Session 4: FHT and the Philosopher’s Stone

Session 4: FHT and the Philosophers’ Stone
Chair: Ali Rtza Taskale

Re-presenting Representations
Ipek Atik
Humanities and Social Thought, School of Arts and Science, New York University

This research aims at analyzing Crash (2004) and Babel (2006), directed respectively by Paul Haggis and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, in accordance with them being representations of “fear, horror and terror” in contemporary cinema. The main questions being asked in this research are: Do these films thoroughly succeed in their – assumed – objective of becoming striking reproaches towards what has been going on in our societal everyday encounters which mainly tend to take place within the bubble of “fear, horror and terror” that has come to surface and that has been relentlessly reinforced since 9/11? Or, do they multiply, reproduce and contribute to the dissemination of the “fear, horror and terror” and violence that they intend to highlight and expose and fail in their, again assumed, objective of being the leaders of the socially responsible products of 21st century’s visual culture?
The questions aforementioned above are approached through various theoretical frameworks, and secondary sources. Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (1921) forms the background for the theoretical take on the representations of “fear, horror and terror” and violence; Giorgio Agamben’s “State of Exception” (2005), and his, “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life” (1998) are used to explore what is at stake when “fear, horror and terror” and violence are reproduced, disseminated and are intricately inscribed in everyday lives of human beings by the state. The analysis of the films are guided with what Nicholas Mirzeoff provides in his “Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture” (2005). Lacan’s “other/Other”, Slavoj Žižek’s critical theories on Lacan and Žižek’s “Neighbors and Other Monsters” (2006) are also used as guiding frameworks.
The greater goal is to go further beyond what is explicit in the representations of “fear, horror and terror” and violence.

Dreadful yet Iirresistible “Luella Miller”: Horror in the Absence of Self
Chiho Nakagawa
Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, who is generally regarded as a regionalist, thus a realist, wrote a supernatural story, “Luella Miller,” about a woman who sucks life out of the people around her. Luella Miller looks innocent and charming, yet she brings about the worst fate in the people who are attracted to her: they waste away, taking care of her. Luella could be a vampire, addictive substance, monster, or parasite. Yet unlike vampires or monsters, she does not choose or even control her victims. “Luella Miller” is about the fears of lack, the fears of losing and of not possessing one’s own self.
The problematic gender ideal surfaces when one brings the current discussion of addiction in examining this irresistible yet dreadful heroine. As Timothy Melley points out, addictions reveal “insufficient free will” of individuals, although the concept of addiction lessens that detestable implication by rationalizing and medicalising the state. People become addicted to Luella, and loses their self-control to the point of death. Yet in this story, no one is more devoid of self-control than Luella herself: she has no choice but to die when no one is left to take care of her. Her magnetic charm suggests that, in a woman, the absence of self and self-control looks not only harmless, but also attractive. It becomes dreadful only when Luella’s complete dependency on others makes people addicted to her, eventually leading them to the total renunciation of self – death. Luella is a vacuum of self, drawing others into the same fate as hers. Freeman presents a sharp critique of the feminine ideal at the turn of the twentieth century with her description of lovable but fatal Luella Miller.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

On Chigurh’s Coin and Benjamin’s Angel: Fear, Horror, and Terror through the Fate of History
Stephen Hessel
University at Buffalo, USA

Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling novel No Country for Old Men presents the reader with a villain so determined and methodical in his ways that the violence he enacts is almost an afterthought.  His silenced shotgun and cattle gun are mere decorations that bring his unwavering outlook on the past, present and future to fruition.  The coin he occasionally flips in order to adjudicate and justify his bloody actions is the true source of terror due to its ability to determine the historical past, the palpable present, and the grim future.  His motivations maybe enigmatic but as the character Carson Wells states, he has principles.
This paper proposes a reading of Chigurh’s coin through the analysis of history Walter Benjamin proposes in “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”  Benjamin’s critique of historicism and historical materialism will be viewed through Chigurh’s perspective in an attempt to identify his raison d’être, but conversely the Messianic trope present in the text will be incorporated as another deterministic factor.  In this way the figure of Anton Chigurh will represent a monstrous, aberrant and extreme example of deterministic approaches to temporal relations.
In similar fashion, Benjamin’s “Angel of History” will be read in all its futility as a metaphor for failure in the face of a species of Chigurhian progress; already determined and concrete it co-opts the power of temporal liberty and transforms it into an inevitable series of events that are immutable.
Finally, the fearful reaction in the face of such incomprehensible resoluteness will be presented through the reflections of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell whose ruminations exhibit society’s inability to impede its movement toward degradation and destruction.  In this sense, Sheriff Bell is Benjamin’s Angel who looks toward the past while being pushed backward into an irredeemable future.