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The melancholy condition of realism
Author(s) -
Jukić Tatjana
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12311
Subject(s) - melancholia , realism , modernity , critical realism (philosophy of perception) , psychoanalysis , movie theater , philosophy , aesthetics , art , literature , epistemology , psychology , social psychology , mood
Drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud (1891, 1917) and Carl Schmitt (1956), I show how twentieth‐century accounts of melancholia, in psychoanalysis and in political theory, entail a presentation of the world that dovetails with nineteenth‐century realism. This suggests that realism is fundamentally a response to the melancholy condition that underlies modernity, and could be analyzed as such; it also suggests that realism persists in the twentieth century as a peculiar configuration of melancholia. Erwin Panofsky’s film theory (1936) exemplifies this position. Based staunchly in realism, Panofsky’s film theory is consistent with his comprehensive early exploration of melancholia (1923); no less than the rationale of cinema is thus shown to be moored in the melancholy condition of realism. It is a juncture explored by Lars von Trier in Melancholia (2011): while studiously arranging his cinematic study of melancholia around realism, Trier implies that film’s likely neglect of realism in the twenty‐first century amounts to cinematic suicide and, consequently, to the end of the modern world.