The French Connection in Criminology: Rediscovering Crime, Law, and Social Change

CHAPTER 6. Cinema and Literary Texts, Differance, and Social Justice Studies

83 CHAPTER 6 Cinema and Literary Texts, Différance, and Social Justice Studies INTRODUCTION French postmodernist thought has contributed substantially to cultural studies and media analysis, and, in particular, to cinema studies. The Lacanian cinema model was developed in the 1970s to early 1980s in the work of C. Metz (1981) and Kaja Silverman (1983). At about the same time, the Birmingham cultural studies group actively engaged Louis Althusser’s (1971) notion of “interpellation,” offering a critique of capitalist economy. Subsequent to a number of second wave commentaries (e.g., Jameson 1981), feminists in particular, offered an alternative analysis of Lacan’s work as applied to cinema. Their investigations provide valuable insight on the denial of voices for other disenfranchised peoples. Alternative Lacanian-based models can be developed from Kristeva’s (1982) analysis of “abjection,” Grosz’s (1994) reconceptualization of the mind/body dualisms, Richard Dienst’s (1994) Derridean and revisionist Marxist analysis, Patricia Clough’s (2000) “autoaffection,” and queer theory’s assessment on the politics of sexuality (e.g., Clough 2000; Butler 1993, Grosz 1994).1 The beginning point for each of the above periodizations has been the notion of inexpressible voices and différance (e.g., for Lacan, “woman does not exist” in the phallocentric Symbolic Order). In this chapter, we develop each ‫ﱠ‬ of them by indicating the various contributions made on behalf of first wave French postmodern social theorists (Barthes, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida), as well as others (Benveniste, Jackobson). Along the way, we also suggest their contributions to law, criminology, and social justice. LACANIAN MODEL (MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL . . .) The Lacanian model applied to cinema and literary analysis needs to be complimented by the notion of the spoken subject; that is, the viewer/reader of texts, and her acceptance of and identification with the discursive subject positions offered. By so doing, subjects begin to see the world as the director/writer suggests (Metz 1981; Silverman 1983). This analysis draws from Émile Benveniste’s (1971) position on the nature of the personal pronouns, “I” and “you.” By themselves, neither pronoun has meaning outside of context. They are “shifters.” Cinema and literary texts offer discursive subject positions with which to identify: the “I” is provided content in this context. The director makes use of lighting equipment, tape recordings, mixing of recording and sound, camera shots, editing, composition, the script employed, and the use of lap dissolves, fades, pans, zooms, and close-ups. All of these are connected with the notion of metaphor and metonymy; that is, the play of desire and its momentary materialization in images and signifiers. The director (much like a lawyer in a trial court) attempts to suggest certain readings of otherwise unexplainable and puzzling presentations. The activities of the director resonate at a much deeper level with Lacan’s notion of manqué d’ être; a lack of being experienced primordially with the entrance of the infant into the Symbolic Order. This is unsettling to the subject. It is the notion of suture in which momentary connections between the imaginary and the symbolic produce meaning and jouissance. Cinema employs a series of shots, reverse shots, and angles. In this production , certain shots are selected (paradigm) over others and placed in linear orderings (syntagm). Much like the unfolding of a dream so insightfully developed by Freud (1965) in The Interpretations of Dreams, the play of condensation and displacement gives form to unconscious desires. Indeed, the viewer/reader is often in a more passive state, approaching the sleep mode and, as such, is more receptive to some forms of suture over others. Desire is mobilized as lack is confronted. Fantasy, symbolized by Lacan as $ a (the S with a slash through it), finds the appropriate objects of desire that overcome this lack. Thus, during suture, gaps-in-being are temporarily overcome by the viewer/reader appropriating signifiers, endowing them with 84 The French Connection in Criminology her/his desire. These signifiers then provide a degree of plausibility or meaning to the unfolding events. This activity is akin to what Roland Barthes (1974) defined as a “readerly text.” This is a text that tends toward closure and finality. Of course, Barthes also made reference to the “writerly text.” This is a text in which nonlinear readings are encouraged, where closure is impossible , where only temporary understanding can be attained, where, at best, momentary epiphanies arise. The Lacanian filmic model prioritizes the mirror stage (pre-oedipal) in...