File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2001/bhaskar.0109, message 8


Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 10:24:44 +1000
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: BHA: The Dialectic and Documentary Theory (4 of maybe 5)


  Documentary Theory and the Dialectic: A Dialectical Critical Realist Approach


The Avant Garde Alternatives

Narcissism or the Struggle for Amour de Soi

The retreat from the legacy of the Grierson can also seemingly take the 
form of the embrace of narcissism.  There is a very interesting photograph 
in John Roberts - Florence Henri's 1928 self-portrait (Roberts, 1998: 56). 
She studied at the Bauhaus and then took up portrait photography and 
fashion work. This particular photograph shows her contemplating herself in 
the mirror. It is 1928 and the world is crashing around her into the Great 
Depression, yet she sits there contemplating her own image. Roberts' 
comment is interesting. He says 'These images of mirrors do not so much 
extend the everyday as a gendered space as embrace narcissism as a recoil 
from the everyday' (Roberts, 1998: 55). For Roberts photographs, such as 
Henri's, reveal that there was some negotiation of, if not opposition to, 
the dominant positivism that was to constitute the basis for documentary 
photography in the 1930s and beyond.
The term 'narcissism', which Roberts employs, has irredeemably negative 
connotations. However we need to ask whether gestures such as Henri's are 
merely the self-absorbed (amour propre) or do they manifest self-esteem 
(amour de soi). The distinction is an important one for as Bhaskar has 
pointed out, 'only the empowered individual can assist or effectively 
solidarize with the powerless, so that amour de soi, rather than amour 
propre, is the true fount of all altruism (Bhaskar, 1993: 265). The 
autobiographical gesture in photography and documentary may then be based 
on a reactionary narcissism but it may also be something like a return to 
the Self as a way of finding healing (Bhaskar, 2000). It may indeed 
constitute the first step of Bhaskar's dialectic of the '7 E's'.
Self-esteem ? mutual esteem (where the intra-dependency of action itself 
reflects both the fiduciary nature of the social bond and the reality of 
oppressive social relations) existential security ? ergonic efficiency 
?(individual ?collective ?totalising) empowerment ? universal emancipation 
? eudaimonia (Bhaskar, 1993: 365).

The point we wish to stress here is that, although Brian Winston is correct 
to point out the complex ethical issues involved, the personal 
autobiographical film may not necessarily be an instance of the 'me 
generation' at work (Winston, 2000: 130). There is an alternative dialectic 
leading, as Bhaskar has shown from, amour de soi or self-esteem to the good 
society.


The Aesthetics of Failure

Paul Arthur (1993) was we believe the first theorist to attempt to 
encapsulate the key aspect of the new Avant Garde Documentary with the 
concept of the 'aesthetics of failure' (Arthur in Renov, 1993). Jon Dovey 
employs the term 'klutz films' to describe the same phenomena (Dovey, 200: 
27-54). However we will stick with Arthur's formulation, as we feel that 
the use of the term klutz tends to oversimplify differences between the 
authorial personae created within the aesthetics of failure. Thus Nick 
Broomfield and Ross McIlwee both encounter failure but the failures are of 
a very different order, as are the personalities constructed within the film.
'Epistemic hesitation', a term analogous to the 'aesthetics of failure', 
has been advocated by Carl Plantinga (1997).  We will return to Plantinga, 
but for the moment we will note that for him 'epistemic hesitation' 
constitutes a possible source of balance to the cognitive triumphalism of 
the traditional expository documentary.
The essential features of the 'aesthetics of failure' are that the 
filmmaker is reflexive in the cinema verité mode. Thus there is much 
discussion and foregrounding of how the filmmaker is making a film and what 
his intentions are. The defining feature of the genre, though, is that the 
filmmaker presents himself as incompetent, and struggling to keep the film 
project on track.
We have chosen to underline the gender implications of this new documentary 
genre, because although, as Arthur and Dovey both argue, it represents the 
erosion of the white male as subject, the white male remains centre stage - 
troubled, incompetent, bumbling etc but nevertheless centre stage. Indeed 
it is debatable to what extent the aesthetics of failure represents an 
avenue of expression for the female filmmaker. Within patriarchy the male 
master can play at being incompetent but no such license is extended to the 
female slave who must always strive to prove herself in a male dominated world.
Within the aesthetics of failure paradigm there are two great maîtres - 
Michael Moore and Ross McIlwee. In many ways people have not yet come to 
terms with what their work signifies.  McIlwee, in our opinion, is the 
greater artist, but Moore is a very accomplished filmmaker.  His Roger and 
Me is widely acknowledged as a classic. Moore is also more explicitly 
political than McIlwee.  But it is not at all clearly understood what the 
nature of his politics is.  They are classically liberal communalist and 
they go back to John Dewey not Karl Marx.  The whole thrust of his art is 
to expel the rich and the powerfully from the community.  He attempts to 
demonstrates over and over again that they are un-American.  At the other 
end of the pole from this liberal communalism is McIlwee who represents the 
individual who will not conform, who in the face of a triumphalist culture 
built round 'can do will do', offers us his personal failures.

Plantinga & Epistemic Hesitation
It is the absence of a critical-realist philosophy of science that 
handicaps Plantinga in his attempt to refute the cognitive triumphalism of 
what he terms the 'formal voice'.  Likewise his attack on postmodernist 
scepticism, which lies behind the concept of the open voice, is weakened 
because he does not have a theory which will locate the proper place for 
epistemic relativism or what he terms ‘epistemic hesitation’ (Plantinga, 
1997: 118).
It is this that is behind his mistaken contrast between explanation and 
exploration.  Plantinga does not see that if we recognise that the world is 
stratified then all explanation is like exploration. Epistemic relativism 
is not an optional extra.  It is guaranteed by the fact that ‘all beliefs 
are socially produced, so that all knowledge is transient, and neither 
truth-values nor criteria for rationality exist outside historical time’ 
(Bhaskar, 1979: 73).  Epistemic relativism then is the very essence of our 
epistemological endeavours. It is however most important to understand that 
epistemic relativism does not preclude ontological realism. Reality exists 
and is stratified. Neither should we abandon the notion of judgemental 
rationality. We do have good reasons for preferring one explanation to another.
We would like to say a further word about Plantinga’s notion of ‘epistemic 
hesitation’. This can be usefully compared with Paul Arthur’s notion of the 
‘aesthetics of failure’ and regarded primarily as a psychological and 
sociological phenomenon (Arthur, 1993: 16-34).  At one level it is true 
that this hesitation, doubt or uncertainty about the epistemological 
project is caused by the collapse of the certainties of positivism. There 
is, though, a social/political moment as well.  We locate this in the 
failure of the Left of 1966-72 to bring about substantial social change. 
This failure has seen in turn the continued triumph of the dominant elites.
In terms of the Bhaskarian dialectic we are dealing with problems at 4D - 
the level of agency. Here the 'de-agentification of reality' has given 
risen to, what Bhaskar terms the 'world historical problem of agency', 
where there is an apparent absence of 'the deep totalizing conveyors of the 
dialectic of freedom'  (Bhaskar, 1993: 316). So great are the problems that 
arguably we are at a stage where the only alternative source of opposition 
is to fetishize indeterminacy and so undermine the categories that underpin 
the status quo. In other words the function of the ‘aesthetics of failure’ 
and 'epistemic hesitation' is to negate all epistemic certainty.
However this is at best a holding operation and it is interesting to note 
that, as Plantinga points out, there is a revival of documentaries, which 
have a ‘formal voice’ in that they attempt to explain reality. It is our 
contention that we should reject epistemic hesitation as an end in 
itself.  Firstly on the grounds that it confuses the notion of epistemic 
relativism and also that it denies the possibility of achieving truth as 
alethia or the reason for things. Our second reason for rejecting 
‘epistemic hesitation’ is that explanation is essential to 
emancipation.  We must understand the world before we can change 
it.  Moreover, indeterminacy by itself does not suffice to advance 
freedom.  For that something must be negated.



(From:
A Paper prepared for the IACR-Conference "Debating Realisms" Roskilde 
University Denmark, 17-19 August 2001

Gary MacLennan
John Hookham
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane
Qld
Australia)


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