Most of Issue #1 is available on this site.

“Queer Theorists” contend all identities, including gay and straight, are socially constructed. This challenges the essentialist positions of those who wish to say everyone is born with an innate gender and sexuality, usually argued as heterosexual. How would you describe the constructed identity that “Queer Theorists” believe exist. Do you agree with it?

I don’t think the question of identity has been adequately posed, but for the ‘right’ reasons. There are two ways of looking at identity, as an expression and as a reification. Both Deleuze and Foucault seem to believe the two are somewhat antithetical to one another but in different manners. Identity is either a short-circuiting of expression or a trap. Queer theorists seem at the very least to be sympathetic to this diagnosis.

I think the answer essentially lies in the distinction between Deleuze and Foucault. Sure, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus seems to have influenced some (proto) queer theorists like Guy Hocquenghem but in general Queer Theory seems an outgrowth of Foucault’s History of Sexuality. To upset the concept of identity, to show it as fluid, as historical, as socially constructed is to likewise conclude that attempts at solidity are a means of control. The imposition of power seems to come first and then we can resist it. Various acts are thus strung together to form a political subject vulnerable to a given regime of power. Attempts to reify identity are necessarily bound to power; they are politically strategic. It can thus become trendy to suggest that what is essential to queer struggle is not promoting homosexuality at all but merely non-normative practices that break the hold of subjecting power, that resist it and allow for new forms of pleasure. There is no “gay” or “lesbian,” or what-have-you, only those that resist or “queer” identity. Even heterosexuals will find that, according to the Queer theorists, their identity does not in fact exist as a stable essence. But rather than actually expressing what such a thing as sexual identity is, this merely obscures that the unseating of sexual identity as well as Queer Theory itself is a strategic deployment against homophobic strategies of power. If a homophobic strategy of power operates, as Halperin and Sedgwick claim by a principle of unfalsifiability then the only way to strike back is to upset the foundations of this principle, a strategy I call the strategy of negation. In this regard, this strategy seems very philosophical. Rather than play a fixed game by the rules, the strategy of negation merely throws them out the window.

Do you think there is something more happening within the creation of queer identity than just a “strategy of negation”?

What seems to have happened in Queer Theory is the following: the strategy is being conflated with the identity, which I think is a mistake, but not of strategy (it’s been very effective in that regard). Instead I want to invert this: a homosexual is one who employs a particular strategy in the face of power, but perhaps this needs clarification. The strategy comes first but this does not mean identity is strategy only that a strategy is a becoming that constitutes an identity, that is shorthand for its trajectory of becoming, its resonance. Thus, we have subjectivity derived from our strategic context within power. Identity has not been upset at all. Its constituting forces have merely been explained. Identity is the result of how a resistance is mounted. In this way it is expressive, not reifying or a form of subjection. This is how far Foucault can take us in a critique of Queer Theory. We would have to look to Deleuze to escape from a power/resistance paradigm. If this were otherwise, a gay or lesbian identity would be profoundly reactive when in fact Deleuze provides us with an active role for it insofar as he prioritizes deterritorialization over reterritorialization. I want to argue for a differential self, a self of process and becoming, but without losing the expressive potential in the concept of identity. Otherwise, the act of coming out, of identifying oneself as gay or a lesbian or bisexual would be meaningless, which we know is not the case.

Deleuze and Guattari differ from Marx in that Marx had a teological view of over-throwing capitalism. That is to say, for Marx there is a utopian climax whereas we don’t see this in Deleuze and Guattari’s creative-destruction. Lenin famously attempted to skip the Marxist / Hegalian teology and go all the way to the utopian climax. Does this type of “jumping the gun” appear in a strategy of negation, and if so to what consequence?

This is an interesting question for several reasons. For one thing, it is very easy to confuse the Deleuzian-Guattarian virtual with a teleological aim. The classic example is that the eye does not come before seeing but the problem of seeing prompts the production of the eye. This is what Deleuze would call reverse causality. They do not at first seem to help elucidate matters when they suggest that “primitive” and “nomadic” regime anticipate the State. In what way? Precisely because the State already exists virtually under all regimes, that it must be headed off from forming.

It is in a similar spirit that I charted the line of negation. It would be my contention that we take a cultural artifact such as Dante’s Inferno as a cultural phenomenon that composes the line of violence for a particular reason, a reason he may not in fact have understood, since he himself derived his hierarchy of sins from a rich Greek, Roman, and Christian tradition. Rather than judge whether Dante was wrong I instead wanted to examine the internal logic that led to the hierarchy in the first place, a task I find much more enjoyable and much more feasible than critique. Naturally, since I argue that Dante’s Seventh level in Hell is a particular line of deterritorialization penetrating into the ‘Body’ (Social Body -> Subjective Body -> Germ plasm (The Code of Life) -> Spirit), that it is an absolute penetration into interiority itself, it seems like an endpoint has be posited, that it is teleological. The point is merely exacerbated when I contend that the strategy of negation as opposed to fascism is a line of “fertilization,” that it makes positivity, or fertility out of negativity, whereas fascism fails to escape the line of abolition, deterritorializes too rapidly, and descends into absolute destruction. This led me to conjecture that at this point in history homosexuality itself is on the brink of bringing fertility from infertility through genetic advancements that will allow same-sex procreation. I get this idea of bringing positivity from negativity from Dante’s rationale of sins. Homosexuality (Dante’s relationship to homosexuality is complicated, as homosexuals seem to be the least sinful in Purgatory, as they are mentioned closest to the top of Mount Purgatory) is judged since it makes infertile what Nature has made fertile. Usury, the next in the sequence, is judged since it makes fertile what Nature has made infertile.

With usury at the end of the line of negation, what this seems to suggest is that capitalism itself seems to have reversed caused this sequence of events. Since reverse causality is not a determinism there is not necessarily a teleological direction, but I do think this is splitting hairs a bit. If the sequence is really a line of deterritorialization into the heart of interiority itself, how does capitalism comprise the ultimate deterritorialization of the most interior of Bodies? Of course we would be making a mistake here to limit the penetrating line to the various points on its line instead of seeing the action for itself. What capitalism does is in a sense unsettle reality. Marx’s observation of exchange value indicates a neutralization of essence. The digital nature of money of today, the emergence of a hyperreality, which I think are only the beginning, are only glimpses of what forces really are at play. Capitalism may be only a shadow of what is really at play. That is why I use such a vague term as “spirit” to denote what Body is finally breached. I’m not sure if a proper teleology would have such ambiguities. Instead, I think this is a virtual trend that could go many ways, a potential that’s always been latent that are starting to unfurl and encounter the various contours of a rough set table it is now covering. It’s like seeing a comet barreling towards the Earth and not knowing what variables may send it crashing into us. We can see the line of negation, we can tell in what rough direction it seems to be penetrating into, but what will happen is anyone’s guess.

It seems a quirky coincidence that in the account of Aliester Crowley I cite of his 1909 North African invoking of the Thirty Aethyrs with Victor Neuburg, he is commanded from on High to engage in an act of homosexual sex magick that obliterates his ego before he can be ready to enter the Abyss to confront Choronzon, when in Dante’s Inferno once Dante and Virigil past the realm of the Sodomites they had to get on Geryon’s back and climb down into the Abyss themselves (some translations, such as the source I used, actually call it ‘the Abyss’). I genuinely think there is an internal logic that compels such coincidences. If Crowley is any indication of what comes next, it seems utterly apocalyptic, an actual confrontation with the devil himself. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this degree of eschatology but I do think the strategy of negation lends itself to eschatology in some way. The internal logic of an eschatology is an uprooting of reality itself, a deterritorialization of the world into something else. It’s quite tempting to make these connections and I cannot say I fully understand what it all means. I cannot even say I fully understand what I mean when I say ‘internal logic’ but I would prefer to take theories and traditions as cultural phenomena to be examined immanently rather than as corresponding properly or improperly to a ‘real’ world, and from this approach I am very tempted to make these connections, if for no other reason than I am inspired and intrigued by the conclusions.

Photo courtesy of Bill DiLillo and the University of Vermont

Todd McGowan is a professor at the University of Vermont. He has recently authored The Impossible David Lynch (Columbia University Press) and The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (SUNY Press).

From University of Vermont web site:

Todd McGowan teaches courses in film theory, history, and genre. His areas of interest include Hegel, psychoanalysis, and existentialism, and the intersection of these lines of thought with the cinema. He is currently at work on a book on politics and psychoanalysis.

How would you describe “the gaze” in Lacanian psychoanalysis? What’s a good example of how “the gaze” works in film?

First of all, it is important to distinguish between the gaze as it has traditionally been understood in film studies and the gaze in the Lacanian sense. The traditional film studies’ concept of the gaze defines it as a subjective act of looking that dominates what is seen. The gaze in this sense works as a tool of mastery.

For instance, through the male gaze, the spectator dominates the female image that popular films display. The gaze in the Lacanian sense has nothing to do with mastery and domination, nor does it occur on the side of the subject looking. The Lacanian gaze is an object on the screen, though it is no ordinary object. It is the point on the screen where the spectator loses her or his sense of mastery, the point at which the spectator’s look stumbles and encounters an obstacle that cannot be integrated into her or his world of meaning.

As this nonsensical point, the gaze forces spectators to become aware of their investment on the level of desire in the images on the screen. The gaze is thus the point at which the screen reaches out and grabs hold of the spectator. My favorite example of this occurs in Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1970), where an unknown truck driver pursues and tries to kill David Mann (Dennis Weaver). Throughout the entire film, the spectator never learns the identity of the truck driver, nor the reason for his murderousness, nor why it targets Mann. Spielberg shows the truck driver only with images of his windshield under the glare of the sun. Rather than see the truck driver’s face, the spectator sees the glass reflecting the sun. For me, this image—and the lack of knowledge it embodies—is one of the great cinematic depictions of the gaze.

You’ve written extensively on how our society has moved towards one that demands enjoyment. Does this show in the history of cinema?

I think it shows in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, most films focus less on spectator desire today. The absences and failures necessary to constitute the desiring spectator are not so apparent in contemporary cinema. Instead, films bombard us with the overpresence of the image and attempt to deliver enjoyment directly through this overpresence. A film like 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006), for instance, spends no time at all constructing desiring spectators; instead, it spends almost the entire duration of the film subjecting them to images of sex and violence that are supposed to facilitate spectator enjoyment (though fail entirely, in my view). But on the other hand, an alternative cinema has emerged in order to combat this kind of filmmaking, and this alternative emphasizes using cinema to show the failure of seeing in order to privilege spectator desire. I see directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Sophia Coppola, Christopher Nolan, and Jim Jarmusch as exemplars of this aesthetic.

How has the gaze changed over the years in film? Do these changes mark distinct regimes of film?

I don’t think that cinema as an art form has made—nor can it make—any progress relative to the gaze. Because the gaze is the impossible object that drives cinematic production as such, that production can never achieve mastery over it. The gaze is an object that remains a sticking point, a fundamental stumbling block, for the cinema. The approach to and depiction of the gaze shifts, but not in any kind of progressive fashion. In the book, I note that some of the most complex approaches to the gaze appear early in the history of cinema.

Does any one cultural phenomenon stick out that has been engendered by a specific gaze shown in film?

It’s fascinating to consider the possibility that a specific depiction of the gaze might shape culture, but I don’t think the lines of causality that the gaze engenders can ever be clear within a matrix of cause and effect. As an impossible object, the gaze acts as a cause of desire. But precisely because it is an impossible object and irreducible to the field of meaning, no specific gaze can be pinned down as the direct cause of a particular cultural phenomenon. One might even say that all culture is structured around the gaze—both as what culture desires and what it avoids. The same is true within the cinema: in The Real Gaze, I examine films in terms of the relation they take up to the gaze. Do they affirm it as an absence, reveal it as a distorting presence, or retreat from it?

Slavoj Žižek has also written extensively on Lacanian film analysis. Is there a point at which your methods diverge theoretically?

I owe a tremendous debt to Žižek’s thinking about Lacan and cinema. I’m not sure if there is a theoretically point at which I diverge from him, though I came to Lacanian theory from a different direction, which has perhaps created a difference in emphasis. My path to Lacan was through Sartre and existentialism, and I tend to think of Lacan as an existentialist thinker, despite the difficulty of reconciling the existentialist privileging of consciousness with the insights of psychoanalysis. Žižek, in contrast, tends to mobilize Lacan’s thought toward political ends. The Real Gaze deals extensively with the political implications of the gaze in cinema, so I share in this project as well. So it is not on the theoretical level that the real difference resides. Where The Real Gaze and all my writing diverge most significantly from Žižek’s on the cinema is in their approach to the filmic text itself. My method is one of arriving at theoretical claims through a close reading of cinematic form, whereas Žižek is interested less in the form of the text itself than in its theoretical fecundity. I must say that I prefer Žižek’s more speculative type of analyses but simply find myself unable to do them.

Are there any directors out there that you think are aware of their Lacanian themes? It’s pretty hard to imagine that David Lynch is not.

I really don’t know if any directors are aware of Lacanian themes or ideas, but my sense is that this wouldn’t help someone to create a thoroughly Lacanian film. In fact, conceptual knowledge can get in the way of the knowledge that the creation of a work of art requires. A director who knew too much Lacan might be unable, because of this knowledge, to produce a film that resonated psychoanalytically. I would argue that there is no more Lacanian director than David Lynch, and yet I think his theory of the psyche, as he conceptualizes it outside the cinema, is not at all Lacanian. Lynch spends a great deal of time pursuing—and arguing on behalf of—the thoroughly anti-psychoanalytic transcendental meditation, a practice that attempts to attain pure consciousness rather than access the unconscious.

How many films did you watch or re-watch in order to complete The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan? I’m guessing a lot, how did you find the time?

I talk specifically about 125 films in The Real Gaze, but I had an additional four chapters (with many more films discussed) that I decided to cut from the final version of the book. I also tried to watch all the films from the different directors I talk about, even when I wasn’t going to mention them in the book. All this viewing wasn’t really a great burden for me, since other than reading theory there is really nothing else that I like to do. I assume I would have watched the same number of films even without the writing of the book to motivate me.

Do you have another book that you are working on? If so what can we expect?

My book on David Lynch (The Impossible David Lynch), which is a kind of supplement to The Real Gaze, has just appeared. I’m currently working on two very different projects: a book on the emergence of films that distort the temporal structure of their narratives (such as Memento [2000] or 21 Grams [2003]), and a book on a specifically psychoanalytic conception of politics, tentatively entitled The Enjoyment of Loss: Politics and Psychoanalysis. The film book will focus on how certain contemporary films, through their alternative narrative structures, are articulating a notion of temporality that approximates the death drive. They force spectators to experience time as repetition turning around trauma rather than as movement forward. The Enjoyment of Loss represents an attempt to come up with a political theory founded solely on the psychoanalytic conception of the subject and society. Typically, psychoanalytic theory functions as a tool for the critique of political activity, and my wager here will be that it can also provide the basis for a different kind of politics, a politics focused on the experience of loss rather than the possibility for gain.

Favorite film? Favorite director?

For me, there is no director even close to Orson Welles. Though every film that he ever made (with the exception of Citizen Kane [1941]) suffered some degree of damage because of his relationship to Hollywood (from lack of sufficient funding to grotesque re-editing), he nonetheless made many of the greatest films in history. Obviously, Citizen Kane stands out, but my personal favorite is Mr. Arkadin (1955). When I watch this film (and all of the films of Welles), I feel as if I’m completely submerged in the cinematic experience. This is because Welles has such great control over the spectator’s relationship to absence and plenitude. He allows one to experience the failure of arriving at the cinematic object as the only possible success. In this sense, his films mirror his career. Critics think of his filmmaking in terms of what he might have accomplished if he had realized his original promise as a young filmmaker, but I see his genius and great success in the failure itself.

Any final comments?

My hope is that The Real Gaze is part of a return to prominence of Lacanian film theory. The discipline of film studies has become very hostile to psychoanalytic theory and theory in general, but I feel like there are a number of young theorists, influenced by Žižek and Joan Copjec, who are right now reinvigorating film theory from a specifically psychoanalytic orientation. These theorists include Jennifer Freidlander, Hugh Manon, Hilary Neroni, and Sheila Kunkle, among others. I would encourage everyone to read them for great insights into how Lacan might enrich the cinematic experience.

There exists a fundamental divide between drive and desire, as pointed out by Jacques Lacan¹, which is all too often over-looked.Before the nervous system can become excited and produce drives, there must be that which initiated the enticing. Past environs indicate how production can occur, and present environs determine the necessity to start production. An example of this is the fact that the drive to produce feces must come second to the discourse of where to do it, and the hormone that indicates the need for it to excrete. In a similar manner, the drive to obtain a long-term romantic companion comes after we learn the need for a romantic companion, or understand the status of being single, or realize dissatisfaction with a current partner. It is within Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses of spirit that we can come to understand the different approaches to desire, linked through a biological drive, and how they are depicted in today’s modern world of politics.

Trieb is a German word used by Freud to describe the drives that occur from stimuli originating from within an organism. Freud labels such stimuli as constant and unable to be dodged by single flight; unlike outer stimuli, such as sunlight, that can be dodged by single flight. Treib is the force that drives us to produce series of actions, which is separate from the Freudian Wunch, the German word for wish. It is Freud’s Wunch on which Lacan bases his definition of desire. Before the drive to produce action (trieb), there must first be the understanding of desire. This is the same for social desires as for biological.

Lacanian desire functions in such a way that it does not start with a lack, but rather a pressure on the subject to produce ─ just as a flying rock moving towards the face pressures the body to react. The end result of production can be linguistically labeled, but the signifier demanding action holds no signified within its definition. This is why that which we fantasize obtaining is referred to by Lacan as a void, object petit a. If the pressure to produce is a signifier, then object petit a is the signified. Reason, as a cognitive force, is used for the production of desire and creates a grammatical need for that which to desire. The linguistical need, or point of satisfaction, is always created after the desire comes into existence.

In Capitalism and Schizophrenia Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari criticize any attempts at labeling desire as a need, a shot at Lacan. They write, “Desire is not bolstered by needs, but rather the contrary; needs are derived from desire: they are counter-products within the real that desire produces. Lack is a counter-effect of desire; it is deposited, distributed, vocalized within a real that is natural and social.”² Here we see Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of desire: Desire is a machine through which the desire and object are one in the same through production. This concept is something that Lacanians should be able to agree with. Any criticism that object petit a is a lack that creates desire is far off base. Lacan’s conception of object petit a can only exist after desire is initiated.

It is through our drives that we come to self-realize desire, and it is this bodily aspect to which Nietzsche pays attention. The only way to recognize desire is to understand the body. The body communicates with the mind to initiate production. Desire can show opportunity, however, is sterile without the will of the body to produce action. It is the Freudian trieb, or drives, that demand action to produce. The body reacts in excitation to certain environmental situations, which is then interpreted as a signifier to produce. The context of the environment will dictate the linguistical need, and production will ensue. That which demands is not desire, but the body and its drives. Nietzsche states this when he writes, “Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage – whose name is self. In your body he dwells he is your body.”³ So why then does Slavoj Zizek, a Lacanian philosopher, criticize Nietzsche as holding “a kind of survivalist attitude” where “the highest value is the continuation of life itself.”⁴ Nietzsche certainly heavily praised art, music, and every cultural phenomenon enriched with creativity. It is a matter of giving agency to the body that Zizek does not agree with; but without the body desire is only a sterile web of semiotics. Only through the body can we come to realize a demand to produce desire, which is why the body rightfully possesses agency.

When Nietzsche criticized someone for acting on behalf of Christian pity, it was a physiological evaluation of weakness. Take for example the modern phenomena of commercials that plea for your donation to help sponsor children in poor countries. The commercial is interpreted in such a way that it makes one “feel bad”. A stimulus communicates to the body, and the body reacts with feeling of depression─ not a demanding signifier. The cultural interpretation of this is to say, “I am feeling bad because I must do something.” To act upon this is to place cultural values above the body, which is exactly what it means to be weak. To give in to the demands of the commercial is to act on behalf of that which goes against what the body is communicating as “bad”. Some say, “I feel good when I donate to charity.” Is this not because they are getting rid of the very vice which started the somber tone… pity? Through this example we understand why Nietzsche thought Buddhist compassion was a thousand times more practical than Christian pity.⁵ Buddhist compassion asks that people produce compassionate actions on behalf of their own happiness; not out of the happiness of others.

It is only through the body that we can understand what Lacan referred to as the big Other, or those un-written rules of society that compel us produce desire. To interpret the rules of the big Other through language is to misunderstand what the big Other demands. The body communicates, through neutrality, depression, and excitement, the un-written opinions of the big Other. The body makes no decisions, yet it acts as the vessel that provides for the signifier the demand to produce desire.

THE FIRST METAMORPHOSES OF SPIRIT: CAMEL

Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.

What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.

What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.⁶

The camel is a subject that places cultural values as the ultimate end to every means. Regardless of how much a series of actions may weaken the body, such a subject would exalt in naïve mental strength to dominate whatever cultural value is asked of it. In this mode the signifier, presented by the body, is of second importance to the conscious cultural value. No matter what signs of negativity the body may create, they will always be over-looked in favor of what is believed to be necessitated through culture.

It is the camel from which we have learned the political personality of Iran. Iran is a theocracy. The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran is based on fundamental religious beliefs given by the Koran. The person with the highest ranking political authority is also the person who possesses the highest ranking religious authority, the Supreme Leader. The outcome of this type of religious political system is one that bares many burdens for sake of ideology. Regardless of what signifier of desire the body may give, it is always superseded by religious authority. Hence the individuals under such a government are asked to endure pains without giving in to the physical signs that admonish danger.

When the current president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke with news reporter Brian Williams in spring of 2008, Williams confronted Ahmadinejad on the current economic woes Iran is experiencing. Ahmadinejad replied with,

I believe that in the life of man, there are things that are more important than material welfare and prosperity. In other words, we are talking about the dignity of human beings.⁷

When Ahmadinejad says “material welfare and prosperity” this can only be interpreted as euphemistic language, as Willams was pointing out major economic strife seen by “20-percent inflation”⁸ and “workers strikes for back-wages.” The politically incorrect point that Ahmadinejad probably wished he could make was that even a basic stable economy is not worth compromising ideology. In reference to the camel Nietzsche writes, “Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?”⁹ Is this not the very mentality of Ahmadinejad?

Whether or not Ahmadinejad is a poor leader and the agent of their current economic strife, his faithful position to ideology is shared by their constitution. Any government that places religion as an ends to every means will find that basic signs of negativity from the body will be over-looked for a higher purpose. If it is bearable, it is even praised as seen with the ascetic rituals of chest beating still practiced commonly today in Islamic culture.

Why put religion above the body? The wrong conclusion would be to suggest that built within their unwritten rules of society, the big Other, exists the demand to do such a thing. The demand of the big Other is known through how the body reacts. If the body is not excited for economic strife and chest beating, then it is not the will of the big Other. The body is denied for a higher purpose that lays not within the unwritten rules of the big Other, just as Christian pity does not latently embedded within it.

THE SECOND METAMORPHOSES OF SPIRIT: LION

In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.

Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? “Thou shalt” is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.” “Thou shalt” lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden “thou shalt.”¹⁰

Unlike Iran, the United States is not a theocracy and therefore religion does not have the final say in political affairs, but admittedly in the Declaration of Independence it is only through ideology that we obtain our values. Even though the Declaration of Independence does not give any political authority to government, it is without shame constantly used for justification with quotes such as “all men are created equal” and God-given rights including “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Politicians have used these ideas to push forward political agendas across the spectrum from President Lincoln’s move to abolish slavery to President Obama’s nationalized health-care plan.

The United States government functions in such a way that it interprets these endowed values to justify different legislative functions. All political parties within the United States have an ideology from which they take orders. It is not the personality of these political parties to suffer for their ideology. Rather, their personalities are inclined to pick and choose which ideology they believe can best achieve their path to non-suffering and proliferation.

In 1950 Mike Wallace interviewed Ayn Rand and asked her what she thought of the “gradual growth of social, protective legislation based on the principle that we are our brother’s keepers.” Ayn Rand replied with saying she feels the same way as everyone, and that she’s just more conscious of it. She feels that it is “terrible”, there is “destruction all around”, and it will continue that way until the “welfare state is reversed and rejected.” This is of no surprise given Ayn Rand’s philosophy, but what is more interesting is the fact that she says everyone agrees with this but they are just not conscious of it. Big government may not be the best political answer, but in order to disagree with the senses that the current state of politics is terrible, it must be a conscious rational decision. There is no evidence to suggest that there is a difference in the way unconsciousness and consciousness interpret physical signifiers. Ayn Rand may have a point, that big government will eventually destroy itself, which is why she may both physically feel terrible, and rationalize that it is terrible. The rest of the American people, who receive their hand-outs and are happy with big government, will not have the same physical experience given from the happy senses.

Legislative government in the United States interprets its various roles in politics through ideology that is seen through domestic socialized programs, but also foreign policy. In a fall 2004 presidential debate, President George W. Bush said,

I never want to impose my religion on anybody else. But when I make decisions I stand on principle. And the principles are derived from who I am. I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself. That’s manifested in public policy through the faith-based initiative where we’ve unleashed the armies of compassion to help heal people who hurt. I believe that God wants everybody to be free. That’s what I believe. And that’s one part of my foreign policy.¹¹

When Bush says “…unleashed the armies of compassion to help heal people who hurt,” his language is so full of euphemisms laden with ideology that it is difficult to even understand without a context. Of course he is referring to the preemptive strike upon Iraq and the control of their government. The social environment of a post 9/11 world allows for the body to signify a drive to react. The values that dictate production of this drive to invade Iraq are pre-determined culturally. He admits that this decision comes from who he is, and who he is takes dictations from ideology to handle production of action in face of drive.

THE THIRD METAMORPHOSES OF SPIRIT: CHILD

But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred “Yes.” For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred “Yes” is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world.¹²

A ‘sacred Yes’ is needed to create what the Lion could not: self-created values. It could be interpreted that since the Lion could say “No” to values and reject them, then a “Yes” would be an acceptance of cultural values─ but what both the camel and the lion could do. What it must be interpreted as, without contradiction, is a sacred “Yes” to the creative forces of the body. If there is a spiritual acceptance of the signification from the body, then the mind is no longer controlled by values preexisting within culture. The Child can create its own demands: will his own will. To take orders from itself, the body, it needs the cooperation of individual spirit to affirm its own will. Without that affirmation from spirit, the pre-existing signifiers of the social environs command the production of desire.

It would be a hard task to find a government free from pre-determined cultural values, but it is not impossible to see groups of people who identify themselves under an independent nation and functioning under such a mode of living. Tibet is home to one of these groups of people. Tibet, who is not recognized as an independent nation, is officially part of the Republic of China. Tibet’s fight for independence is currently broken between the younger, more rebellious generation, and the older generation who are more loyal to the 14th Dalai Lama’s word. The Dalai Lama does not wish complete independence of Tibet from the Republic of China.¹³ He does not command the people of Tibet, but rather only offers his guidance. He himself has admitted that the people of Tibet will make their final political decisions on their own.¹⁴ The Dalai Lama’s unofficial “government in exile” of Tibet, Central Tibetan Administration, is the type of government that allows the people to make decisions on their personal desires, regardless of their cultural authority, as seen in practice through the rebellious younger generation.

A FORMULA FOR GREATNESS

Deleuze views Nietzsche’s stages of the three metamorphoses of spirit as arbitrary, all present within each other.¹⁵ But, if we are to place the three metamorphoses of spirit in context to Nietzsche’s spirituality centered on acceptance of the body, we can interpret the passage a little more literally, as actual metamorphoses of spirit.

Nietzche’s solution for greatness is amor fati, love of fate.¹⁶ To love the outcome of the production of desire is to not care if culture approves or disapproves. The object of amor fati is to un-learn resentment. Resentment can be tailored in two ways: 1.) Wishing a different state of what is experienced and 2.) Holding on to an experience as if to not wish an inevitable change. The former is a state in which the subject resents the state of events as is, and the latter resents the state of change which occurs. To resent is to be controlled by the realm of ideology and culture. In the way of amor fati one can learn to will his own will, instead of following the will of the interpreted cultural demand. In this context, Nietzsche’s state of greatness is the final stage of the three metamorphoses, the child. It is the child who transcends resentment to will his own will.

In context of transforming into the child, amor fati is perhaps better defined through the word aphiēmi, applied to the cultural semiotic approval. Aphiēmi is Greek for referring to letting go of a force with complete forgiveness. This is exactly what is called for in the mode of the child: Acceptance of cultural forces with a complete forgiveness to whatever opinion it may have.

It is through the signification of the subject that culture, during production of desire, conveys approval, or disapproval on the experience of production. Both approval and disapproval, if clung to, can create resentment. If the production of desire is dependent upon the approval or disapproval of culture through the subject, culture will control production. Through letting go of the subject’s position within culture, the active production of desire produces on behalf of the body – not culture.

How can one practice amor fati? Meditation is without a doubt one way. It is a practice that encourages the letting go of personal attachment to fate. The practice of meditation, for that time meditating, limits passions to help one become unattached to desire and the production of. If it is said in a Buddhist context that one has transcended desire, then perhaps one has transcended the grip of desire. We can never fully rid of drive so long as our nervous system exists, but the attachment to seeing it through may be eradicated through the practice of meditation. It is attachment, or resentment, which impedes our ability to live freely from cultural expectations, willing our own will.
The object of amor fati is to un-learn resentment.

1. Jacques Lacan. Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), 722-723
2. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (1983; repr., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003)
3. Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Modern Library ed. (London: Viking Penguin, 1954; New York: Random House, 1995), 34-35. Citations are to the Random House edition.
4. Zizek shortly after radicalizes his survivalist interpretation to, “a pure survivalism without any sense of historical mission or engagement.” Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Zizek (Cambridge & Malden: Polity, 2004), 104to produce desire, which is why the body rightfully possesses agency.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 34-35.
6. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 26.
7. NBC News, “Transcript: ‘Response…will be a positive one’”, NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25887437/page/2/
8. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25887437/page/2/
9. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 26.
10. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 27
11. Office of the Press Secretary , “Remarks by President Bush and Senator Kerry in the Third 2004 Presidential Debate”, The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041014-1.htmlenvironment
12. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 27
13. Christiane Amanpour and Andrew Tkach, “Dalai Lama challenged by new generation of Buddhist activists”, CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/31/amanpour.buddhas.warriors/index.html?iref=newssearch
14. Tenzin Gysato, “Speech of His Holiness the
    Dalai Lama to the European Parliament, Strasbourg”, His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama, http://www.dalailama.com/page.99.htmmake
15. Gilles Deleuze. Pure Immanence Essays On A Life, trans. Anne Boyman (New York: Urzone, 2001), 53-54
16. Friedrich Nietzsche. Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (1979; repr., London: Penguin Books, 2004), 37

Tom O'malley, Executive Director of ACEFEST

Tom O’malley is the Executive Director of ACFEST, a film festival native to New York City started in 2006.

Hi Tom. Tell us a little about your film festival. Why’s it called ACEFEST?

ACEFEST (formerly ACE Film Festival) is an annual event held in New York City in celebration of the American Cinematic Experience. We handpick a program of domestic independent films from hundreds of submissions each year. Although the patriotic element of our festival has been a major point of interest for many of our followers and an attractive topic for much of the press we’ve received, we’re actually expanding our reach this year to the global market. Being in such a politically pertinent time, we feel like international cohesiveness should be our mission – opposed to singling out our own country. Nationalism has started a lot of conflicts in world history and we don’t believe in contributing to that – especially at this point in time.

Why did you choose to start ACEFEST?

My business partner, Luke, and I are filmmakers by nature. Having moved to Manhattan after attending a relatively small-town college, I found myself intimidated by the grandeur of the “independent” productions being filmed throughout the City. Although I still consider my time with ACEFEST a “hiatus” from filmmakng, I simply need cinema to be pumping through my veins in one form or another at all times.

How would you describe the current state of American independent film?

Prudent. They say there are two recession-proof industries: entertainment and the Mafia. However, whether or not independent film falls into the category of “entertainment” is yet to be determined. Both corporate and private funding resources are reluctant to put their money on any project that isn’t a sure thing. So unless your indie film’s lead actress is Maryl Streep, you either need to lower your production standards or join the Mafia.

At what point in film making history did independent film really become a viable industry?

From what I understand, there was a trust in the early 1900’s looming over the film industry. All motion pictures had to be produced and distributed under this trust – which meant they essentially had to be made by Kodak or one of the other big dogs in the yard. Thomas Edison, strangely enough, owned most of the patents for technology necessary to produce a move – so he made out like a bandit. In reaction to this system filmmakers started making low-budget shorts and features and distributing them locally on their own dime. Many say these bad-asses were the pioneers of independent cinema.

Any particular directors that you feel pioneered American independent film?

The biggest name that was there from the beginning would have to be Charlie Chaplin. There may have been others before him but he was the first to draw major attention to independent productions.

How many submissions did you get last year? Based on the submissions you get, is there a popular topic that filmmakers like to try out?

We don’t generally divulge actual numbers. I will tell you we exceeded our projections significantly. It will be interesting to see what effect the current state of the economy has on our entries this year. Our submissions are heavy in documentaries, by far. They can often be the cheapest to make, involve the smallest crews and get the most serious attention at festivals – so the conditions are ideal, really.

The improvement and accessibility of film technology has really broadened the scope of filmmakers out there. How do you feel about that?

Being able to make a feature-length movie for under $1,000 truly has saturated the market. This isn’t a bad thing. It has caused filmmakers to step up their game that much more and create works that are that much better. The desire to not get lost in the increasingly populous industry can act as the ultimate motivator.

Where’s the future of American Independent film heading?

As I mentioned before, the economy is dictating where a lot of industries are heading right now. We may see trends in a new direction such as more web-only films, TV shows and video podcasts. Filmmakers are artists and they will always find a way to create.