosopherHenri Bergson, who enriched it with a philosophical allure (élan vital), or Epstein’s own

hero Louis Pasteur, who by the end of his life argued that fermentation of living organisms

cannot be reduced to their chemical functions.

3.3 Cinematic vitalism

Much as with animism, the link between cinema and vitalism is not an apparent one. Isn’t

cinema, the “mechanical eye” as Vertov (17) calls it, the horseman of modernity - a lifeless,

selfless machine, rather than an object filled with anima? Inga Pollmann brings up this

paradox in the opening of her dissertation "Cinematic vitalism - theories of life and the

moving image":

Modernity would thus be a consequence of the triumph of a mechanistic world-

view over its competitors, which include […] “vitalistic” sciences that sought to

hold on to some essential distinction between living being and the nonliving

world of matter. (1)

The discourse around early cinema is not tied to this dichotomy – the machines are full of

life! Life appears even in the names of the first film companies such as Vitagraph (”life-

bearer”) or Biograph, while phrases such as “living pictures”, “pictures coming to life”

frequently come back in the first reports on film screenings (Pollmann 3;21). In the rarer

cases when cinema is not seen as the bearer of life, it is measured against it: for Gorky

cinema is “the shadow of life […] deprived of color, sound and smell” and for Lukács “a

life without soul” (qtd. in Pollmann 26). Rémy de Gourmont, more attuned to Epstein’s

own understanding of cinema, writes so of it in his 1907 article: “I saw life stirring” (27).

“Life” as a concept was used in a variety of ways - to distinguish the possibilities of cine-

matic representation, its ontological proximity to living matter, or the bond between the

projected image and the spectator - and it undeniably made cinema “the place for think-

ing about the correlation of life and technology […] of the human to technology on the

one hand, and to nature, especially non-human life (from animals to cells) on the other”

(30). Vitalist ideas actively shaped modern thought and resulted in filmmakers utilizing

cinema to portray machinic life, inhuman life or inorganic life, while treating the lens of

the camera as a scientific device of exploration and discovery.

Unlike animism, vitalism is a concept limited by its historical frames - although the roots

can be traced back to singular strands of ancient Greek philosophy (Cheng 1), it is com-

monly linked to the early twentieth century in the West, when it reached the peak of its




popularity as a scientific concept. Contrary to animism, vitalism was a consciously pro-

duced discourse, clearly defined by its devotees in sciences, and later terminated by the

same intellectual circles. This is not the case with animism, first a term coined by Western

anthropologists to translate the practices of the non-modern, non-Western people intounderstandable terms. Both animism and vitalism are often considered from a pseudo-

evolutionary standpoint: vitalist/animistic “worldviews” are only tolerable in children or

non-modern people(s) as steps on the ladder to the glorious development of reason and/or

modernity. In fact, the link between children and primitive peoples has a history in West-

ern science and anthropology. Cheng informs (with displeasure) that when asked to ex-

plain how humans get energy, 85% of children replied with “a vitalist explanation” (1),

what might influence us as adults in negative, unreasonable ways. The most famous of

such cases in relation to animism is that of the work of one of the best known theorists

of childhood development, Jean Piaget. Piaget demonstrates that all children are natu-

rally animistic until they develop a more advanced, rational and correct understanding of

the world” (Harvey 14). To the contrary, in many non-Western societies children must be

taught to be animistic by their elders, and on many occasions they are “schooled” in this

way of being with art and ritual (ibid). With regards to cinema as a sustainer or inducer of

animism, Pollmann comments on the “magic and ritual of the cinema” when she recalls

how the French novelist Colette wrote about children watching an educational film:

When the children in Colette’s description of an educational film screening watch “the intentional and intelligent movement” of flowers in the cinematic

land of slow-motion technology, they “get up, imitate the extraordinary ascent

of a plant climbing in a spiral, avoiding an obstacle, groping over its trellis: "It’s

looking for something! It’s looking." (132)

It is curious to note that the same metaphor has found its place in film studies as well - the

phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack also elaborates on analogies between cinema’s tech-

nological development and a child’s sensory development in her well-known book The

Address of the Eye (1992). These cases exemplify the discourse of progress and erasure,characteristic of modernity – progress is founded on the erasure of the primitive, less de-

veloped standpoints. Partha Chatterjee, when writing about the onset of modernity in In-

dia, has forcefully argued that modernity is a hierarchical structure, in which the modern

seeks to erase and replace that which came before it (1997). Vitalism, one that substitutes

for the truths of Science for a child, or animism present in the primitive, early experi-

ments with cinematic form, should be erased once more reasonable and/or matured ways

present themselves.




3.4 Primitive modernism

Those seemingly schizophrenic early film theories, on the one hand embracing the scien-

tific, mechanic modernity of cinema, on the other pointing to its vitalist, savage or magical

properties, are symptomatic of modernity’s relation to the primitive. Although the impor-

tance of vitalism can be justified by the fact that it was once a scientific doctrine, the pres-

ence of animistic, primitive, pagan, or occult discourses testifies to the contrary: there is a

certain excess in cinema that escapes a purely scientific appropriation. In Savage Theory:

Cinema as Modern Magic (2000)RachelMoore identifies primitivist and savage impulses

in the theory of Eisenstein, Lindsay, Kraucauer, and Benjamin, proving that in the ethnog-

raphy of the Moderns, cinema is equal to a magic ritual. Epstein’s work doesn’t escape

this trend - photogénie and animism are instrumental to his early work, while his late es-

says channel his growing fascination with modern developments in physics – time-space,quantum theory and mechanics. In the already quoted “The Cinema of the Devil” (1947),

Epstein’s film theory achieves a fluidity between cinema as the return of animism and the

cinematic technology as another of the rebellious, scientific discoveries of the Devil. The

relation of cinema and animism is tied to the dichotomy of the progressive and the prim-

itive. For Epstein, the border between modernity as a mechanistic worldview and cinema

as a return of animism is easily crossable. In fact, he argues that photogénie is possible

precisely because of the mechanic nature of the cinematic apparatus – it is through the

mechanism of the camera that “such elemental things as stones acquire the power to elicit

emotion, if not religious significance” (180).

“Given his enthusiasm for the modern and the mechanical”, Moore writes in relation to

Epstein’s documentary filmmaking in the remote landscape of Brittany, “[…] the choice

to spend the better part of his last two decades filming at places decidedly un-modern is

striking” (178). “The Cinema Seen from Etna” (1926), Epstein’s travelogue-film-theory

book does not resist the temptation of “primitive modernism”. The 1920s in France saw

the peak of interest in ethnography, anthropology, cultural difference, and the mysterious,

primitive, colonial “Other”, the allure of its rituals and the spell of its darkness:

Whether in the form of the Surrealist’ interest in African art object of the found-

ing of the Institut d’Ethologie in 1925, “the other”, as James Clifford put it, ‘was

the crucial object of modern research’ […] the avant-garde sought something

primitive, savage and… completely modern. (Moore 178-179)

To describe certain strands of art-anthropological engagements with the sciences during

the 20s, James Clifford, a historian and anthropologist, coins theterm “Ethnographic Sur-

realism”, “which grows out of a communion between the arts and sciences that share the

project of 'defamiliarizing the seemingly apparent ways of being in the world'" (ibid). Al-

though Epstein doesn’t explicitly underline the influence of ethnography or anthropology




on his theory, it is apparent through his novels, film, and the exploration of cinema’s rela-

tion toanimism. In his view, cinema has the ability toopen upnew “cosmogonies”. In “The

Intelligence of the Machine” (1946), one of his late essays, characteristic of his fascination

with the relativity of spatial and temporal qualities of cinema, he writes that although “[…]the complete relativity of every aspect of nature has only one point of departure – […] the

height, weight and shape of man”, there must exist “other theodicies and cosmogonies, a

different mathematics […] with a human race reduced to the size of bacteria or inflated to

the size of Himalayas” (2012:314). Although in this particular essay Epstein laments the

“futile and absurd” attempts of the cinematograph to escape the “scandalous vanity” of

the human pretension “to hold on to a stable ground outside of us”, in other essays he sees

cinema as an antidote that saves man from functioning exclusively within modernity and

humanism: “[In cinema] life fragments into new individualities. […] Everything quivers

with bewitchment. I am uneasy. In a new nature, another world” (Epstein 182).

For Epstein, the camera has ritualistic abilities, and cinema blurs the boarders between

the modern and the animistic. According to Epstein, the camera “transforms objects into

thingsthat inspire sentiment” (Moore 180). Cinema is also inherently modern in that it ex-

poses the fatigue of modern life, as he defines it in “Rapidity and the Fatigue of Homo Sapi-

ens”, an essay never published during his lifetime14. Fatigue equals the ever-increasing

pace of life, affecting the modern man on every layer. The acceleration of life results in

an intellectual, physical, and mental fatigue. Here, it is evident that the optimistic em-

bracement of modernist progress is at the same time related to “a profound disquiet at

those beliefs which it perpetuates” (Hayword 253). For Epstein, cinema belongs in the

lineage of the modern devices of the Devil, it is yet another tool of progress. That progress,

however, is non-linear, for it is a victory of animism over modernity. This mechanism of

inverted progress is also the reason why cinema is the “heroic, drug, the staple food” the

antidote to the fatigue of modern man (335). As Epstein argues, the strive for progress is

at once man’s blessing and curse, and fatigue itself is “a result of the obligation to think

rationally”, as human intelligence“strains itself from thecreation of themachines and reg-

ulations” (335). At the same time, the machine that man creates, frees him and changes

him – the instrument always reconfigures the mind of its creator, in unexpected ways.

While for Bazin cinema encapsulates the human desire for perfect realism, for Epstein it

captures the modern need of mobility, and especially of experiencing the mobility of the

world. This mobility is not mechanic, but soulful, full of anima: for example, the close up

“translates in minute detail the mobility of the soul” and cinema itself “reflects the exterior

pace of life nowadays, accords to the movement in which souls live”(336).

14For a new translation see: Keller and Paul 2012.




“In primitive societies, priest and scientist at first were one”, states Epstein in “The Cin-

ema of the Devil” (1947) (319). Epstein’s film theory presents a balance - cinema neither

regresses to animism, nor does its animism erase the modern. The concept of cinema

as animism questions the very definition of modernity in relation to cinema. Although itis convenient to draw a thick line between modernity as designated by the objective rea-

soning of industrial, lifeless machines, and de-personification on one side, while placing

vitalism, the science of life and animism as the re-evaluation of non-human personhood

on the other, in Epstein’s view cinema manages to find a balance. Yet, Epstein’s animism

reaches beyond the mobility of life – at the least, it reaches beyond its vitalist nature.

3.5 Vitalist aesthetics

One of the long-lasting influences of vitalism is its contribution to the discussion of the

aesthetics of film. Central to vitalist aesthetics in film theory is the French philosopher

Henri Bergson (1859-1941). In fact, his 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature was accompanied

by the following verdict: “…in recognitions of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant

skill with which they were presented15". Following the publication of his third book Cre-

ative Evolution (1907), Bergson became a popular figure among the cultural and scientific

circles in Paris, and later also in the Unites States where in 1913 he delivered a series of

lectures at the Columbia University in front of a sizable audience. From there, his popu-

larity was on the rise. It is safe to assume, due to the status of Bergson as a popular andpublic intellectual, the enthusiasm with which his ideas were met in Paris, and his promi-

nence within vitalism, that Epstein was familiar with his philosophical work. Bergson also

remains vitalism's flag figure due to his own engagement with the sciences, especially bi-

ology. In film theory, Bergson’s idea of duration (la durée) is fundamental to Deleuze’s

“time-image”, an aesthetic that exposes the spectator to the duration and flow of time.

Broadly speaking, vitalist aesthetics rooted in Bergsonian vitalism, are directed at reveal-

ing the flow, the force of life, the élan vital animating all organisms. Lukásc encapsulates

the idea when he writes that cinema is “movement in itself, the eternal transience, the

never-resting change of things” (qtd. in Pollmann 27). Ironically, Bergson himself did not

believe in the power of cinema to capture the flow of life. Instead, he saw cinema as a

medium adapted to the fragmented, temporal demands of modern perception (Pollmann

74). Epstein too does not ascribe much value to this contemplative aesthetic – for him

long takes and still lives are the death of cinema (Cortade 167). Nevertheless, the mo-

bile aspect of vitalism is surely an influence on Epstein: one of photogénie's qualities is

to reveal the movement of all nature, the mobility of all things. That the lenses are able

to reveal that to us he labels the “metaphysics of the telescope” (319), what testifies to the

bond he sees between metaphysics and science, between modernity as technological ad-

15http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1927/

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1927/




vancement, and discovery as enchantment and animism returning to the world. Echoes

of vitalism can certainly be seen in Epstein’s work, as read by researchers focused on the

corporeal experience, perception, and embodiment - note this quote from Epstein selected

by Christopher Wall-Romana in his essay on photogénie's as a 'corporeal vision':

Coenaesthesis [an inner sensation of the body - BK] constitutes the general

feeling of living, in which a host of indistinct sensations coalesce and fuse (…)

A primitive, fetal, and very much animal sensibility. (52, italics BK)

It is evident that Epstein must have been aware, either by direct knowledge or by osmosis,

of vitalism and its aesthetic expressions in cinema. Epstein’s closing argument in “The

Cinema of the Devil” (1947) is that the battle between the Ancients and Moderns is not

undecided at all – the victory of cinema is the victory of fluid forms over fixed forms, of

movements over permanence (327). In "The Cinema Seen from Etna" (1926), he states:

“cinema unites all the kingdoms of nature into a single order, one possessing the most

majestic vitality” (289). Although Epstein’s films prove to be a natural choice for an aes-

thetic analysis of vitalism and/or animism in cinema, an ontological inquiry must be wary

of favoring a specific, isolated aesthetic. The photographer and critic Jean-Michel Frodon

discourages this practice for the readers of Bazin. It is often proposed that Bazin’s the-

ory realizes itself in the aesthetics of Italian neo-realism, but Frodon informs that Bazin

himself states “that we must beware of equating cinema with a given aesthetic” (27). In

a similar manner, photogénie can be read as an aesthetic concept, yet it testifies to onto-

logically animistic powers of cinema. Photogénie is elusive in its qualities, what in turn

produces a manifold of readings as to their aesthetic fulfillment. The matter of tracing the

influence of vitalism on photogénie as an aesthetic begs another dissertation16. However,

when it comes to aesthetic dimensions of photogénie, Wall-Romana correctly states that

it is far too simplistic to reduce it to “an obsolete technical aestheticism, a naïve fetishism

for the filmic shot” (52). Those who still fall prey to the attraction of fashionably volatile

aesthetics of the cinema, “should buy a kaleidoscope, a plaything for a second childhood”,

as Epstein advises (qtd. in Moore 180).

3.6 Vitalism and animism in Epstein

Although vitalism is an important part of his environment, Epstein’s orientation is unmis-

takably animistic, however, when he claims that cinema reveals the inner life of things,

instead than just the flow of life. To Epstein, cinema is vitalist in its mobility, but does

not perform a vitalist function in distinguishing the living matter from the dead. Instead,

it reveals life in things it bestows its lens upon, a life that is not only mobility but also

16 As film aesthetics are not central to this thesis, I can only recommend Inga Pollmann’s dissertation onthe subject of vitalism and cinema. It will shed light on how vitalism manifests both in theory, and artisticpractice.




personhood. Cinema animates by revealing the personality and the “moral character” of

things, as well as distilling these features in humans:

To things and beings in their most frigid semblance, the cinema thus grants

the greatest gift onto death: life [vitalism - BK]. And is confers this life in its

highest guise: personality [animism- BK]. (Epstein 267)

Etymologically, both animism (”anima”) and vitalism (”vita”) have life at its core. “Vita”

is life in its wholeness, its flow and unity among all living matter. The German film the-

orist Sigfried Kraucauer posits that cinema in its vitality reveals and “harbors an affinity

for the flow of life” (qtd. in Pollmann 34). “Anima” is also an animating principle, most

often translated to spirit - that which inhabits living beings. “Anima” is not as much an

element that constitutes life as a phenomena, but an item integral to personhood. This is

the element Epstein identifies at work in photogénie, a personhood revealed by cinema

that elevates non-human lives to the center of attention from the bottom of the modern

anthropocentric hierarchy of persons, through allowing a glimpse into their “alien life”:

If we wish to understand how an animal, a plant or a stone can inspire respect,

fear, or horror, those three most sacred sentiments, I think we must watch

them on screen, living their mysterious, silent lives, alien to human sensibility.

(180)

Although an aesthetic analysis of photogénie might reveal close affiliations to vitalist aes-

thetics, its ontological dimensions unmistakably lead to animistic re-evaluations of per-

sonhood. Consider how Epstein’s ideas resonate with this description of animism given

by Eric Kohn in his interview with Philippe Descola:

Animism forces us to come to grips with the fact that we humans are not the

only ones who know the world. Therefore, our human-centered analytics—

those that underpin all of the human sciences as well as the basis for its division

from the natural ones—have to be rethought to show how the human is open

to these other ways of knowing, and being, in the world17.

Vitalism and animism bond in their fascination with the world as a living, vibrating place.

Life permeates all matter and constitutes personhood – whether animal, object, or ma-

chine.

17Kohn, Eduardo (2009). "A Conversation with Philippe Descola," Tipití: Journal of the Society forthe Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 7: Iss. 2, Article 1. Accessed at 20/05/2014: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol7/iss2/1

http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol7/iss2/1





4. How to break free from the tyranny of metaphors:

taking animism seriously

4.1 Metaphors of vision: the revelationist tradition in early film

theory

As most of you know, I’m sure, philosophical thinking tends to be terrorized by

metaphors of vision. We assume that we understand reality, because we can see it. But,

how do you see it? You see it because of the lens, or the focusing capacity of the eye,

which exercises a certain tyranny over the nature of what you see. If you look too closely

at something, all you can see is dots18 (Paul Fry).

Vitalism influenced filmmakers in their attempts to uncover the mobility of matter, and the

flow of life underneath perceivable reality. Through their films and theories, they asked:

can we ever truly see reality, or are we subjected to the tyranny of our own vision? In

Doubting Vision (2008) Malcolm Turvey argues that Epstein’s output is part of a larger

tradition in early film theory: “revelationism”. In his view, certain European early film

theorists - Jean Epstein in France, Siegfried Kraucauer and Béla Balázs in Germany (al-

though the latter born in Hungary), and Dziga Vertov in Russia attribute “relevationist”

qualities to cinema: they believe human vision is impaired and seek in cinema the revela-

tion of a genuine knowledge of the world. A double-edged doubt marks Doubting Vision:first, Turvey identifies revelationist impulses in Epstein, Balázs, Kraucauer, and Vertov:

“Due to a visual skepticism [about the abilities of human vision] the [theorists] desired to

escape the human eyes’ limitations in order to see reality as it really is, not as it appears to

our flawed visual faculty” (18). Then, he doubts their supposed doubt, arguing that their

distrust of human vision originates in a erroneous assessment of its mechanisms, espe-

cially now that they are better understood than a few decades ago: “[they] are only able to

make their arguments about the limitations of human vision and the revelatory power of

the cinema by misusing perceptual and related concepts” (12). In Turvey’s understanding,their film theories are flawed by an unnecessary mysticism – cinema does not provide a

visual epiphany. Instead, Turvey argues, the qualities they assign to cinema, are already

present in the mechanism of human sight itself, otherwise they are simply misdirected

metaphors.

For Turvey, a distrust of human sight accompanied by a belief in revelationist qualities of

art, is rooted in the conditions set by modernist art, which promised an experience of “a

higher, more formal order of vision […] reflexive in its form” (Krauss in Turvey 99), where18Professor Paul Fry during the lecture on “The Postmodern Psyche”, part of the Literary Studies course

at Yale, accessible online: http://112.112.8.207/resource/data/20100129/U/yale201001010/transcript-15-the-postmodern-psyche.htm




“vision, rather than a privileged form of knowing, becomes itself an object of knowledge”

(Crary in Turvey 111). For the modernists, true art “should transform or abandon the way

that reality usually appears” (112). Referencing Jonathan Crary and Rosalind Krauss, both

authorities in the field of art history, allows Turvey to situate his theory of “revelation-ism” within a broader field of modernism in art. In film theory, Rudolf Arnheim famously

voiced the modernist argument in Film as Art (1933), in which Turvey sees the anti-thesis

to Bazin’s “realism” of mechanic reproduction:

There is serious danger that the film maker will rest content with shapeless re-

production. In order that the film artist may create a work of art it is important

that he consciously stress the peculiarities of the medium.

(Arnheim in Turvey 9)

The “peculiarities” of thecinematicmedium, theuniqueaestheticproperties of cinema, id-iosyncratic and detached from the attributes of other arts, allow the revelation of reality’s

true nature: “the close-up, slow motion, time-lapse photography, editing can reveal fea-

tures of reality that are invisible in the sense that it is impossible for the human eye to see

them without assistance” (17). According to Turvey, Epstein is neither a modernist, nor a

realist, but a ‘revelationist’. Although the belief in transcendental qualities of art situates

Epstein within modernism, he is specifically a ‘revelationist’ when he proposes that cin-

ema is privileged in revealing the true nature of reality, due to the fact it is more efficient in

performing the tasks that human vision is unable to accomplish. Because Turvey correctly

assesses the importance of medium specificity to Epstein’s work, his argument is partially

confirmed by those scholars who read Epstein in the historical context of the debate on

cinema as art. Many of the contributing scholars to the 2012 Epstein anthology Jean Ep-

stein: Critical Essays and New Translations follow the same path, stressing Epstein’s

devotion to distilling the specificity of the cinematic medium (Wall-Romana; Kirtland;

Cortade; Lundemo; Bullot), as well as attributing transcendental or mystical qualities to

it, and thus elevating it to the status of art. Yet, the reception of Turvey’s argument among

the contributors is varied. Although Turvey convincingly asserts the centrality of medium

specificity and aesthetic qualities of cinema to early film theory, a few scholars perceive

his reading of the hierarchic relation between cinema and human vision as a misreading

of Epstein’s intention. Lundemo’s encapsulates the biggest problem of Turvey’s argument

by stating that “Epstein’s argument is that cinema offers a different, and not only ‘better’

or more powerful […] perception” (215).

In Turvey’s reading, Epstein’s reference to animism is just another colorful specimen in

an arsenal of metaphors, not more than an attempt to place cinema in the pantheon of the

arts. The fact Epstein picks a primitivist or mystical metaphor is another symptom of the

times. Turvey correctly claims that emphasizing mystical and spiritual powers of arts is

an essential component of modernism:




It is impossible to summarize all of these spiritual philosophies here [that in-

fluenced the modernist distrust of human vision - BK] […] they share a concern

for the quality of inner life, an interest in spiritual development and wholeness,

and a mistrust of material values and appearances. (117)

Turvey sets out to demystify Epstein’s theory through laying bare the qualities of mod-

ernism, as well as through an attempt to 'correct' its misguided claims of revelation by

art. Throughout the book he discusses Epstein’s metaphors as misdirected claims, irrec-

oncilable with a correct understanding of human vision, and symptomatic of modernism’s

naïve enthusiasm for the power of arts. However, he seems to oversee Epstein’s commit-

ment to an understanding of cinema as something different from human, not superhu-

man, but rather nonhuman. My goal is not to determine what Epstein 'really' means or

which reading is more 'correct', but to read his film theory through the lens of animism.Paradoxically, Turvey’s statements can support the necessity of implementing animism

as the key to understanding Epstein’s cinematic ontology. With animism as an interpre-

tative strategy, rather than a metaphor, Epstein’s place within the revelationist tradition

becomes nuanced.

4.2 Demystifying Epstein: misconceptions and metaphors

Turveydiscussesanimism only on oneoccasion throughout thewhole book. He introduces

Epstein’s supposed distrust of human vision by stressing the “mechanic” identity of the

camera, which would allow Epstein to put trust in its objectivity. Cinema operates better

than human perception, because as a machine it provides a mode of seeing that is more

reliable than our own sight, flawed by subjectivity:

Epstein argues that the cinema is more reliable because it is a machine:

"My eyes present me with an idea of form; the film stock also contains an idea

of form, an idea established independently of my awareness, an idea without

awareness, a latent, secret but marvelous idea…" (22)

Curiously, though Turvey argues that Epstein sees cinema as more reliable than human

vision, the quote he picks has Epstein clearly stating that the film stock contains an idea

independent, different from it. In a similar manner, when Turvey interprets animism as

a metaphor for cinema’s ability to reveal the mobility of the world, he fails to see other

meanings that can be derived from the coupling of cinema and animism. Turvey defines

animism not as much as the core quality of photogénie, and by extension Epstein’s theory,

but a testimony to both the influence of Bergson's philosophy and Epstein’s fascination

with modern science and the microscope. In his reading, cinema is animistic because it

reveals mobility where the human eye perceives stasis – a very vitalistic interpretation

of animism: “In demonstrating that reality is mobile, [for Epstein] ‘an amazing animism




is restored to the world’" (22). When placed in the context of reality observed under a

microscope, animism becomes easy to dismiss as an analogy invoked by numerous early

film theorists: “The camera has uncovered the cell-life of the vital issues […] the greatest

landslide is only the aggregate of movement” (Balázs in Turvey 4); “We may see on thescreen the fight of the bacteria […] by the miracles of the camera we may trace the life

of nature” (Münsterberg in Turvey 5). However, although Turvey quotes the animistic

passage, he ignores the second part of it that is central to an understanding of animism

present throughout Epstein’s theory of cinema:

…an amazing animism is restored to the world. We know now, once we’ve seen

it, that we are surrounded by inhuman living things19. (Epstein in Turvey 22)

In Epstein’s theory, the microscope’s lenses “promote into existence” beings (“inhuman

existences”), or objects that humans would be unable to relate to without having first in-

vented the microscope to see them:

There again, lenses provide – that is, they produce – images, select them in

order to make them visible within the invisible, separate them from what will

remain unknowable, suddenly raise them from non-appearance and non-being

to the rank of perceptible realities. (320)

A quality that cinema shares with the microscope, is that it elevates beings or objects into

a relation, or into “the light of dramatic concern” (Epstein 295), thus promoting them into

personhood. Turvey overlooks the cinema’s ability to enter the other-than-human, rather

than the superhuman world, even though he himself states that the animistic reality re-

vealed by cinema is so different , that Epstein chooses to employ “primitivist similes and

metaphors” (22-23). This also serves as a point in an argument I made before – as a the-

orist unfamiliar with non-Western or non-modern ontologies, Turvey takes them to be so

different that they simply must be metaphors or similes. For Turvey, there is an irrecon-

cilable difference between the two types of revelations – one of microscope and the other

of cinema. The first is indeed a revelation, as the microscope allows humans to see be-ings that materially exist outside of the scope of our vision. In the latter case, the camera

simply enriches already existing beings with imaginary qualities. The distinction between

the “genuine” revelations of the microscope, and the “imaginary” revelations of cinema is

at the core of Turvey’s argument, because he chooses to dismiss animism as a “simile”.

Interestingly, his assertions of Epstein’s misconceptions draw on the linguistic analysis of

Ludwig Wittgenstein – a philosopher, not a scientist, an optician, or a neurologist. Rather

than a scientific inquiry into the nature of human sight, Turvey’s reading imposes onto

Epstein’s theory a specific methodology, that due to its lineage might dismiss animism.19Note alternative translation:“[A]n animism is being reborn. We know that we are surrounded by inhu-

man existences” (203).




Turvey turns to Wittgenstein’s linguistics20, because: “philosophy is concerned with the

workings of our language with what is already in place, not something unknown” (27). In

Wittgenstein’s view, bad philosophy is simply nonsensical, it misuses language and con-

cepts, it is blind to their meaning. The task of philosophy is the analysis of language, asit so intimately reflects our reality. Turvey assumes Epstein makes literal claims about

the ability of cinema to transcend human vision, therefore his misuse of perceptual con-

cepts can be uncovered through a linguistic analysis. This approach allows Turvey to, for

example, accuse Epstein of confusing the categories of time and space:

Yet Epstein conceives of the fourth dimension of time as if it were an empirical

phenomenon that the naked eye is not powerful enough to see but that can be

revealed by the cinema in the same way that the position of a planet too distant

for the eye to see can be revealed by a telescope. (23)

Turvey, once again highlighting the true revelations of scientific devices, versus the hypo-

thetical discoveries of the camera, lucidly points out that neither the human eye, nor the

cinema is able to see through time. It is no fault of human sight, but the property of time

that we are unable to re-orient ourselves towards its beginning or end, as we are able to do

with space. A flashback does not make the fourth dimension of time visible, because the

viewers still watch it in the present. Everyday language demonstrates this clearly: time

prepositions, such as “before” of “after”, are non-literal applications of perceivable spatial

components to temporal dimensions21. Turvey’s reliance on Wittgenstein allows him to

disarm Epstein’s belief in the “revelations” of cinema, by merely pointing out the linguis-

tic inaccuracies of his perceptual statements. Simply put, if there is something cinema

can do, it is because human vision can do it too; if there is something human vision can’t

achieve, and cinema does – it is simply a metaphor that we can easily break down.

4.3 The question of our ontologies: naturalism versus animism

Tuvey considers his methodology a transparent one, reliant on common sense, logic andfacts. However, Wittgenstein’s approach belongs to a larger tradition in the West, one

that does not escape the watchful eyes of contemporary anthropology. A few contem-

porary scholars have already performed an anthropology of the Moderns, in an attempt

20Turvey refers mostly to the early texts of Wittgenstein – in later works Wittgenstein presents the idea of reality as a complex system, that is irreducible to simple articulation.

21 A discussion of “time” is beyond the scope of this thesis, and would not directly further the argument of cinema as animism. It is interesting to note, however, that shamans during a ritual freely enter the futureand the past, or rather make the past or the future visible within the present – much as in Deleuze’s “timecrystals”. According to Epstein, photogénie always happens in the future, “it is an imperative”: “ Photogénieis to be conjugated in the future and imperative. It is never a state” (qtd. Wall-Romana 53). Additionally,in his later essays, Epstein devotes a considerable amount of thought to space-time and the discoveries of quantum physics. He convincingly argues that in cinema space-time can never be separated (unlike in thehuman mind): moving in space already is related to change in temporal dimensions.




to reveal the seemingly self-evident mechanisms of our appropriation of the world: in

1998, Umberto Eco organized a then unique program at the University of Bologna, called

“Anthropology of the West”. He invited non-Western scholars (predominantly Chinese

and African) to lead the program according to their own criteria. Just recently, one of the most prominent living French intellectuals, Bruno Latour, has published a new book:

An Inquiry Into the Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (2013). By

dismissing animism as an interpretative strategy, Turvey appropriates the non-animistic

ontology as a given, unquestionable method of measurement that reveals how Epstein is

“misusing perceptual concepts”, as they turn out to “differ considerably from the sort of

empirical phenomena (such as a distant planet, the particulate structure of an object, or

microbes) that are normally discovered and observed using visual technologies” (12). Tur-

vey presents Wittgenstein’s linguistics as commonsensical, a method we could turn to in

order to demystify what is a metaphor, and what is real. For Turvey, Epstein writes about

phenomena that is simply nonsensical when viewed through the lens of Western ontolo-

gies, mirrored in linguistic analysis. Yet, Turvey’s modus operandi fits within a larger

unit with its own history, an ontology that Descola (2005) labels “naturalism”. Natural-

ism, characteristic of Europe and the Anglophone world from the classical age until now,

is the opposite of animism. In 2005, Descola published his monumental book Beyond Na-

ture and Culture where he insists on abolishing the belief in an unquestionable distinction

between nature and culture, one that Western scholars often presuppose as inescapable.

This is precisely the belief that allows Turvey to smoothly differentiate between the le-

gitimate revelation provided by modern optical devices (telescope, microscope) and the

fictitious revelations of the camera, which Epstein so eagerly advocates.

Descola, once a student of theanthropologist ClaudeLévi-Strauss, attemptsto systematize

his previous research (notably among the Achuar people of the Amazon, 1997) into four

ontologies, that describe the relation between culture and nature on the basis of physical

andinterior similarity or dissimilarity between humansandnonhumans. Thecomponents

of nature and culture, and the relations between humans and nonhumans, are different

in each of the ontologies. The ways in which humans relate to the world, “exist under the

form of mental structures, partly innate, partly stemming from the properties of social

life” ("The Ecology of Others" 87). The structures are not consistent, but also not contin-

gent. The Euro-American naturalism is predominant in the West, and includes a strict

divide between natural laws (nonhumans and their activity) and symbolic laws of culture

(humans and their activity). In this system, humans are the sole possessors of interiority,

while at the same time connected, by the materiality of their bodies, to the physical world,

itself devoid of any interiority. In animism, to the contrary, nature and culture flow intoeach other, to create a system in which both humans and nonhumans share the same in-




Figure 1: The above figure illustrates the similarity and dissimilarity between humans and non-

humans in various ontologies: the plus symbolizes what unites humans and nonhumans, while the

minus stands for what differs them.

teriority, even though the materiality of human and nonhuman bodies differs22.

4.4 The personality of objects (2nd specification of photogénie)

What happens if we read the same paragraphs Turvey picks, but through the ontology of

animism, instead of naturalism? Turvey notices that other film theorists already make an

argument of the cinema’s ability to reveal the inner life of humans, but Epstein extends this

thesis to objects (59). A famous and already quoted reflection on the inner life of a revolver

returns: “A close-up of a revolver is no longer a revolver, it is the revolver-character (…)

It has a temperament, habits, memories, a will, a soul” (Epstein in Turvey 59). Turvey

rephrases this quickly and includes no less than three disclaimers: “The object seems to

come alive, as if it were a living being of some kind ” (ibid, italics BK). In the naturalisticontology, only human beings possess an interiority, while the objects we interact with can

only hold imaginary qualities. To further “demystify” the argument, Turvey quotes the

followingpassage from Epstein’sessay “For a NewAvant-Garde”(1926), published around

the same time as “On Certain Characteristic of Photogénie”:

Each of us, I assume, must possess some object which he holds onto for per-

sonal reasons: for some it’s a book; for some, perhaps, a very banal and some-

22Totemism: some humans and nonhumans share, within the same network, the same physicality and

interiority, for example based on their birth right to a certain territory. This ontology is almost exclusive tothe Aboriginal Australians. Analogism: both the physicality and interiority of all elements is so essential-ity varied, it is necessary to find analogies between them. Think The Simpsons episode, where a comet isheading towards the Earth, and they decide to burn down the observatory in order to prevent the disaster.




what ugly trinket; for someone else, perhaps, a piece of furniture with no value.

We do not look at them as they really are. To tell the truth, we are incapable of

seeing them as objects. What we see in them, through them, are the memories

and emotions, the plans or regrets that we have attached to these things for amore or less lengthy period of time, sometimes forever. Now, this is the cine-

matographic mystery: an object such as this, with its personal character, that

is to say, an object situated in a dramatic action that is equally photographic

in character, reveals anew its moral character, its human and living expression

when reproduced cinematographically. (qtd. in Turvey 71)

Epstein states, that through the power of cinema, we embed objects into the network of

human memories and feelings. The “as if” brings back Stenger’s important question – do

you really believe in animism? For Turvey, “the personality of objects” is equal to theirnarrative status within a film. This is correct, but too reductive. “For a New Avant-Garde”

(1926) is a short piece of film criticism, as such concerned with aesthetics. One of Epstein’s

early texts, it relies on a definition of photogénie as an aesthetic specific to cinema, if unex-

plainable: “There is something more. Cinema is its herald” (305). The passage chosen by

Turvey is different from the overall tone of the essay. Essentially, here Epstein emerges as

a ruthless film critic, praising his champions such as D.W. Griffith for rapid editing, while

dismissing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) as “still life”, dead cinema, a set recorded on

film. Yet, a promise of future theoretical engagements with animism surfaces, when Ep-stein attributes personhood to objects and even to “the gaze” of an eyeball on film (304).

A seemingly insignificant detail: in this essay Epstein recalls his meeting with the French

poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars in Nice, on the set of the production of Abel Gance’s (if

Epstein ever had an idol, here he is) La Roue (1923). Cendrars proclaims: “ Photogénie is

a word… very pretentious, a bit silly; but it’s a great mystery.” Epstein comments: “Grad-

ually, much later, I understood how great a mystery photogénie is” (304). Photogénie was

only an idea developing in Epstein’s mind at the time. The few lines where he recalls his

enigmatic conversation with Cendrars, and where they lead, are the key to understanding

“the personhood of objects”. For Epstein, the power of cinema is not only to reveal the

narrative importance of props, but to conceive of an ontology where objects and humans

possess the same interiority. Inga Pollmann acknowledges Epstein’s work only briefly in

her dissertation on vitalism, but, when she does, it is in connection to Cendrars: “Film

theorists including Blaise Cendrars and Jean Epstein went a step further, they gave in to

the temptation – and aesthetic and political potential – to cross-breed human, animal,

and technological perception” (96). The political potential that Turvey doesn’t discuss is a

possible creation of an anti-hierarchic system, where as in animism, interiority is common

to all human and nonhuman persons, while physicality differs. Note this inspired state-

ment on cinematic powers by Cendrars in The ABCs of Cinema (1917-1921), that Epstein

must have read - a statement no animistic shaman would be shy to start a ritual with:




Everything is rhythm, word, life. No longer any need to demonstrate. We are in

communion. […] On screen the slightest effort becomes painful, musical, and

insects and microbes look like our most illustrious contemporaries […]Crystal-

lization comes to life. Ecstasy. Animals, plants, and minerals are ideas, emo-tions, digits. We see our brother the wind, and the ocean is an abyss of men.

(qtd. in Pollmann 114)

Pollmann quotes this passage at greater lengths, and underlines Cedrars’s use of cine-

matic, fast-paced editing into his writing, as well as ideas of cinematic mimicry, camou-

flage and mimesis. However, it is the negotiation of nonhuman personhood that draws

attention of a reader attuned to animism. Insects and the wind become brothers and our

contemporaries, and men become an abyss within the ocean. Does it not mirror Epstein’s

travel notes in "The Cinema Seen from Etna" (1926)? “In front of us, Etna, the great ac-tor…” (288), not less an actor than a human would be. Later on, describing his ascent on

Etna, Epstein calls the camera his “most beloved living machine” that sees the human with

“an inhuman eye” (290). The human-object relation in Epstein theory is much more nu-

anced than a simple enrichment of object with anthropomorphic qualities and dramatur-

gic importance, although this is also essential: “The Earth had an obstinate, human face”

(289), says Epstein during his cinematic reflections on Etna. But – we must not miss the

other side of the equation – humans can become props or objects on screen: Epstein saw

the greatest actor in the river Seine (Keller 37) and “…in his mind, [in his 1924 film La Belle

Nivernaise] the trees and the river played starring roles, in the credits for Six et demi onze

Epstein includes “the sun” and “the lens” in addition to each of the human actors” (Keller

39). Although different in their physicality, their interiority within the cinematic universe

is equal: “There are infinite number of movements, of expressions, as much among my hu-

man actors as among the things that act in my films…” (Epstein 155). Objects are elevated

to the status of humans, and humans are promoted to the status of objects. In cinema, ob-

jects can become alive, while humans appear dead: “Actors who thought themselves alive

here show themselves to be more than dead, less than nothing, negative; while others and

objects that are inert seem suddenly to feel and think…” (Epstein 182). Cinema disrupts

theanthropocentric hierarchy, through allowing both human and nonhuman elements the

same interiority, or narrative importance. In another early essay, “L’objectif lui-meme”

(1926) Epstein already states his interest in an anti-anthropocentric ‘ciné-analysis’, argu-

ing against the ‘absurd subjectivism’ of the human ego:

Why refrain from profiting from one of the most rare qualities of the cine-

matographic eye, to be an eye outside of the eye, to escape the tyrannical ego-

centrism of our personal vision? (…) The lens is itself. (216)

The unarticulated political potential of Epstein’s theory, which Pollmann mentions, is that

of animism’s invitation to reconsider the primacy of the human, and its privileged position




in the naturalist ontology.

4.5 The difference between seeing and knowing

'Family resemblance' or 'ancestry' that cinema makes visible in another phenomena, as

Turvey argues, “Epstein describes as if it were an invisible, immaterial, almost platonic

entity, existing independent of each family member” (72). Although not directly related to

animism, 'family resemblance' highlights the anti-egocentric potential of cinema. Turvey

opens his discussion of it with the following passage:

From oldest ancestor to youngest child, all the resemblances and differences

delineated a single character. […] And what issued from mouths of one to an-

other was the family, which answered me with its singular voice, according toits singular character, with its set way of thinking and which carried on across

many past, present, and future bodies. (Epstein in Turvey 72)

Later on, Epstein also states that knowing the 'mother-soul' we originate from and will

return to, equals enlightenment. Why is that? Cinema allows us to see ourselves as parts

of a bigger whole, or a family line, allowing us a collective self. Instead of foregrounding

the “I”, cinema can reveal our ties to a community. Brenez comments on this fragment

in a similar manner:”Cinema again asks the question of human community: here again

the film dissolves the principle of identity (…) The individual no longer exists, he is but aporous figure” (234). Turvey, however, focuses on perception. Following Wittgenstein, he

explains that what Epstein must have meant is similar to 'aspect-drawing'. The visibility of

the ancestral line is no more than an illusion, not a dissolution of the individual ego. 'The

aspect' appears only in the eye of the beholder – although nothing has been added to the

picture materially, we can see it differently. If anything, it is the strengthening of the ego’s

power in the naturalist ontology – the human as the bearer of interiority freely manipu-

lates any meanings attached to an image. This is a function easily performed by the human

eye – “I [draw] a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has

not changed, and yet I see it differently” (Wittgenstein in Turvey 73). This would of course

mean that every cinematic image of a family should include a visual representation of the

family line in the image. Yet again, Turvey’s reading stems from naturalism – humans

alter their interiority, the nonhuman elements of nature are subject to irreducible laws.

Turvey’s arguments are based on the separation of seeing and knowing, one that is not

necessarily present outside naturalism. For Turvey (and Wittgenstein), to see is to receive

by the eyes and correctly identify in the brain. Wittgenstein proposes that the difference

between truly seeing and simply knowing (or assuming), lies in the way the beholder re-

ports on what she sees. If she truly sees, she responds immediately and without hesitation.

“Humans can spontaneously and unhesitatingly identify a face as sad, happy, and so on,

without treating their identification as one among several interpretations”, claims Turvey




(64). Curiously, to illustrate this assumption with regard to objects, Turvey asks thereader

to imagine a “Wisconsin tribe”:

Let us imagine that a tribe of English-speaking people, who do not use cutlery

or have any concept of cutlery, and who have never seen or heard of cutlery,

is discovered in a remote corner of Wisconsin. One of them is shown a fork

and asked what it is that he sees. He describes the material features of the fork

perfectly: its color, shape, texture, and so on. But would we say that he sees a

fork? In one sense we would, for he describes its material properties very well.

But in another sense he wouldn’t. He does not see a fork, but just an object

(…) It is this other sense of the concept of seeing – seeing the kind of object

something is, not just its material properties – that Wittgenstein is trying to

clarify. (65)

Graham Harman, one of the founders of the object-oriented ontology (OOO), a movement

that rejects the importance of humans over nonhumans, discusses a similar division in his

brochure The Third Table. The Third Table is a response to Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous

two table argument (The Nature of the Physical World 1928). The argument opposes the

“everyday” table that is verifiable and concrete to the “scientific table”, a fluid swarm of

molecules. Both are real: the first one can be perceived with humans eyes, the other with

scientific devices. For Harman, both tables symbolize the reductionism of, respectively,

humanities and hard sciences. The first one is the table we see, the second is the table

that we know is there. For Harman, there is a 'third table', in-between the two. The 'real

table' is never entirely knowable or accessible, and due to its in-betweenness it is never

verifiable23. Yet, Turvey rather follows Eddington in his distinction, when he insists on a

difference between seeing the material qualities of the object and knowing what the object

is (for).

If linguistic analysis is the primary epistemological weapon, a way of decoding our relation

to the world, what does it say about seeing and knowing in animistic ontologies? In Polish

the word wiedźma (a witch) is a combination of 'wiedzieć' (to know) and 'widzieć' (to see),

while 'znachor' (a shaman, a healer) comes from 'znać' (to know); in Dutch ziener (see-

er, someone who sees into the future) comes from 'zien' (to see) and 'helderziende' - one

who sees clear, a psychic; In Lithuanian ragana (witch) from 'regeti' (to see); in Russian

wiedźma (witch) from wedet (to know) and widet (to see); in English 'seer' and 'visionary'

(following the 17th century meaning: able to see visions) both point to a privileged access

to reality or knowledge gained by sight;vidente (a fortuneteller) in Portuguese is 'someone

23Terence Blake wrote an interesting critique of Harman’s argument for the French online jour-nal ‘Theoria’, where he accuses the OOO of being a ‘negative theology’, devoid of mysticismand reductive towards reality. The short article can be accessed at: http://www.theoria.fr/review-of-graham-harmans-the-third-table-hatje-cantz-2012-1669/

http://www.theoria.fr/review-of-graham-harmans-the-third-table-hatje-cantz-2012-1669/

http://www.theoria.fr/review-of-graham-harmans-the-third-table-hatje-cantz-2012-1669/




who has the sight', 'ver' is 'too see'; in French 'voyant' (seer) and 'clairvoyant' – one who

sees clearly, who derives knowledge from sources outside of the human sensorium. These

are but a few examples, but they already complicate Turvey’s rigorous separating of seeing

and knowing. In the above examples, 'to see' often means “to gain knowledge of otherwiseinaccessible parts of reality by sight”. Fortunetellers see into the future, shamans and

witches know because they can see, clairvoyants and psychics are the ones who see clearly

and truly. To see something is also the realize something – 'open your eyes!', we say in

English, when we urge someone to accept the truth, or to see from another perspective.

The inhuman eye of the camera, or camera as 'the third eye', is a form of 'clairvoyance',

instead of aspect-drawing. Aspect-drawing is naturalist, it is directed from inside of the

human self towards the image – it imposes meanings that are absent in the image and only

materialize in the human eye. 'Seeing' as 'knowing' in the animistic ontology of cinema,

is the opposite – the outside world pressures the human eye to be aware of what it nor-

mally overlooks, of a different ontology, a different way of being together with nonhuman

elements, as seen by an inhuman camera. This is why Epstein advocates ‘cine-analysis’

instead of psychoanalysis – to see through cinema is to allow the picture world to act on

us, instead of us acting on an inner impulse. Turvey himself points to this:

In his film theory, Epstein attributes the power to the movie camera, calling it

photogénie, the revelation of the inner ‘personality’ of objects. He also often

uses terms such as ‘cinematic telepathy’ to describe the relation between the viewer and what is depicted in the cinematic image. (26)

Surprisingly, Turvey does not refer to a paragraph in which Epstein equals ciné-telepathy

to a universal language; a paragraph that levels seeing and knowing, from an early essay

“Language d’Or” (1922):

In the darkness said to be favorable to telepathic phenomena – that is, the com-

pression of the most remote things and the most secret correspondence be-

tween minds – the surprising language was born; its nature was unexpected,

easily assimilated through the eye but not through the ear. It isn’t read, it is

seen, and this act of ‘seeing’ is truly the most nuanced exercise. (298)

4.6 Cinema: a lesson of egotism in reverse

Turvey argues that Epstein’s declamation of supposed super-sensory knowledge produced

by the cinema, places him among the Romantics. In Romanticism, the artist is akin to a

prophet or a seer, has a privileged access to reality. Indeed, especially in his film criti-

cism and early texts, Epstein appears as an eager novice, enamored with the artistic andmystical powers of cinema, especially when exercised by filmmakers he champions (Abel

Gance, D.W. Griffith, Mercel L’Herbier). Whenever he ponders the aesthetic qualities of




cinema, he gives away his own taste. He’s not shy in labeling “second-rate filmmakers”

(272) “a plague” (296), or “hogwash” (275) while praising his favorites: “Gance – today our

master, one and all” (294), or “Delluc, the missionary of photogénie” (299). For Turvey,

‘revelationism’ unifies modernism with Romanticism, to which modernism was originally a reaction (Hayward 256). Yet, contrary to the ego boosting assumptions of Romanticism,

Epstein advocates cinema as a machine for ego-loss and decentralization. In "The Cinema

Seen from Etna" (1926), he describes an episode that will leave a mark on his theory. Stuck

in an elevator, he needed to escape by taking a rather long staircase, “an immense spiral of

stairs portended vertigo. The entire shaft was lined with mirrors. I descended surrounded

by images of myself, be reflections, by images of my gestures, my cinematic projections”

(291). Surely, Epstein might have emerged from his journey through the hall of mirrors

as a modern Narcissus, fascinated by his own reflection, as he so many times was with the

cinematic close-up. Epstein believed “Young girls will consult [close-ups] instead of the

fortune-teller” (184), highlighting the link between the two24. Instead, he is humbled, if

not shattered by “the moral effect of such spectacle (…) I saw myself stripped of my sus-

taining illusions, surprised, laid bare (…) Such a lesion of egotism in reverse is pitiless

(292, italics BK). The echo of Romanticism surely lingers on the horizon, but Epstein’s

idea of cinema is more than that: it is a tool of external analysis, or hypnosis. It “reveals”

not only the truths of reality, but also the narcissism of the human ego. It humbles us.

There is an ethical, moral, or political dimension to Epstein’s film theory that seems to be

neglected in favor of aesthetics and philosophy. Animism, as an interpretative cue, helps

to bring into focus these elements of his theory that appear insignificant when read within

the naturalist ontology. It shifts Epstein’s theory beyond its own milieu. For example, in-

stead of placing Epstein among the Romantics, it zooms in on his ties to the anti-modern

beats of anti-anthropocentrism:

These [cinematic] experiments contradict and throw into confusion the sense

of order which we have established at a great cost in our conception of the uni-

verse… Not without some anxiety, man finds himself before that chaos which

he has covered up, denied, forgotten, or thought was tamed. Cinematography

appraises him of a monster. (Epstein in Turvey 22)

Instead of expressing a dissatisfactionwith thedeficienciesof human sight, Epstein praises

cinema’s ability to “uncover” the chaos men have hidden from themselves. This revela-

tion is not purely perceptual, but has an ethical dimension. The revelation entails seeing

(as knowing, or being aware of) other ontologies outside of naturalism – those that men

“thought were tamed”. Words written in 2012 by the curator Anselm Franke, mirror those

24 When we read deeper into Epstein’s theory of close-up it becomes apparent it’s also far from narcissistic– the close-up shows things “the way they are”, it exposes “the formless underbelly that is shrouded by thetendency to name and order things”. (184) When I interviewed the Malaysian filmmaker Dain Said abouthis animistic tendencies, he expressed a similar sentiment: “Language had distanced us from the world.Cinema returns it to us”.




written by Epstein in 1924. In 2012, Franke, the curator behind a recent exhibition on ‘An-

imism’, writes so in his foreword to a special issue of e-flux , of the same title:

A ghost is hunting modernity (sic) - the ghost of animism. It awaits us every-

where when we step outside the modern reason’s cone of light, outside its firmly

mapped order, when approaching its frontier zones and ‘outside’. We find it in

theimagined darkness of modernity’s outside, where everything changes shape

and the world is reassembled from the fragments that reasons expels from its

coherence25.

5. Broadening the animistic horizon – towards an an-

imistic theory of cinema

'Things have a life of their own,' the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. 'It’s simply a

matter of waking up their souls'. (Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude)

So far, I have produced three readings of Epstein’s film theory through the lens of ani-

mism: the revelation of the personhood of objects in photogénie, the challenge cinema

as animism posits to modernity, and the de-centralizing, anti-anthropocentric relation-

ality of animism. My reading of Epstein’s theory resonates with the revival of animism,or animism(s), as Bird-David (1999) prefers to say, over the last decades; a Renaissance

of animism in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and art. Epstein’s animistic film

theory, to which I devoted the majority of this thesis, allows an insight into what a mar-

riage between cinema and animism could be, but there are other possible intersections.

With Epstein’s animistic theory as an inspiration, I would like to briefly speculate on an

additional, open-ended possibility.

5.1 Relational cinema: cinema as animism

Graham Harvey places two Western worldviews at the heart of Western’s anthropology’s

misunderstanding of animism. The first is stressing the underlying unity of all things

(God), the other is to insist on a duality of everything: body and soul, mind and matter,

human and animal (xviii). Contrarily, animism is an ontology of multiplicity, which rec-

ognizes various definitions of personhood and life; a community of persons, rather than a

hierarchy. Nurit Bird-David (1999) notices that, astoundingly, up to the lat nineties, the

concept appeared in diverse kinds of dictionaries and sources only in its Tylorian defini-

tion. Challenging Tylor’s reading, she defines animism as a relational epistemology, whichreplaces the Cartesean “I think, therefore I am” with “I relate, therefore I am” followed by

25http://www.e-flux.com/journal/introduction%E2%80%94%E2%80%9Canimism%E2%80%9D/

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/introduction%E2%80%94%E2%80%9Canimism%E2%80%9D/




“I know as I relate” (178). According to Bird-David, there are three key problems with

Tylor’s anthropological classification of animism as a religious belief. First , his positivist

inclination was to separate 'belief' from science, where only science can provide an access

to reality and knowledge. Moreover, Tylor puts animism in evolutionary terms – it is a'primitive' epistemology, a failed epistemology, a childlike one, that advanced civilizations

grew out of, or evolved past it. The most consequential misconception is the classification

of animism as simply a religious belief that supposedly explains the ways of 'the primitive

peoples', but is built on a predominately modern idea of personhood:

Classical theoreticians (it is argued) attributed their ownmodernist ideas of self

to “primitive peoples” while asserting that the “primitive peoples” read their

ideas of self into others! This lead the theoreticians to prejudge the attribution

of "personhood” to natural objects as empirically unfounded. (Bird-David 68)

Irving Hallowell coins the term ‘other-than-human persons’ to communicate the position

of other persons within the Ojibwe community. Some might accuse Hallowell of anthro-

pocentrism for using 'human’ as the basis for the term. As Harvey explains, it is ‘person’

that is the basis, rather than ‘human’:

[The term] arises from animistic engagement with a world full of persons, only

some of whom are human; Secondly, it arises from an animistic acknowledg-

ments that humans’ most intimate relationships are had with other humans.

Perhaps rock persons might speak of other-than-rock persons, while tree per-

sons might speak of other-than-tree persons. Such phrases, if unwieldy, are

not intended to privilege any class of person but to draw attention to degrees

of relationality. (xviii)

The strongest implication of animism is that is ties together a lot of contemporary at-

tempts to contest anthropocentrism by recognizing nonhumans as relational persons. In

animism, humans are just a subset of persons, but not definitive of “a person”. Perhaps the

most puzzling of all the absences of animism is from the debate on post-humanism. In film

studies, post-humanism as a methodology focuses on representations: the (post)human

condition in the era of technological advancements, aliens, cyborgs, and AIs. The divide

between subjects and objects, what is technological, what social and cultural is too often

confined to the level of representation. Animism allows us to rethink the ontological sta-

tus of cinema in relation to post-humanism, in its focus on what is past the human, the

nonhuman persons that participate in the making of a film – cameras, computers, props.

The relation between humans and the machines necessary to create a film could be con-

textualized within the animistic ontology of relationality. Epstein’s cinematic animism

challenges the modern divide between object and person, the primitive and the progres-

sive, and in this way anticipates Bruno Latour’s famous statement that “we have never

been modern” (1991). In this non-modernity of ours, the most pronounced relation is that




between humans and machines – that also includes humans and the camera, or various

other machines utilized both in the making, and screening of films. In his 1988 essay

“Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer26", Latour

proposes that the relations of humans to nonhumans should be sociology’s point of focus:“The most liberal sociologist often discriminates against nonhumans [...] The author pro-

poses a vocabulary to follow human and nonhuman relations without stopping at artificial

divides between what is purely technological and what is social” (298).

In cinematic animism, the camera can be akin to a shaman. As Harvey suggests, to deepen

our relation with the world, we might turn to “those who see through different eyes or

know by different senses, shamans for example” (5). Shamans often relate through direct

sensory experience, built on a physical relation, for example with a plant, that producespsychoactive sensory experiences. For Epstein, cinema also allows us to experience a dif-

ferent, de-centralized perception. In one of his very last essays, “Alcool et cinema“, never

published during his lifetime, Epstein highlights cinema’s ability to de-anthropomorphise

space:

So, notonly does theconfiguration of cinematographicspace elude therigorous

egocentrism of the Euclidean configuration, not only does it refuse to accept

an exclusively human proportionality, but it also accepts no unique centre of

perspective, no unique standard, whatever it might be. (398)

Shamans lead rituals. Through rituals, which reconfigure relations between humans, ob-

jects and environments, reality can be seen anew. Rituals are often carried out with ob-

jects that upon entering a ritual gain character and meaning – for example, to stay with

the Ojibwe, the word “totem” (originating in “ototeman” in Ojibwe) translates to “he is a

relative of mine” (Bell 4). An otherwise inanimate object becomes “a relative” through a

reconfiguration of relations – I now relate to him. Similarly, in Epstein’s work, the “moral

character” and “personality of things”, the “inner life of things” is meant to reshape our

understanding of personality and character itself, to re-relate ourselves to the objects wenow see transformed and enlivened on screen: “As a general rule, each time humans cre-

ate an instrument after their own idea, the instrument in turn and in its own way reshapes

the mentality of its creator” (Epstein 319).

26The essay might be hard to track down with Latour’s name. Latour wrote this essay under thepseudonymJim Johnson, explaining it thus: “The author-in-the text is JimJohnson, technologist in Colum- bus, Ohio, who went to Walla Walla University, whereas the author-in-the-flesh is Bruno Latour, sociologist,from Paris, France, who never went to Columbus nor to Walla Walla University. The distance between thetwo is great but similar to that between Steven Jobs, the inventor of Macintosh, and the figurative nonhu-man character who/which says "welcome to Macintosh" when you switch on your computer. The reason forthis use of pseudonym was the opinion of the editors that no American sociologist is willing to read thingsthat refer to specific places and times which are not American” (1988:304). It is worth noting that all of “specific places” were later removed by Latour, as the editors ensured it would be fine.




in has no doubt that the cinematographic instrument can reshape the mind that designed

it. What’s at stake for Epstein is no less than creating through cinema “a new conception

of the universe and new mysteries of the soul” (321). In animism, art and storytelling are

important practices of relating to the world to the extent that stories are treated as “grand-fathers” who teach us how to live ethically and must be treated with proper etiquette and

respect (Harvey 41). In Maori arts, as in photogénie, not only humans express themselves,

but all the other persons who perform, as art is always expressive and relational, never rep-

resentative (Harvey 57,75).

A substitution of relationality for representation as the ontology of filmmaking, as well as

film-watching, could direct our attention to cinema as a way or re-relating to the world,

rather than representing it. Epstein’s ontology is relational – it not only relates the film-maker, the camera and the world, but also the spectator and the cinema (the film). A re-

configuration of human relationship with the world is the goal of cinema, although never

fulfilled by the majority of cinematic creations - even in the first of his published essays,

“Grossissement” (1921) Epstein is aware of this futility. He writes: “Until today, I have not

yet seen pure photogénie lasting a full minute” (249). Although he admits that photogénie

can be understood as a quality of the lens itself, it requires human involvement to take on

its full shape. The “strange gaze” of the camera, unveils the “intense and personal lives”

of “rivers, forests, snows, factories, railroads” (154). This ontology returns to the idea of

reality based on ever-changing relations between humans and nonhumans of the world:

it returns us to animism. Through its mobile nature, cinema reveals its potential of revolt

and revolution – its ability to rearrange relations between anyone and anything.

6. Conclusion

When discussing the current state of scholarly engagement with animism, Graham Harvey

states that “the process of conversation and/or dialogical research are not about compar-

ing an unknown tradition (our other’s) with a tested truth (ours), they are about fumbling

towards a richer experience of the world” (69). The task of this thesis – to recollect the

old, produce the new was doubly challenging. The stimulating, theoretical work of Jean

Epstein has been for decades unjustly ignored by a majority of the Anglophone film theory

scholars. Animism as a concept and an ontology has been either forgotten, misunderstood

or simply disregarded from within our modern ontologies. Not only have I summoned

both of them out of the shadows, but attempted to fuse them, in hopes of producing some-

thing that I felt was lacking in mainstream film studies: an engagement with ontologies

that are present in our thinking about cinema, which we nevertheless fail to name. Ani-

mism, as I read it along the work of Epstein, allows an articulation and a theoretical de-

velopment of some of the concerns that have been especially present in early film theory:




the anti-anthropocentric potential of the mechanic camera eye, the complex relation of

cinema to modernity, the disruption of the hierarchic relation between humans, objects,

and machines.

At the beginning of my scholarly engagement with animism, I failed to see its full po-

tential for film studies. In my mind, animism was confined to its entanglements with

post-colonial cinema and area studies. Luckily, I have abandoned this restrictive mind-

set quickly, upon noticing the revival of animism in contemporary art, anthropology, and

philosophy. My growing confidence in animism as an important ontological, social, and

cultural concept, motivated me to build foundations for its revival in film studies. When

I encountered the work of Jean Epstein, I could not have predicted how deeply it would

resonate with the current revival of animism. Central to this revival is a divergent under-standing of personhood. Through its anti-hierarchic (re)definition of personhood, ani-

mism opens up a different way of thinking ethics in relation to cinema. By confronting us

with the pronounced narrative and aesthetic presence of objects on screen, revealing their

personal and moral character, cinema can become a pitiless lesson of egotism in reverse.

Epstein’s work opens cinema up to the tasks of de-centralizing the human ego, demands

its attentions to objects, and paints a vision of cinema as a relational event, adjusting the

interaction (not representation) between humans, objects, and machines.

I have take certain liberties with Epstein: instead of decoding his intentions, I built on his

engagement with animism, and expanded his theory in the direction of animism. It might

seem surprising that I plead a return to animism through the work of a writer born outside

of what is often perceived to be animism’s 'origin area' (tribal societies). The question of

origins is particularly muddled in the case of animism. The original definition by Tylor is

etymologically Latin, and remains a translation of social and cultural practices that were

never identified as 'animistic' by people who were engaging in them. Animism is some-

what of a shadow term, never acknowledged by those to whom it was ascribed in the past,

and only now reclaimed by various groups identifying with animism. No matter the iden-

tification with animism, its influence remains profound in the way humans envision their

relation with their environment, and the nonhumans inhabiting it. In this way, I believe

that Epstein’s theory is infused with animism, and through his artistic work, he maybe

even practiced it. Maybe everyone making cinema does, in a way. Animism’s troubled

past allows it to be detached from its perceived 'origins' – in the end, it is only in the eyes

of old anthropology that such origins existed. Tim Ingold encompasses the potential of

animism for Western research, pointing at its proximity to what we are already doing:

“[An imputation of life to inert objects] is more typical in western societies who dream

of finding life on other planets than of indigenous peoples to whom the label of animism

has classically been applied” (2011). So, “we have never been modern” (Latour 1991) in




the end, and animism, controversially, but continuously, returns in our efforts to define

human relations to the world.

The possibilities of intersections between animism and cinema seem to be endless, espe-cially in the light of the growing scholarly engagement with the nature of the nonhuman,

or the post-human, and the always actual questions of human relation to technology, and

those arts that follow from it. The usefulness of animism as a method resides in the fact

that nothing is stable or ready-made, the borders of our definitions are constantly chang-

ing along the development of our relations with others persons, only some of whom are

human.




A. The Lives and Souls of Objects

"We do not personify other entities and then socialize with them, but personify them as,

when and because we socialize with them." (Nurit Bird-David)

I devoted my thesis to producing an animistic reading of Jean Epstein’s film theory. Yet,

alongside this academic project, I began an examination of how animism (both the Ty-

lorian, vitalist version and the relational ‘new animism’) can be translated into my own

artistic practice. Here I present some of the results of this practice-in-progress, which is

guided by Deleuze & Guattari rather than Epstein. Although I was accompanied by dif-

ferent philosophical personae, both my academic project, and my artistic practice, are

influenced by animism as a relational reconsideration of the personhood of objects. The

images are accompanied by a short essay.

To some it may seem paradoxical to discuss Deleuze’s work in relation to life. In a way

Deleuze allowed me to see life everywhere, or allowed me to admit I have always seen it

everywhere. To me, his is an affirmative philosophy, and many call it a philosophy of life.

Yet, in 1995 Deleuze took his own life by jumping out of the window of his apartment in

Paris. I was five years old at the time, and if we are to believe Jean Piaget, the famous

child developments psychologist, I was animistic and vitalistic as every child is – that is, I

saw life and soul in every object, as well as everywhere around me. Later on, through my

research, I learned that in many non-Western and non-modern societies children must

be taught how to be animists by their elders, often through art, storytelling or ritual. And

through Deleuze, once again, I learn what it means to say that something is alive, and what

is life. In his words, “it is organisms that die, not life” ("Nietzsche" 143). I do not recall how

I understood life and personhood as a child, but I know I am re-learning to understand it

now, through animism, vitalism and through Deleuze & Guattari.

For Deleuze and Guattari, there is an affinity between a philosopher and an artist – a

philosopher creates concepts, while an artist creates percepts and affects, and of course,

the two can be mended ("What Is Philosophy?"). The project I share today is not as much

a result of a calculated engagement with a specific ‘Deleuze’ concept. My project is rather a

practice, something I do every day, maybe as a ritual. At times, it is difficult to say whether

I simplydiscover Deleuze’s creative philosophy, or whether he skillfully gives name to what

I have always thought and struggled to express – isn’t that the greatest talent of writers,

to momentarily harness our chaotic thoughts? To let us sit back and let us watch themstruggle with concepts we are often unable to articulate.




As I have shown in my thesis, both vitalism and animism are not only rarely spoken words,

but also “dirty words”. Entangled in a variety of cultural and intellectual knots, they suf-

fered an ideological judgment. Yet, for the readers of Deleuze vitalism is no new discovery.

Petra Perry claims that Deleuze's innovative reading of Nietzsche in the 1960s enabledDeleuze, in his subsequent work, to reactivate some of the debates generated by turn-of-

the-century vitalism in France (Marks 31). Bergson’s idea of duration is fundamental to

Deleuze’s “time-image”, an aesthetic that exposes the spectator to the duration and flow

of time. In the case of Deleuze, the most discussed incarnation of vitalism is through aes-

thetics.

But there’s more. Deleuze equals life with thought itself. In his words: “Actually, there is

only one term, Life, that encompasses thought, but conversely this term is encompassedonly by thought.” ("Spinoza: Practical Philosophy" 14). So, there is an affinity between

thinking and life – but what is life? Deleuze says: “It wasn't all just theory, you see. Think-

ing is never just a theoretical matter. It was to do with vital problems. To do with life

itself” ("Nietzsche" 105). In “Creative Evolution” (1907) Bergson claims that a real theory

of knowledge is inseparable from what he calls a 'theory of life'.

For Deleuze, to philosophize is no less than to be attentive to life, the totality of life, not

only human life. Deleuze’s work stood accusations of being politically removed from real-ity, but along with Guattari they manage to recover what I fell is the most important polit-

ical issue: that of human ego-centrism and anthropocentrism, as well as human denial of

the materiality of the world, and our connections to it. In the foreword to "Anti-Oedipus"

(1972) Focault argues that Deleuze and Guattari warn us not to get enamored of power

and of the ego. For Deleuze, the category of ‘human’ is too reductive to encompass Life,

and by extension thought. ‘Human’ constitutes a universalization that we conquer by be-

comings: “[…] to go beyond the human condition: This is the meaning of philosophy, as

our condition condemns us to live among badly analyzed composites” ("Bergsonism" 28).

With Guattari’s contribution, Deleuze’s vitalism reaches a form of what John Marks calls

‘machinic vitalism’ (163), which escapes the traditional division in vitalism – that between

organism and machine, where organisms are alive, and machines and objects are dead.

“Why not”, Deleuze and Guattari ask, “have a machinic view of the individual and the so-

cial body? Everything is a machine” (qtd. in Marks 49). Objects that I will show you today

are machines, too. What describes a machine best? The fact that it is relational, it requires

connections, relations. This relationality plunges us into a discussion of animism – an on-

tology based on relationality and a re-definition of personhood.




Deleuze’s vitalism already signals a de-centralization of subjectivity and a re-thinking of

egotism and anthropocentrism. Guattari’s ‘machinic animism’, an extension of his work

with Deleuze, is even more attuned to this impulse. Melitopoulos and Lazzarato write that:

Guattari brings about a de-centering of subjectivity in separating it simulta-

neously not only from the subject, from the person, but also from the human.

His challenge is to escape from subject/object and nature/culture oppositions,

which makes man the measure and the center of the Universe. (45)

Guattari is also interested is redefining the object through animism, in his words:

There has been a sort of de-centering of subjectivity. Today, it seems interest-

ing to me to go back to what I would call an animist conception of subjectivity;

to rethink the Object, the Other as a potential bearer of dimensions of partialsubjectivity, if need be through neurotic phenomena, religious rituals, or aes-

thetic phenomena for example27.

In The Logic of Sense Deleuze says we can be “a little alcoholic, a little crazy” (157). We

can also be “a little vitalistic” or “a little animistic”. Animism is a relational ontology, a

materialist practice that can reconfigure our understanding of the personhood of objects.

Animism’s focus on materiality and relationality makes it an interesting territory for artis-

tic exploration, and for understanding how we relate to objects: both in everyday life, and

in our artistic practice. In the project that I titled only through webcam_art , it’s both: I

make my webcam art every day, trying to direct my attention to objects that surround me,

through an object/person that I interact with every day: my laptop’s built-in camera. I try

to make the images every day, aiming at creating a relational practice that would attune

me to the objects/persons around me. In effect, I have over a hundred and fifty images

already. Below are selected examples.

Sometimes I try to achieve the effect of a painted “still life” because I find the term “still

life” so fascinating – to Deleuze, the force of life is behind every creative act, yet paintings

that focus on objects are traditionally seen as devoid of life. As if art was stealing the life

out of objects, instead of being motivated by it. Yet, it is through objects that we enter a

lived relation with our environment, in fact, as humans we are in a corporal relation to

objects/persons all the time, touching them, making food out of them, sitting on them,

making art with them, sleeping, building, playing…

27 Accessed 26/06/2014: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/assemblages-felix-guattari-and-machinic-animism/

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/assemblages-felix-guattari-and-machinic-animism/




Figure 2: Main page of onlythroughwebcamart.com

Figure 3: 'Takifugu': turning my lamp into a Japanese blowfishf

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/onlythroughwebcamart.com




Figure 5: Glass: a bird splitting a kitten's head. To create this image, I held an empty glassup to the webcam. After a slight editing of contrast and exposure, I noticed two animalsemerging from the objects: a big-eyed bird, and a white kitten on the bottom.

Figure 4: The Lighthouse: inspired by Jean Epstein's 'Tempest'

As Deleuze says, we are only machines plugging into others machines - this I see as a re-ally animistic, relational statement. So what about objects? “Objectification” is a word

with a bad reputation. But it could mean becoming-objects, or relating to objects, as




Figure 6: Self-portrait through an object

holders of subjectivity. In my self-portraits, I try to look at myself as an object/person

(within the community of other objects/persons). I pose with objects/persons, through

objects/persons, and always for an object/person (my webcam).

Figure 7: The eyes of plants I




Figure 8: The eyes of plants II

Could we conceive of ‘becoming the nonhuman’ or ‘becoming-object’? Maybe becoming,

unlike identification, does not require understanding. For the philosopher David Hume,

fiction and art are important in their power to produce empathy beyond ourselves (Pis-

ters 160). Can there be an empathy-without-understanding, an empathy with objects, or

plants? Patricia Pisters already identifies these impulses in Deleuze and Guattari:

[For Deleuze and Guattari] plants and rocks do not possess a nervous system,

but they seem to share chemical affinities and physical casualties that consti-

tute “microbrains” or an “inorganic life of things”, as they put it. In this vitalis-

tic conception of spirituality, when speaking of the soul or force of life that art

can make us feel, the cosmic universe is full of microbrains… (154)

Speaking of rediscovering forgotten territories, to Deleuze, art is a matter of territory, too.

I have moved houses about twenty times in my life, and with every move, I decrease the

number of objects that mean something to me. Objects that are important in my life, due

to my relations with them, my own totems. Only through webcam_art is an attempt to

make the objects/persons I have in my yet another temporary room my totems. The word

“totem” in the Ojibwe language translates to “he is a relative of mine” – so whenever we

enter into a ritual – for example of art-making, the object becomes a relative, someone we

engage with.




Figure 9: Diptych: Holding hands with a ribbon




Figure 10: Diptych: bathroom persons

I photograph them, I re-arrange them, I take time to look at them. I de-stabilize my rela-

tion to them by simplest means: with Microsoft Paint or playing with saturation, exposure,

contrast. I never manipulate them beyond that. Whenever I look at them with my humans

eyes, I try to remember what I saw with the webcam eye. I enjoy having the mediator be-

tween me and the object – the mediator is my laptop, and thus the relation becomes atriad. I have been doing it to human persons in the photographs I take too, but that’s a

different story.




Figure 11: Self-portrait as an object. This is a webcam photo of my profile, I'm wearing a

shower cap.

Figure 12: Ritual knife, starring kitchen utensils

But most of all I try to have an external relation to the objects/persons, an empirical em-

pathy without understanding, not a projection. In animism, persons are constituted by

our relations to them, not by what we think about them.




Figure 13: Bearer of the gaze: here I visualize my method. Although my eyes are covered,

the eyes of the object/person (a lamp) are exposed. We are both looking into the webcam.




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Filmography

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari . Dir. Robert Wiene. Goldwyn Distributing Company, 1920.Film.

Waking Life. Dir. Richard Linklater. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2001. Film.

La Roue. Dir. Abel Gance. 1923. Film.

La Belle Nivernais. Dir. Jean Epstein. 1924. Film.

Six et demi ozne. Dir. Jean Epstein. 1927. Film.

The Fall of the House of Usher. Dir. Jean Epstein. 1928. Film

Documents

Reading of Jean Epstein's theory of Cinema