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the book) but also because he seems to understand the ¤ctive nature of his autonomy as an individual. That Corso understands he is not in control is revealed in a scene that follows his second visit to Fargas’s mansion, where he discovers the aristocrat drowned in a fountain. He is seated on an airplane next to “the girl” as the next scene begins: corso looks down at the girl. corso: What exactly happened back there? the girl: Fargas caught someone stealing, I guess. corso: And what do you guess happened to him? the girl: (simply) He drowned. corso: With a little help from who? the girl: (Shrugs) He’s dead. Who cares? corso: I care. I could wind up the same way. the girl: Not with me to take care of you. corso: I see. You’re my guardian angel. the girl: Something like that. (She removes her head from his shoulder, turns away, and snuggles up against the window instead .) corso: Somebody’s playing a game with me. the girl: (drowsily): Of course. You’re part of it. And you’re getting to like it. The dominant reading of this scene is not one that speci¤es a commentary on the fragmentation of subjectivity, yet from a rhetorical vantage the critique of humanism, particularly as it is expressed in terms of the illusion of the unity of subjectivity, helps to explain why Corso escapes the fate of every other character who touches the cursed book. The signi¤cant difference between Corso and the other characters is his sense of his own fallibility, his somewhat naive trust in the characters he meets, and his distrust of the image and other forms of representation. Those who do not “get it” are the Fools who have the strongest faith in their individual autonomy. Thus we can add a fourth to the many deaths of The Ninth Gate: not only does the ¤lm comment on the demise of the written text, the demise of the ¤gure of the book, and the demise of occultism, but it is also a commentary on the demise of the autonomous individual. In the ¤lm, the Devil is a socialist in the sense that only those who do not assert their supreme independence from the collective are allowed to survive. Given his unfortunate expulsion from the idyllic collective know as “Heaven,” perhaps the Devil has learned his lesson. the allegory of the ninth gate / 223 The Occultic as Postmodern Occultism Having summarized this study as both an analysis of occultism in popular culture and a theoretical exploration of critical practice, questions about the larger signi¤cance of the occultic as a social form still remain: What does the death of modern occultism mean? If modern occultism is dead, then what can we describe as “occultic”? If the occult as such ended with the historical transition from modernity to postmodernity (or late capitalism), then is there such a thing as postmodern occultism? And what about the intending, concrete individual? The answers to these and similar questions can be broken down into the familiar categories of description and diagnosis. In concluding this book, I would like to speculate on a number of answers. Occultic Identity Politics? If the term “occult” is to retain its etymological roots in hiddenness and secrecy, then the concept of a “postmodern occultism” is oxymoronic . That the occult no longer coheres in the contemporary world as the elite study of secrets suggests that occultism as such no longer exists as a discrete practice. Yet popular culture continues to generate texts that appeal, nostalgically, to the occultism of modernity , and in this sense modern occultism continues to live in movies like The Ninth Gate. The occult also survives as a category that people continue to use in making generic sense of the world. “Postmodern occultism” or the occultic (or perhaps in fashionable, scholarly terms, “post-occultism”) is a label for the death of modern occultism as the elite study of secrets and the birth of occultism as a kind of ®oating signi¤er. In light of the most popular occultic texts today, I suggest that this signi¤er is predominantly one of difference. Although more traditional occult texts are widely available and continue to ¤nd audiences, the most ubiquitous form of the occultic is the entertaining commodity. At the time of my writing, the ¤lmic version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the current draw at the box of¤ce, and its debut...

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