ABSTRACT

This study considers the political significance of Alain Resnais’s Je t’aime, je t’aime through a comparison of the structural determinations imposed on subjectivity by the time machine and the analogous determinations imposed by the mechanism of cinema and the structures of capitalism, demonstrated by the film’s medium and content. To participate in the time travel experiments, Resnais’s character must be both conscious and passive. Like in film spectatorship or life under capitalism, the time-traveling subject is fully aware, but this experience is determined by an exterior structure and its machinations. The exteriorized mechanism of Resnais’s malfunctioning time machine thus permits an outside view of its structural determinations of time that I compare to those imposed by cinema and capitalism, which emerge as time machines of their own. I analyze this using Althusser’s theorization of the conceptual mechanisms that reproduce real objects (time, cinema, capitalism) as thought-concretes. I then suggest, through Rancière’s recent work, that aesthetic experience inside of these time machines presents the potential to recuperate one’s subjectivity from their grasp. To conclude, I contrast Resnais’s character’s solitary experience in the time machine with the collective aesthetic experience of film that is already inclined toward political consequence.

摘要

本研究通过比较时间机器强加给主体性的结构决定与电影机制和资本主义结构强加的类似决定，来思考阿兰·雷奈的《我是我》的政治意义，证明了这一点电影的媒介和内容。要参与时间旅行实验，雷奈的角色必须是有意识的和被动的。就像电影观赏或资本主义下的生活一样，时间旅行的主体是完全有意识的，但这种体验是由外部结构及其诡计决定的。雷奈的故障时间机器的外化机制因此允许外部我将其时间结构决定的观点与电影和资本主义强加的那些作为它们自己的时间机器进行比较。我使用阿尔都塞关于将真实对象（时间、电影、资本主义）再现为思想具体的概念机制的理论来分析这一点。然后，我通过朗西埃最近的作品提出，这些时间机器内部的审美体验提供了从它们的掌握中恢复个人主体性的潜力。最后，我将雷奈的角色在时间机器中的孤独体验与已经倾向于政治后果的电影的集体审美体验进行对比。