Unbearable Freedoms: the Real of Sexual Difference from Rossellini to Fassbinder

Abstract

Having established the centrality of drive for a theory of cinema that may wish to concern itself with Lacanian ethics, what is left to do is verify the impact of any cinematic attempt to throw a bridge towards “the hazy shores of freedom”. It may come as a surprise that the majority of the directors mentioned below are seen as exemplary bearers of a strong Christian sensitivity towards the question of liberation, especially in its connection with masochism. The Christian legacy they represent, however, is based on what can only appear as the shocking assumption that the place of God is empty. More precisely, at the heart of the cinema I discuss in relation to the problem of freedom there is the revelation that God, to say it with Lacan, is unconscious.