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The cinematic sublime, or certain resistancesbetween theory and practicePatrick Fuerya

a University of SussexPublished online: 06 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Patrick Fuery (2004) The cinematic sublime, or certain resistances between theory and practice,Journal of Media Practice, 5:2, 81-88

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Journal of Media Practice Volume 5 Number 2 © 2004 Intellect Ltd

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jmpr.5.2.81/0

The cinematic sublime, or certainresistances between theory and practicePatrick Fuery University of Sussex

AbstractThis paper will look at the necessity for certain types of resistance between theoryand practice in film. It will argue that these are important because they representthe moments of creativity and production. As such these are the resistances tostability, compromise, and the good. The eidos of such resistances will be workedthrough the idea of the cinematic sublime - the moment where theory and practicemeet.

Resistance and the third termIt would seem that one of the unspoken, perhaps unrecognized, structuralrelationships between theory and practice is that it is mirrored in the basicconfiguration of the sign. The difficulty, once we recognize this, is deter-mining the ways in which to reconfigure the sign. In one sense this is theidea that theory and practice oscillate between the role of signifier and sig-nified. We can approach this in any number of ways, but three can belisted here: (1) theory = signifier to practice’s signified; (2) practice = sig-nifier to theory’s signified; (3) in either case the relationship between sig-nifier and signified in the cinematic sign becomes one founded oninstability. Rather than see this as a problem it will be argued here that theinstability inherent in this allows for a dynamic that is necessary forcertain developments in both theory and practice. It will also be arguedthat this is fundamental to the idea of the sublime - that is, the destabiliz-ing of the signifier/signified relationship, the rupturing of any sense ofwholeness and finitude in the cinematic sign. It is this cinematic sublimethat offers a certain perspective on theory and practice, both in terms ofeach other, and as a model for exploring how the two deal with a commonsubject matter. By considering how theory and practice engage in thesublime we might come to understand further their relationship to oneanother and the formation of the cinematic sign.

This is represented here by the model of the losange. Theory and prac-tice are seen as forming a relationship between two compelling forces, thegood and the sublime. The good, as we shall note later, is the compulsiontowards the beautiful, the ethical, the moral, the socially determined; thesublime is the forceful collapse of such things and a domination of theuncertain, instability, the impassioned, the startled. Between these fourpositions we find the negotiations of certain vicissitudes; three are nomi-nated but there are clearly many more. These three are: the Ungrund(without ground/the hunger to be); the thing/Das Ding; and resistances. It

81JMP 5 (2) 81–88 © Intellect Ltd 2004

KeywordsFilm theory and

practice

sublime

aesthetics

psychoanalysis

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is this final one, positioned between all of these, that will serve as a point ofdeparture. It is also the substance that infiltrates all the processes nomi-nated, including the relationship of theory and practice. In this sense itseparates and connects theory and practice, just as it separates and con-nects the good and the sublime.

To understand resistance in this context we can turn to one of Freud’sfootnotes that almost has an air of resignation to it. In The Interpretationof Dreams, after so much careful and persuasive analysis, after extraordi-nary teasing and cajoling of images, words and meanings, Freud admitsthat there will always be in various instances a core that is impossible toanalyse and resolve. This is set up by Freud within a larger context of thewide range of resistances that are brought to the analytic scene by thesubject of analysis, including distortion, doubt, interruption, forgetting,hostility, and so on. Beyond these is this other type of resistance - some-thing which is integral to the dream-work - that Freud calls the navel:‘There is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable - anavel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown’ (Freud1985: 186) and elsewhere,

There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dreamwhich has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during thework of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-thoughtswhich cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to the con-tents of the dream. This is the dream’s navel, the spot where it reaches downto the unknown.

(Freud 1985: 671).

Within this model of the losange the line of resistance between theory andpractice finds the navel of each located at their habitus. In other words,film theory’s unplumbable navel - that where it reaches down to theunknown - is the site precisely defined as the most abstract in relation topractice; and the same holds for film practice. For in each enterprise theact of production is compelled towards this sense of the unknown, andunknowable. Somewhat curiously, and this is why the dream metaphorholds up so well here, the navels of film theory and practice are necessaryqualities within those activities and are not necessarily derived from therelationship between the two. Or, put another way, film theory and filmpractice have their own depths of the unknown - that is why they continueto be productive - which operate independently of other forms of resistancebetween the two. Theory and practice constantly engage in this unknown,and in doing so reinvent themselves. A consequence of this is that whentheory and practice turn towards these acts of productive engagement inthe undiscovered material of their core business, they also set up certainresistances to one another. At the same time, however, they look to theother for possible solutions. The unknowable navel of film practice, forexample, will always be just that - unknowable; however theory holds inpotentia different possibilities for approaching this. A cautionary notemust be added here. This is not to suggest that the function of film theoryis to resolve the navel of practice, and vice versa. In many ways the

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unknowns remain no matter how they are tackled. As with Freud, weneed to see these moments as those that reflect upon our analytic and cre-ative practices; these navels reach down to unknown depths because theychallenge all forms of analysis. That said, theory and practice do preciselyoffer the possibility of engaging with these unknowables from a differentpoint of view.

If theory and practice each have their own navels of resistance, provid-ing the compulsion to change, develop, and evolve, then we can see thatthe aporia of all this is the resistances between the two. These resistances,which are seen here as lines of connection rather than repulsion, emergeout of the materiality and specifications of these navels. So, for example,theory has its unknowable attributes, and in the struggle to engage inthese critical issues resistances are formed. A similar scenario exists forfilm practice. In this sense such lines of resistance are not about theoryand practice resisting one another, but rather the formalized progressionof the struggles of each to deal with their unknowables. As such theselines are prone to shifting, subject to invention and alteration - they arepremised on fluidity rather than stability.

There is the sense of the need and desire to resist here, the reasons forwhich will be dealt with later. This necessity results in what can be calledthe third term of resistance. The two Marx brothers test one another; theyare, in effect, resisting on all sorts of levels, not the least being the logic ofthe mirror. This logic is that reflexivity will preserve the illusion of mirror-ing whilst reversing the natural order; when we look into the mirror weresist the fact that the image is reversed. The two Grouchos allow all sortsof collapses in the logic of the mirror, always maintaining the relationshipof image and reflection. They can even step through the very apparatus,confounding its fundamental structure. What disintegrates the illusion arenot these improbable tests and impossible ontologies; rather it is the intro-duction of the third Groucho. Once this third term comes into play every-thing collapses. Here, then, is the metaphor for some of the issues at hand.Like the two Grouchos, theory and practice mirror each other, and theplay has a certain level of productivity within its own parameters.However, things only really change when the third term is introduced.This, I would argue here, is the introduction of different orders of resis-tance between the two. It is not simply a matter of reconfiguring relation-ships - the two Grouchos do that just fine in many, many different ways. Itis ultimately about altering the reflexive practices (of both theory andpractice) to allow new forms of resistance to operate. Two of these are des-ignated on the model, and once we have considered these it is possible tolook to the curious relationship of the good and the sublime.

The next line of connection in this schema (represented below the lineof resistances on the model) is Das Ding, the thing. This can be seen asboth a part of resistance as well as a quite distinct relationship. The thingis Lacan’s term, via Freud, to denote the strange, the unknowable, theunrepresentable, the outsidedness, and otherness. He introduces it tonegotiate an interpretation of the opposition between the pleasure princi-ple and the reality principle. The thing is the absolute other of the subject(Lacan 1992: 52) that we continue to search for through our desires,

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swept along through the manifestations of the pleasure principle. Opposedto this is the reality principle. So in effect the thing is that which we knownothing of - the eternally strange - and yet at the same time it is theabsolutely familiar. In this sense it can be related to Lacan’s idea of exti-macy. This is the term he coins to deal with the issue of the real and itspresence in the symbolic; it is that which is more intimate than the mostknowable, intimate detail, yet to confront it is to see a fearsome and dis-turbing thing. It is more real than real, yet it is constantly hidden from us;when we confront it we witness the absolutely familiar and at the sametime the totally foreign.

I think this can be worked into the understanding of film theory andpractice, and once more the three Grouchos can lead us into this. Themirror game of the two Grouchos does not allow for extimacy or the thing.This is in spite of the fact that the logic of the mirror, and so reflection, isbroken so many times. The game they play is a tempered version of thepleasure principle, located and defined within a controlling discourse ofthe reality principle. Once the third term - the third Groucho - is intro-duced we see the effect of extimacy and the force of the thing.Relationships collapse, order disintegrates, meaning is problematized andquestioned. What the two Grouchos confront when the third appears issomething totally familiar and yet foreign, totally known and yet unknow-able. (This of course has resonance of Freud’s reading of the uncanny.) Thetwo Grouchos move from a sense of the other as a sort of manageableprocess and relationship, to the idea of the absolute other as somethingthat cannot be contained within the existing order.

To return now to the relationship between film theory and practice.These two can be seen as having a relationship based on extimacy, eachbeing the thing for the other one. As with all relationships of extimacy,theory and practice recognize the familiar and known contained withinthe other, but it is so often presented as something almost unrecognizable.What is recognized of course is ‘film’, but it is presented to the other one insuch a way that it becomes the strange and different. Thus theory makesfilm strange - presents extimacy in effect - to practice, and practice will dothe same for theory. It is important to read this strangeness in a particularway; and I hope to illustrate this here with the notion of the sublime, butas with all examples if not a certain failure, at the very least a certainrestriction, is ensured.

As with the lines of resistance it is important to see this relationship ofextimacy between theory and practice as one that is necessary and fecund,rather than alienating and destructive. Theory and practice should see theother as extimacy for within such a perspective the possibility of changeresides. Once more this is the intervention of the third term, which is, itshould be noted, not a distinct element, but the thing of theory and prac-tice in dialogue with each other. By positioning the other one as its other,both theory and practice continually exert the forceful existence of theuncanny. Alterity becomes how theory and practice intervene with, andengage in, one another. Such otherness is produced - that is, it is formeddirectly out of the economy between theory and practice. As such neitheris capable of producing the thing, this level of extimacy, without the pres-

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ence of the other one. Clearly this means that we are speaking of a partic-ular type of agency, one that exists in the junction of theory and practice;one that can only be produced when either of these reflects on its relation-ship with the other. And this is precisely why it is a version of extimacy, forit is the interaction of two systems with the same point of origin, and yethave been cast apart. In this sense theory and practice need their differ-ence to one another in order to be productive, and at the same time theyconstantly reflect on the practice of the other. This is not dissimilar to thestory Lacan recounts of the two children on a train; as the train pulls intoa station the girl points and says: ‘Look, we are at Ladies’; to which theboy responds, looking out of his window: ‘No, we are at Gents’. Thus,points out Lacan, we are sent on our different directions. Theory and prac-tice do pull into the same station, but they have always looked out of dif-ferent windows.

The sublimeThe sublime may seem to be a curious concept to introduce into this topicof a beyond to the theory of practice. However I would like to argue that itprovides us with some interesting possibilities as a way forward, especiallyin terms of the issues raised so far. I do not propose to engage in too muchdetail on a history of the sublime, but I will take this next part throughwhat might be seen as five key ideas from such a history. The source ofthese is necessarily wide ranging - from Longinus, through Burke, Kantand on to Lyotard - but this is not to suggest homogeneity between thesetheorists. That said, there does seem to be a sort of definable agenda interms of the sublime. The task here will be to suggest some ways in whichthis agenda might be used to comment on the theory and practice of film.

1. Beyond the theory of practice and the sublimeThe history of the sublime is marked by the attempt to do something thatresonates in a great many of the discussions between film theory and prac-tice. Put in the crudest way this is the relationship between style and sub-stance. The analysis of the sublime has had to negotiate the difficulty ofwhat constitutes the sublime as such; what, in effect, makes somethingsublime. In 1674 the French translator and commentator of Longinus,Boileau, emphasized the difference between the rhetoric of the sublimeand the sublime of content; or the style versus the content. In doing so heset in motion the European (and especially the English) theorizing of thesublime in a particular direction. This becomes the idea that we can readthe sublime effect either by the ways in which it represents, or by what isrepresented.

We can adapt this aspect of the history of the sublime here in a numberof ways. We could consider how theory and practice can be compared to arhetoric of film (theory) and the content, or spirit, of the sublime (prac-tice). Or, and this is not in itself excluding this other order, we could con-sider how theory and practice engage with the sublime. The first of thesewould use the theories of the sublime to comment on theory and practice,whereas the second would be interested in how the issues of the sublimeare dealt with differently through film theory and practice. A third level to

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all of this would be the idea of producing the sublime in theory and prac-tice - and this project is the one that perhaps is the most appealing, butcertainly beyond the limits of this paper. What follows are some possiblepoints of connection between all this - of how the sublime can be used toinform a discussion of the resistances between theory and practice.

2. Where does the sublime reside?This was one of the great debates, settled, or at least focused, perhaps mostnotably in Kant. Kant dismissed the idea that there can be a sublimeobject; for him it could only ever exist within the subject. All writers onthe sublime seem to agree on one thing - the sublime is all about the effecton the imagination/emotion/mind. And it is the effect that defines thesublime, rather than any particular quality of the object. (Disagreementbreaks down with Kant because he is adamant that the sublime cannotexist in the object as such; for Kant the sublime is called a ‘feeling of thespirit’.) The sublime effect, it must be recalled, is not an easy one - in factthe sublime is typified by fear, passion, awe, tumult, and sweepingemotion. Indeed the defining points for the sublime, summarized byBoileau, is that its effects elevate, ravish, and transport. Only if somethinghad these effects could it be called the sublime.

How can we locate the relationship of film theory to practice in such acontext? The framing notion here has been resistance and reflexivity;what this notion of the sublime gives us is a foregrounding of the dualityof these issues once more. In one sense we can rephrase this question toread: how is it possible for theory and practice to create the sublime effect?And from a related perspective it can be asked as: how can theory andpractice be brought to bear on the issue of the sublime in order to under-stand it? By conflating theory and practice in such questions we avoid theeasy divide of using theory to explicate the sublime, and practice to createit. In doing so the processes become engaged in a reflexive moment. Whentheory attempts to create the sublime effect it necessarily questions its ownmethodologies (or genealogies as Foucault might say) - this is evident inobvious ways in Lacan and Derrida, but all theorizing at some levelattempts to be sublime. And when practice attempts to analyse thesublime it does so by questioning its core components. In both of these wewitness a breakdown in the theory/practice divide and figuring out whichis which can be quite a complicated process. In this way what I am sug-gesting is that the introduction of the sublime offers one way forward inthis notion of a beyond to the theory of practice. The sublime’s inherentreflexivity means that both theory and practice move beyond their ownrestrictive practices. As Lyotard, via Kant, points out: ‘The sublime is thechild of an unhappy encounter, the encounter of the Idea with form. Theencounter is unhappy because the Idea reveals itself to be so unwilling tomake concessions, the law (the father) so authoritarian...’ (Lyotard 1994:124). The sublime arrests any easy flow between conceptualization andform. The third Groucho becomes the sublime intervention, moving theself-placating mirror effect of theory and practice beyond the establishedprocesses. This is the promise of the sublime - to ravish theory and practicein order to elevate and transport them to an altogether different order.

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3. Reflexivity, the sublime, and the beautifulThis leads us to the next point, which will involve the introduction of thebeautiful. In Kant’s schema one of the primary differences between thebeautiful and the sublime is marked by a certain arrangement of the inter-nal and external. The judgement of beauty is something that is alwaysexternal to ourselves and understanding; the sublime, on the other hand,is always internal. The beautiful is located in a position that is essentiallyantithetical to the sublime. The beautiful is part of the law, the authoritar-ian, and as such has a certain sense of placation. For all of the sublime’sstormy upheavals, the beautiful offers calm and poise.

Both theory and practice are often drawn to the beautiful; there is acertain seductive quality to the beautiful and culturally we aretrained/taught to privilege it in a certain way. The sublime is beauty’sother, and we are not exactly with Kant nor against him to position thesublime against the good in this sense. (Kant saw relationships betweenthe sublime and the good, but it is not a simple one by any means). Thegood is positioned in terms of the law, and as such is connected to moral-ity, the cultural paradigm, the superego - in short the domain where ethicsare decided and maintained. I’d suggest that the sublime provides a spaceoutside of this - this is part of the reason it is so seeped in awe, fear, andforce. And when theory and practice engage with one another they poten-tially achieve this same space.

This may seem slightly grand and to be fair it is probably more of anabstract idealism rather than a practical aim. What is potentially moretangible, however, is the idea that the reflexivity of theory and practice arecapable of producing something that wrestles their existence out of thegood. In this sense the good holds the laws of theory and practice, of howtheir histories conflate and contest, of the economies of discourse and dis-cursive practices that allows them to exist in the relationships they cur-rently occupy. In other words, the notion of the sublime offers thepossibilities of a beyond to the theorizing of practice because it runscounter to the good of existing relationships. One of these has been citedhere as the relationship of resistances between the two.

4. TerrorBurke’s treatise on the sublime focused on terror; the famous passage onthis reads:

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that isto say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects,or operates in a manner analogous to terror, it is a source of the sublime;that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable offeeling.

(Burke 1990: 39)

Part of the idea of this paper is to suggest that somehow the sublime offersus a way of considering theory and practice from a different perspective;and that such considerations may well operate like the sublime. With thecentrality of terror I would suggest that this is precisely one of the debili-

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tating forces against thinking beyond the limitations of theory and prac-tice. In other words it is the terror that makes us retreat to established pat-terns and ideas. The liberation that terror potentially provides is to reworkthe discursive practices between the two.

The final word on all this goes to the three Grouchos. Why does not thethird Groucho instil terror in the other two? After all he disrupts the per-fectly tuned relationship between them; he collapses the system that seemsto be working so well as it tests the fabric and process of action and coun-teraction. The simple answer is that this is comedy, and the history of thesublime has tended to be invested in tragedy. But, and this may well belabouring the point too much, the terror is subsumed into the new order -the breaking away from the frame (the mirroring process); an order thatwill, in time, create its own versions of mirroring and repetition. The mir-roring and the repetition of theory and practice can be disrupted in manyways - the cinematic sublime is just one of many possibilities. The trick isto subsume the terror of the new.

ReferencesBurke, E. (1990; first published 1757), A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of

our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Adam Phillips, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press

Freud, S. (1985), The Interpretation of Dreams (trans. J. Strachey),Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Lacan, J. (1992), The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (trans. D. Porter, ed. J.-A. Miller),London: Routledge.

Lyotard, J.-F. (1994), Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime: Kant’s ‘Critique ofJudgment’, (section 23-29), trans. E. Rottenberg, Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

Suggested CitationFuery, P (2004), ‘The cinematic sublime, or certain resistances between theory

and practice’, Journal of Media Practice 5: 2, pp. 81–88, doi: 10.1386/jmpr.5.2.81/0

Contributor DetailsPatrick Fuery is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex.He is the author of eight books, including, most recently, Madness and Cinema,New Developments in Film Theory, and Visual Cultures and Critical Theory (withK. Fuery).E-mail: P.Fuery@sussex.ac.uk Department of Media and Film Studies,EDB, School of Humanities, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex,BN1 9SH

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