Abstract
Employing the Agambean analysis of sovereign power as always involving a state of exception, as well as Heidegger’s ideas on art and truth as aletheia, an analysis of von Trier’s Antichrist is undertaken so as to demonstrate that the film ought best be understood as a work of art that acknowledges yet challenges the standard and ruling binaries of man and woman, masculine and feminine, culture and nature, and the paradigm of which they are a part, so as to make possible the unconcealment of an alternative “truth” that is hidden and obscured by the ruling paradigm and its binaries. Thus, new possibilities for both meaning and human being are discovered.
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- 1.
One quick way to conceive of how what I am calling “true art” is to be distinguished from “art” that is not “true art” is via the phenomenon of kitsch. Sometimes called a “deficient form of art,” kitsch, as such and by its very nature, does not provide new insights or new meanings. Rather, kitsch, whether negative or positive, merely reinforces beliefs, values, and ideals already dominant in a given society. Nothing new is added. No insight is gained. No new questions are conceived. True art, however, opens up new ways of thinking, provides insight, explores alternative conceptualizations of phenomena, and unconceals alternative ways of being in the world.
- 2.
Heidegger scholar Iain Thomson first coined this phrase in his 1999 dissertation. While the phrase has been adopted by many other scholars, it first appeared publicly in Thomson’s first published book, Heidegger on Ontotheology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- 3.
See Heidegger’s “On the Essence of Truth” for his own detailed account.
- 4.
See Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
- 5.
Susanne Claxton, Heidegger’s Gods: An Ecofeminist Perspective (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).
- 6.
There have been some much more substantive articles written about Antichrist in the area of psychoanalysis.
- 7.
For a detailed examination of Lilith via historical sources, see both Chap. 5 of my book and the essay by Raphael Patai, “Lilith” in the Journal of American Folklore 77: 306 (1964): 295–314.
- 8.
I explore this at length in Chap. 5 of my book, Heidegger’s Gods: An Ecofeminist Perspective.
- 9.
I make the case for this interpretation in Chap. 5 of Heidegger’s Gods: An Ecofeminist Perspective.
- 10.
Agamben , in his book Homo Sacer, employs the ancient concepts of zoe- and bios in his analysis of sovereign power and the crucial role the state of exception plays. Other excellent works to consult on this matter are Sherry Ortner’s essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture” and Patricia Glazebrook’s essay “Gynocentric Eco-logics.”
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bachrach, Naftali Hertz. 2013. Sefer Emek haMelech. New York: Hebrew Books.
Brannan, Alex. 2016. The Philosophy of Antichrist: Expulsion from Eden. https://cinefilesreviews.com/2016/04/23/the-philosophy-of-antichrist-expulsion-from-eden/4/.
Brooks, Xan. 2009. Antichrist: A Work of Genius or the Sickest Film in the History of Cinema? https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jul/16/antichrist-lars-von-trier-feminism.
Claxton, Susanne. 2017. Heidegger’s Gods: An Ecofeminist Perspective. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Heidegger, Martin. 1966. Discourse on Thinking. Trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row.
———. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row.
———. 2002. The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus. Trans. Ted Sadler. London: Continuum.
———. 2004. What Is Called Thinking? Trans. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper and Row.
Patai, Raphael. 1964. Lilith. The Journal of American Folklore 77 (306): 295–314.
Thomson, Iain. 2011. Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Claxton, S. (2019). Art and Myth: Beyond Binaries. In: Haro, J., Koch, W. (eds) The Films of Lars von Trier and Philosophy. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24918-2_5
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