Ingmar Bergman's middle years – from the late 1950s to the early 1970s – were a period of great creativity, but also of irreparable destruction on a private and artistic level. This paper takes stock of a film immediately preceding his great international breakthrough (with Persona in 1966), namely The Silence (1962). Rendering, in Bergman's own words, "God's silence," the film also thematises absence, wordlessness, and the void in at least three additional senses: showing a child's entry into the Symbolic Order, The Silence demonstrates the absence that is constitutive of this passage; giving an account of a specific relation between a master and his apprentice, the film shows a concrete example of the wordlessness at the core of their communication. Moreover, as an attempt to seek out the paternal figure, the film demonstrates the necessary void at the core of the new order – a community governed by silent praise.
2018
"Presencing the writer: immanence and ecstatic communion in A Clockwork Orange and Naked." In Looking at the Sun: new writings in modern Personalism, pp. 141–156. Edited by Anna Castriota and Simon Smith. Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press. External Peer-reviewedLink
The present article reconnects two of Ingmar Bergman's films from the mid '60s to notions of anxiety, alienation and creativity. Shame, a film set in a village ravaged by war, provides the viewer with three senses of transversality: (1) as a crossing of the ego's boundaries; (2) as a sexual and political transgression; and (3) as an intervention of an abstract power. To Søren Kierkegaard, despair and anguish are key emotions to eclipse the sense of powerlessness brought about by depression and alienation. In Hour of the Wolf, the main character follows his calling to pursue his art at the expense of his romantic relationship. This summoning has an ambiguous character, since we cannot fully decide if it functions as a liberating or demonic force.
Articles in Inscriptions
2019
"The boundary of love: art, paranoia and deadlock." Inscriptions 2, no. 1. Inscriptions Peer-reviewedDOI
Answering to the claim that our contemporary era has lost a connection to the domain of the sacred René Girard held that, contra Sigmund Freud, the myth of Oedipus was not primarily a story of patricide, but a hidden narrative of victimisation and expulsion. As an arch-example of mob logic the myth and Sophocles' play serve to gloss over a brutal and ritualistic sacrifice by claiming that it was the victim who acted in violation of the law; according to Girard the charges against king Oedipus were retroactively invented to justify the initial act of expulsion. In the street-art of AFK we encounter images that activate feelings of persecution and exile, uncovering a possible path to regain our connection to the holy.
In murals depicting prominent figures as martyrs AFK has reconnected the emerging form of street-art to art's ability to maintain our relation to the sacred. Cannily drawing on ambiguities concerning victimhood, pleasure, and mob logic AFK has made headlines, and have reignited debates concerning the place of street-art in the public domain and in the space of arts. Inscriptions is happy to present a series of public artworks by AFK in this issue.
"Hamsun's betrayals." In CSS Conference 2019: Scandinavian Languages and Literatures World Wide. Lund: Lund University. DOIPhilArchive
Knut Hamsun's late life was characterised by a sequence of betrayals, most notably his support for the Nazi occupation of Norway. This paper investigates how Hamsun utilised these acts of treachery to mount a unique defence against forensic psychiatrist Gabriel Langfeldt. Langfeldt's diagnosis of "permanently impaired mental faculties" served as a provocation that spurred Hamsun to write his final work, On Overgrown Paths. The paper argues that this book represents a "final betrayal" – an act where Hamsun disobeyed the conventions of autobiography to remain committed to his artistic calling. Utilising Kierkegaardian ethics, the author frames Hamsun's defiance as a form of resistance that ultimately led to personal reconciliation through art and love.
2019
With Stefan Chazbijewicz. "Stefan Chazbijewicz." Inscriptions 2, no. 1. DOI