A Plural Voice

by Leonardo Quaresima

"L'écriture est destruction de toute voix, de toute origine. L'écriture, c'est ce neutre, ce composite, cet oblique où fuit notre sujet, le noir-et-blanc où vient se perdre toute identité, à commencer par celle-là même du corps qui écrit. [...] Le scripteur moderne naît en même temps que son texte; il n'est d'aucune façon pourvu d'un être oui précéderait où excéderait son écriture, il n'est en rien le sujet dont son livre serait le predicat. [...] C'est que écrire [designe] une opération [...] que les linguistes [...] appellent un performatif. [...] Sans doute en a-t-il toujours été ainsi: dès qu'un fait est raconté [...] la voix perd son origine, 1'auteur entre dans sa propre mort, l'écriture commence." (1)

"La marque de 1'écrivain n'est plus que la singularité de son absence; il lui faut tenir le rôle du mort dans le jeu de 1'écriture. Tout cela est connu; et il y a beau temps que la critique et la philosophic ant pris acte de cette disparition au de cette mort de 1'auteur." (2)

Here are the starting points - in brief - of this issue of Fotogenia and the previous one.

We are all aware that these are key texts. From these excerpts and their subsequent analysis even more complex developments have taken place: the "post-structuralism" and the American "deconstructivism," in particular, have assigned to them the role of passages heralding a new beginning. Foucault's essay does not only present the most radical critique around the concept of authorship, but also of artwork (he denied its existence in a theoretical form) and writing (a category which, according to the French critic, "transpose [...] dans un anonymat transcendental, les caractères empiriques de l'auteur" (3)).

More precisely, the idea permeating the two issues of the review springs out of the discrepancy between these aspects of the cultural debate, the direction taken by research with its models and methodologies, and the cinematic discourse. Despite the radical changes occurred in recent years, which have brought about a totally new and diverse "cinematic object" from the past (due to technical and language transformations, the dissemination of new communication means, the link with new symbolic processes, new relations with other systems pertaining to the "art realm"); in the discourse on cinema (within the critique domaine, specifically), the concept of authorship has stood its ground with a strong and widespread presence: an almost automatic and "natural" operativeness, in a sense strongly and somewhat naively tied to theories concerning the politique des auteurs.

However, contemporary cinema (not only "post-modern" cinema or "transformed" through technology, but also the most "harmless" comedy, the most naive and modest Italian movie) is - I repeat - something totally different from the one intended by the protagonists of the above-mentioned politique (whose reference framework had already changed by the end of the 60's). In the theoretical system of other contexts, that is within a general theory of signs, the model and the concept of authorship have undergone the strongest relativization: what are the reasons behind the long-lasting presence of analytical references and parameters in cinema?

To the writer a revisitation appears rather urgent, if we take into account how, in other contexts, even the concept of text (as mentioned before) has been questioned and founded anew. This is what has happened within the diversified reader-oriented currents of critique, where the enhancement of the reader's role has brought

about not only the dethronement of the author (as Barthes had forecast: "L'unité d'un texte n'est pas dans son origine, mais dans sa destination [...] - La naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort de l'Auteur" (4)), but also the weakening and crisis of the text; let us think about Fish's model, just to give you an example. (5)

In the meantime the cinematic system (as also mentioned by Alberto Boschi and Giacomo Manzoli in the introduction to Fotogenia, n. 2) has been paying dearly for this approach with profound dyschronic unbalances, due to the upstream application of notions closely linked with a particular development stage, a specific configuration of the frame. The trend is therefore the interpretation of the cinema from the 1910's or from the following decade, (6) though the concepts of "director" or "author" were developed in later years (the authorship one, in essence, within the Nouvelle Vague), and most of all as referring to a field which does not find any root in previous periods.

The project has been then developed alongside these directions: by promoting an analysis which would incorporate into the theoretical viewpoint the developments of the methodology inferred from adjacent fields; by fostering a study on the different configurations of the author throughout the diverse stages of the cinema history, as opposed to the oversemplifications or the faulty applications which are so widespread in the tradition of the history of cinema. In this case as well, this is a field where an enormous research work is necessary. A recent study about the situation in France (7) (a reconstruction of the status and roles of cinema authors from the origin to the contemporary scene, with special attention to the issues relating to copyright and legislation) has clearly stressed the missing parts and the significantly vast potential of this type of research.

Certainly the endurance of the "authorship" concept in the field of cinema studies cannot be without reason. The firm stand of its position can find its motivation within the "exigence sociale d'une figure porteuse qui médiatiserait 1'acces à 1'oeuvre;" (8) or within an anthropological need, determined by the "claim for an author's figure as an expression of the audience's, cinema lovers' or scholar's need to attribute part of the communication responsibilities to an anthropomorfic subject other than oneself;" (9) or within the relation "entre la jouissance filmique et la reconnaissance du Nom," by the author's role as "garant pour le libre cours du plaisir" of the audience, as a place where the new and the old live side by side. (10)

As referring to one of its strongest and most effective historical forms, the politique des auteurs corresponds to a need for the inscription of the subjectivity within a production system both in Europe and Hollywood, alongside a new founding of cinematic universalism. (11)

It is likewise true that when the authorship concept is put into question a series of multiple levels and contexts come to the fore; it forces one to open new fields of research from a historical perspective and to review (as mentioned above) whole chapters of the history of cinema. This is an effort calling for and putting into question methodological and theoretical aspects (the legitimacy - already referred to - of "dyschronic" applications of given categories); and even more, here the aesthetic realm comes to play a relevant role (the redifinition of the "work of art" category), alongside the history of critique (for the diverse strategic roles played by the authorship concept from within), philology (relatively to the definition of operations determining the final imprint of a film, which seal ultimately and truly its form), and the legislation.

As regards all these points the articles presented in these two issues of the review offer research perspectives - sometimes totally new - alongside some relevant conclusions, although preliminary ones. The scenario of proposals widens further with the volume presenting the proceedings of the 3rd "Convegno Internazionale di Studi sul Cinema" held in Udine, where some of the texts published here have been presented. (12) The proposal refers to the historical level. From a comparative perspective an unforeseable parallelism seems to emerge with the system of painting, (13) as regards the development of specific models and degrees of "authorship." Already at the onset of cinema the status of "views" appears to us moving back and forth from a condition of anonymity to a diverse one, where a glimpse of the principle of responsibility can be perceived (for example in the presence of a trademark); this can be seen as the reason why, above all else, Lumière's cinema has been considered based on authorship. (14) In Italy cinema does seem a vast and lively workshop characterised by the mobility of roles, functions and figures sporting the authorship status mark.

The hyperbole of Cabiria, by which Pastrone intended to acquire for himself and by all means the mantle and mark of "author," does witness the strategic value assigned to authorship models in a given stage. (15) The reconstruction of Feuillade's career enables us to grasp one of the moments at the onset of the birth of a cinematic figure embodying within himself different stages of filmmaking process (script writing and mise en scène), while at the same time it stresses the traits not necessarily overlapping with what we could call the centre of an "expression of a personal universe" (where instead the filmmaker appears here as a voice for popular beliefs and imagination (16)).

Other important passages have been overlooked: Vertov's project of a collective cinema, foreign to authorship models and outside the aesthetic realm (although his approach and experience have been paid a relevant attention); the "plural" characterisation of experiences linked with "New Cinema" movements of the sixties and the (following) model of "national cinemas;" the emergence one more time of similar modules in subsequent phenomena, still marked by the need for a common construction approach, to create a macrotext built by similar and repeated elements (and therefore stronger within a context marked by a weaker expression) - as for the "African cinema" analysed by Gardies. (17)

The genre system has been the one particularly overlooked, in its meaning as manifestation of a plural text as well, and as a traditional field of articulation of individual voices and "impersonal" traits: forms, styles, narrative codes, mythologic systems, We can likewise consider this context a usually well-studied subject, although here a theory for cinematic genres seems weak and partial (however some recent studies have marked the revamping of interest in this field (18)) and maybe this is due to its close intermingling with the "authorship" concept. This aspect however ought to be further studied.

The proposal presented in the two issues of the review also offers a series of original elaborations from a theoretical perspective, as regards the identification of models analysing the "author's function" (to use Foucault's words) and the framework of efforts, matrices, functions lurking behind a naive (humanist, romantic) idea of author/creator.

Particularly interesting seems to me the application of allography and autography notions (derived from Nelson Goodman through Genette). (19) If on the one hand Ron-dolino asserts the impossibility to separate the work from its author, Chion on the other seems to put this approach into question, by stating that these two terms are opposing ones and envisaging a complete independence (and a life of its own) for the film ("the author of the film is the film itself!") and the need for a "work politics." (20)

A contrasting stance between cinematic language and authorship seems to emerge from Epstein's analysis; the idea is based on the autonomy of cinematic language which "cannnot easily be bent to the need and means of expression of an author; [...] and it would rather find its place precisely at the moment when the subject falters." (21) A redefinition of the author status, including also the configuration of his/her counterpart (the audience, that is "the cinema world") is put forward by Sorlin, from the starting point of Italian Neorealism and the need to think anew its "authorship" traits. (22) The importance and productivity of the notion of "device-dispositif," as presented by Foucault, are further stressed by Bell, (23) who analyses directly the issue of formulating anew the author/director notion in the light of post-structuralism developments. And here we complete the circle and the need from which we have started finds its direct - and original - answer (also in a new interpretation of Pasolini's writings).

Also the roads which lead to a critical analysis of authorship could be diverse; fruitful developments could be derived by an analytical model based on the notion of style and the investigation of wider systems dynamics (according to the work by Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (24)), a model springing from the study proposed by Wolfflin or Focillon which could offer significantly rich perspectives of development. Reference has already bee made as regards the genre theory; and it is also possble to presume the relevance of intermediate systems (between style and genre), more mobile, and cross-sectional, vis-a-vis the former approach and the single texts: aggregation of styles, semantic units, enunciation modalities, production modes, whose field could merge with the one identified by the "author's poetic approach," but whose nature and scope would be totally diverse. (25)

Important developments can also be derived from a perspective which could look at cinema as a communication system, a means of construction for symbolic processes and a place for setting up social relations. (26) The cinematic philology, with its attention paid to restoration and conservation problems, as regards the material features of film, seems to move towards the relativization of authorship. As bibliography (study of the materiality of the book, of material forms through which books are transmitted to readers or listeners: D. F. McKenzie) in the literary realm has worked towards the "elimination of the author," (27) likewise the fervour around philological studies, characterising the contemporary scene, whether unaware or willingly so, has produced similar efforts in this direction. The history of the film "object," the study of its variables, seems to cast aside its validating principles by bringing into the "limelight" only the autonomy, the independence, the "subjectivity" of the single text, alongside its relations with other ones, through other channels and parameters, not always merging with the author/owner's view.

Death of the author? Maybe an invitation to a more precise historical analysis, with relation to the development and embodiment of the author's figure, an invitation to consider it a complex figure, permeated of subjectivity, but free from the restricted framework and control of the individual subject.

"Dead of the author" could also mean the need to actin a strong and radical manner which would entail an openess, a liberation: the multiplying and dissemination of "authorship" nuclei and traits well beyond the borders of the single work and of the poetics.

(Translated by Maura Vecchietti)

Return to Fotogenia n. 3