ARTAUD, ROUCH, AND

THE CINEMA OF CRUELTY

PAUL STOLLER

Imagine the following scene. We are seated in the filmtheater of the Musee de l'Homme. It is 1954, and a selectaudience of African and European intellectuals has beenassembled to see a film screening. Marcel Griaule is thereas is Germaine Dieterlen, Paulin Vierya, Alioune Sar andLuc de Heusch. Jean Rouch, who is in the projectionbooth, beams onto the screen the initial frames of LesMaitres Fous. Rouch begins to speak, but soon senses arising tension in the theater. As the reel winds down, theuncompromising scenes of Les Maitres Fous make people inthe audience squirm in their seats. Rouch asks his selectaudience for their reaction to the film.

Marcel Griaule says that the film is a travesty; he tellsRouch to destroy it. In rare agreement with Griaule, PaulinVierya also suggests that the film be destroyed. There isonly one encouraging reaction to Les Maitres Fous, that ofLucde Heusch.1

This reaction clearly wounded Jean Rouch. Should hedestroy this film? In filming Les Maitres Fous Rouch'sintentions were far from racist; he wanted to demonstratehowSonghay people in the colonial Gold Coast possessedknowledge and practices "not yet known to us." Just as inone of his earlier films, Les Magiciens de Wanzerbe1(1947),in which a sorcerer defies common sense expectations byvomiting and then swallowing a small metal chain of power,so in Les Maitres Fous, Rouch wanted to document theunthinkable — that men and women possessed by theHauka spirits, the spirits of French and British colonialism,can handle fire and dip their hands into boiling cauldronsof sauce without burning themselves. Always the provoca-teur, Rouch wanted to challenge his audiences to think newthoughts about Africa and Africans. Could these people ofAfrica possess knowledge "notyet known to us," a veritable

challenge to racist European conceptions of Africa's placein the history of science?

Perhaps Rouch's intent in Les Maitres Fous was naive.The brutal images overpower the film's subtle philosophi-cal themes. After other screenings to selected audiences inFrance, Rouch decided on a limited distribution — to arttheaters and film festivals.

Rouch was troubled by such criticism, for his priorpractices and commitments were clearly anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist. Critics have suggestedthat the controversy surrounding Les Maitres Fous com-pelled Rouch to make films, especially his films of "ethno-fiction," that more directly confronted European racismand colonialism. Such a view may well be correct, for afterLes Maitres Fous Rouch mad e a seri es of films that portrayedthe political and cultural perniciousness of European eth-nocentrism and colonialism in the 1950s. But Rouch'spolitical films are not simply the result of his reaction tostinging criticism; they also embody, in my view, a cin-ematic extension of Artaud's notion of the theater ofcruelty. In a cinema of cruelty the filmmaker's goal is notto recount per se, but to present an array of unsettlingimages that seek to transform the audience psychologicallyand politically. In the remainder of this essay I first discussthe Artaudian theories of the cinema and theater andspeculate about the contours of a cinema of cruelty. I thenuse those contours to analyze four of Rouch's more politi-cally and philosophically conscious films (Jaguar (1953-66), Mot, Un Noir (1957), La Pyramide Humaine (1959),and PetitaPetit(\969). I conclude with a discussion of thecontemporary philosophical and political importance ofRouch's cinema — of cruelty.

50 Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 Visual Anthropology Review

ARTAUD AND THE CINEMA

Throughout his life Artaud (1896-1948) suffered fromlong bouts of incoherence — the result of schizophreniaand drug addictions. Despite these difficulties, Artaudbroke into the theater as an actor in 1921. Between 1921and 1924 he joined the experimental repertory company ofCharles Dullin for whom he acted and designed sets andcostumes. He also acted with Georges and LudmillaPitoefswho produced plays by Blok, Shaw, Pirondello, Capek, andMolnar. During this period, Artaud also began to writeplays, essays, poems, manifestoes, and film scenarios. In1925 he joined Andre* Breton and other Surrealists contrib-uting essays to the review, The Surrealist Revolution. Be-tween 1926 and 1929, he, Roger Vitrac and Robert Aronfounded the Theatre Alfred Jarry, which briefly became acenter of the avant-garde stage in France. After three yearsof meticulous planning in the early 1930s, Artaud openedhis shortlived Theatre of Cruelty. The failure of thisexperiment did not dampen Artaud's creative spirit, forArtaud traveled widely and continued to write plays, essaysand manifestoes. In 1938 Artaud's influential book ofessays, The Theatre and its Double, was published. Criticshailed it as an important work. This recognition, however,did not exorcise Artaud's existential demons. He spentmuch of the last part of his life in asylums and died in 1948(Bermel 1977: 113-19).

Once in Paris Artaud was quickly drawn to the magicof the cinema, the subject of many of his early essays,especially during his tenure as director of the Bureau deRecherches Surrealistes. Like Robert Desnos, Artaud pennedmany film scenarios (only one was ever produced). Hewrote scenarios not to sell his ideas to producers, but toexplore his thoughts about the relationship between filmsand dreams (Kunezli 1987; Williams 1981). Like otherSurrealists, Artaud found an affinity between dreams andthe cinema, and his analyses of film, according to LindaWilliams (1981), probed this relationship with great sensi-tivity. Unlike Robert Desnos who unproblematically ac-cepted a link between the experience of dreams and film,Artaud focused upon how film signifies.

In his writings on film Artaud's great enemy is lan-guage, for it is language's arbitrary connection of things(referents) to sequences of sound that stifles the humanimagination. "What Artaud wanted was a language thatwould not only express, but also — impossibly — be— the

very flesh and blood of his thought" (Williams 1981: 20).Artaud saw film as a possible means of escaping the perils oflinguistic signification. Williams goes on to suggest a linkbetween Artaud's cinematic theories and Christian Metz'snotion of the imaginary signifier.

The notion of the immediacy of film, of its ability tobypass the usual coded channels of language through avisual short circuit that act 'almost intuitively on thebrain,' is Artaud's attempt to rediscover what he termsthe primitive arrangement of things... For the filmimage, unlike an accumulation of words on the page oran enactment of these words in a theater, cannot bepointed to as a thing that is actually there. In otherwords, the film (as Christian Metz has shown, but asthe Surrealists had already intuited) is an imaginarysignifier... Briefly, the term refers to the paradoxicalfact that, although film is the most perceptual of all thearts and even though its signifier (the play of light andshadow on the screen representing objects of the realworld) gives a powerful impression of reality, thisimpression is only an illusion. (1981:21-22)

As Artaud recognized, human beings are lulled into accept-ing the reality of the images in dreams and films; they"misrecognize," following the terminology of Lacan andWilliams, the illusion of the image. As a result the scenariosof Artaud and Desnos attempted to construct films thatwould deconstruct our fundamental relationship to theimage. In this way, film could be a means of unveiling thefundamental structure of the unconscious thereby liberat-ing it from the tyranny of language.2

ARTAUD AND THE THEATER OF CRUELTY

By the time of the publication of Andre Breton's SecondSurrealist Manifesto (1929), Artaud had become less enam-ored of the cinema and its revolutionary possibilities."Movies in their turn, murdering us with second-handreproductions which, filtered through machines, cannotunite with our sensibility, have maintained us for ten yearsin an ineffectual torpor, in which all of our faculties appearto be foundering" (Artaud 1958: 84).

Perhaps Artaud realized that the seductive qualities ofthe cinema can also create a kind of anesthetized state thatpromotes inactivity (see Buck-Morss, nd.). Artaud mayhave recognized that the cinema's immediacy was not

PAUL STOLLER, WHO IS CURRENTLY NEH RESIDENT SCHOLAR AT THE SCHOOL FOR AMERICAN RESEARCH IN SANTA FE, NEW

MEXICO, IS PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY. HIS TWO MOST RECENT BOOKS ARE THE TASTE OF

ETHNOGRAPHIC THINGS: THE SENSES INANTHROPOLOGY {\9%9) AND THE CINEMATIC GRIOT. THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF JEAN ROUCH

(1992).

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 51

immediate enough for his revolutionary program of socialtransformation.

In time Artaud turned more and more of his attentionsto the theater, specifically to his Theater of Cruelty. Con-sidering the impact that Artaud's writings have had on thetheory and practice of theater in the Twentieth Century, itis ironic that his great dramatic experiment closed only twoweeks after it opened in June of 1935- Like other aspects ofArtaud's voluminous work, his writings on the Theater ofCruelty are fragments, jagged pieces of puzzle that neverform a coherent whole.

Artaud's early experience in the Parisian theater disil-lusioned him. He reviled so-called masterpieces. "One ofthe reasons for the asphyxiating atmosphere in which welive without possible escape or remedy... is our respect forwhat has been written, formulated, or painted, what hasbeen given form" (Artaud 1958: 74). In fact, Artaud feltthat the literary staidness of the cerebral arts was sociallyunhealthy.

Masterpieces of the past are good for the past: they arenot good for us. We have the right to say what has beensaid and even what has not been said in a way thatbelongs to us, a way that is immediate and direct,corresponding to present modes of feeling, and under-standable to everyone. (Ibid.: 74)

For Artaud, the Theater of Cruelty was the solution tosocial asphyxiation, for it constituted aspace of transforma-tion in which people could be reunited with their life forces,with the poetry that lies beyond the poetic text.3 Morespecifically, the Theater of Cruelty

...means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first ofall. And on the level of performance, it is not thecruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking ateach other's bodies, carving up our personal anato-mies... but the much more terrible and necessarycruelty which things can exercise against us. We arenot free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. Andthe theater has been created to teach us that first of all.(Ibid.: 79)In some respects Artaud yearned for the participatory

theater of yore which foregrounded transformative spec-tacle. According to Artaud, that idea of theater had longbeen lost. He traced this loss to Shakespeare and Racine andthe advent of psychological theater, which separates theaudience from the immediacy of "violent" activity. Theadvent of the cinema compounded this loss.

It is clear from Artaud's comments about myth, spec-tacle and "theatrical violence" that his vision for the Theaterof Cruelty was inspired by pre-theatrical rituals in whichpowerful symbols were employed for therapeutic ends. Inhis first manifesto on the Theater of Cruelty (1933), Artaud

wrote:But by an altogether Oriental means of expression, thisobjective and concrete language of the theater canfascinate and ensnare the organs. It flows into thesensibility. Abandoning Occidental uses of speech, itturns words into incantation. It extends the voice. Itutilizes the vibrations and qualities of voice. It wildlytramples rhythms underfoot. It pile-drives sounds. Itseeks to exalt, to benumb, to charm, to arrest thesensibility. It liberates a new lyricism of gesture which,by its precipitation or its amplitude in the air, ends bysurpassing the lyricism of words. It ultimately breaksaway from the intellectual subjugation of language, byconveying the sense of a new and deeper intellectualitywhich hides itself beneath gestures and signs, raised tothe dignity of particular exorcisms. (Ibid.: 91)

Although Artaud disassociated himself from the Surrealistsin the late 1920s, the influence of Surrealism twists its waythrough his writing: the suspicion of logic, language andrationality; the use of the arts to liberate the power ofhuman vitality from the repressed unconscious; the promo-tion of social revolution; the juxtaposition of "primitive"and "civilized" imagery to create transformative poetry (seeBreton 1929;Lippard 1970;Balakian 1986; Clifford 1988;andRichman 1990).

Artaud's writings on the Theater of Cruelty also evokespirit possession rituals. Albert Bermel, an Artaud critic,suggests that the rites associated with the Corybantes, anearly Greek secret society, are quite similar to those pro-posed for the Theater of Cruelty. Through music anddance the Corybantes initiates were whipped into a frenzy,a crazed state that was expiated through purification rituals,"an experience not dissimilar in kind to the one Artaudseems to have had in mind" (Bermel 1977:40).

Bermel is not the only scholar to suggest links betweenritual and theater. Gilbert Rouget (1980) argues thatclassical Greek theater evolved from the Corybantes, whichhe calls a possession cult. Other French scholars haveproposed links among possession, poetry and theater(Schaeffner 1965;Leiris 1958;Gibbal 1988). TheArtaudianscenario outlined for the Theater of Cruelty also bearsstriking resemblance to many West African possessionrituals, including those practiced by the Songhay in theRepublic of Niger — the subjects of most of Jean Rouch'sfilms.4

ROUCH AND THE CINEMA OF CRUELTY

It is clear that Artaud believed that the Theater of Crueltycould not be transferred from stage to screen. Although he

52 Volumes Number 2 Fall 1992 Visual Anthropology Review

was fascinated by the cinema in his earlier writings, hisinterests gradually gravitated toward the more ritualizedframework of the theater. Given Artaud's dispositions, is acinema of cruelty possible? Like the sets and costumes ofArtaud's shortlived Theater of Cruelty, the images of thegreat Surrealist films wage war against culturally condi-tioned perception. Films like Un chien andoulou (1929)and L'Age d'or (1930) play with generally recognized pat-terns of perception; namely, the illusion that that which ispatently unreal (the images of the cinema) is, in fact, real.Surrealist film, following the argument of Linda Williams(1981), exposes the illusion—some would say, delusion —of the perceptual processingofimaginary signifiers. Artaud'sscenarios, in fact, dwell on themes that expose the"misrecognition" of the cinematic image. In this sense,Surrealist film meets some of the criteria of Artaud's The-ater of Cruelty. But are these films transformative? Do theyalter behavior? Do they purify the spirit? Do they releasepent-up vitality?

Although the cinema can seduce us into a highlypersonalized but relatively inactive dreamlike states, itsculturally coded images can at the same time trigger anger,shame, sexual excitement, revulsion, and horror. Artaudwanted to transform his audiences by tapping their uncon-scious through the visceral presence of sound and image,flesh and blood. He wanted to revert to what AndreSchaeffner (1965) called the "pre-theater," a ritualizedarena of personal transformation, a project for a ritualizedstage.

Although Jean Rouch has concentrated his artisticefforts exclusively on the cinema, his path shares much withthat of Artaud. Like Artaud, he was very much influencedby Surrealism. In his various interviews, both publishedand broadcast, he often pays homage to the Surrealists.When Rouch witnessed his first possession ceremony amongthe Songhay of Niger in 1942, it evoked for him thewritings of Breton and the poems of Eluard (Echard andRouch 1988;Stoller 1992). Perhaps the vitality of Songhaypossession rituals, a virtual pre-theater—compelled Rouchto make "cruel" films. In some of his films, especially thosehe refers to as "ethno-fiction," Rouch pursues an Artaudianpath. Rouch always tells a story in his films, but thenarratives in these films are secondary to his philosophicalintent. In these films Rouch wants to transform his viewers.He wants to challenge their cultural assumptions. He wantsthe audience—still mostly European and North American— to confront its ethnocentrism, its repressed racism, itslatent primitivism.

Anyone who has been assailed by the brutal images ofLes Maitres Fous has experienced Rouch's cinema — ofCruelty. In Les Maitres Fous, "Rouch's path is correct not

only because he doesn't ignore colonialism, but becauseleaving constantly his own environs and exhibiting naturethrough the massive effects she produces elsewhere, it at notime allows the spectator to remain indifferent, but compelshim in someway if not to take a position, at least to change"(Bensmaia quoted in Predal 1982: 55). Rouch's Les MaitresFous evokes the meaning of decolonization: namely, thatEuropean decolonization must begin with individualdecolonization — the decolonization of a person's think-ing, the decolonization of a person's "self." Such an effectis clearly an element of a Cinema of Cruelty, a cinema thatuses humor as well as unsettling juxtapositions to jolt theaudience.

JAGUAR

Jaguans not an insufferably "cruel" film; rather, it is infusedwith what Italo Calvino once called the brilliance of "light-ness." I like to call Jaguar, " Tristes Tropiques, African style"— with a very significant twist. Like Tristes Tropiques 2ndother works in the picaresque tradition, Jaguar is a tale ofadventure, a story of initiation to the wonders of otherworlds and other peoples. The protagonists, Damore, unpetit bandit, Lam, aFulani shepherd, and Illo, a Niger Riverfisherman, learn a great deal from their adventures in thecolonial Gold Coast. The difference between TristesTropiques and Jaguar is an important one. We expectClaude Levi-Strauss to be enlightened by his voyage toBrazil. But do we expect the same for three young Nigeriensfrom Ayoru? Can Others embark on philosophical jour-neys of Enlightenment? In Jaguar, Rouch forces us toconfront a wide array of colonialist assumptions: that intheir "backwardness" all Africans are alike; that in their"backwardness" Africans have no sense of the wanderlust;that in their "backwardness" Africans do not extract wis-dom from their journeys. With great humor, Jaguar shat-ters our expectations. Along their journey to the colonialGold Coast, the Others (Damore, I^m and Illo) confronttheir own Others: the Gurmantche who file their teeth intosharp points and drink millet beer; the Somba who eat dogsand shun clothing. At the Somba market Damore' says toLam:

"Mais, il sont complement nus, mon vieux.""Completement," says Lam.

For Lam, Illo, and Damore' such a corporeal display isunthinkable. They have encountered the "primitive'sprimitive," thus affirming Montaigne's affirmation that"each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice;for indeed, it seems we have no other test of truth and reasonthan the example and pattern of opinions and customs of

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 53

the country we live in..." (1948: 152). Later in Jaguar,Damor^ becomes very "jaguar," (with it), Lam becomes asmall time entrepreneur (nyama izo — the children ofdisorder), and Illo toils as a laborer in the port of Accra. Atall junctures in the film, difference is underscored: distinc-tions are made between northerners and southerners, Chris-tians and Muslims, traditionalists and moderns. In Jaguar,Africa is not a continent of sameness; it is rather a land offinite distinctions, a space for the politics of difference.Commenting critically on KwameNkrumaand his cronies,Damore says:

"Us sont bien nourris, ceux-la." (These ones are wellnourished)

A political commentary of visionary proportions, for theleaders of newly independent Africa would become verywell nourished, indeed — fed by the political systems theycreated.

And so in Jaguar, Africa emerges from the shadows ofsameness and is cast into the swift cross-currents of politicalfragmentation. Rouch's protagonists, like Susan Sontag'sLevi-Strauss, are heros — adventurers in a heterogenousAfrica who confront their own primitives as well as thestormy politics of their epoch. As such, these wise andarticulate "Others" defy our expectations and make usponder our own categories of sameness and difference,civilized and primitive. In this way, Rouch uses Jaguar tocritically juxtapose Europe and Africa.

Like the Artaudian wanderer, Rouch's "fictional" wan-derers in Jaguar challenge the cultural assumptions ofviewers, forcing them to confront the centuries-old legacyof European ethnocentrism and racism. Jaguar makes uslaugh as it subverts the primitivist imagery of Africa. Trueto a cinema of cruel xy, Jaguar compels viewers to decolonizetheir thinking, their "selves."

Moi, UN Norn

To make Jaguar, Rouch employed his friends as actors.Although Damore, Lam, and Illo acted well in the film, theyhad never been migrants. While he was editing Jaguar,Rouch asked Oumarou Ganda to attend ascreening. Ganda,who badbeen a migrant in Abidjan, challenged Rouch tomake a film about real migrants like himself. Rouch tookup Ganda's challenge which resulted in Moi, un noir, one ofthe first films, ethnographic or otherwise, that depicted thepathos of life in changing Africa. In the film, we followGanda and his compatriots as they work as dockers inAbidjan's port. We see how hard they work, how little theyare paid, and how they are belittled as human beings. Wesee how work and life steal from them the last vestiges of

their dignity. In this space of deprivation and demoraliza-tion, we are touched by Oumarou Ganda's fantasies, ^ eare saddened by his disappointments. We are outraged byhis suffering. We hear his sad voice. In this film one of thesilent ones tells his sad tale. Oumarou Ganda's storyenables us to see how the discourse of colonialism andracism disintegrates the human spirit. Are not the dreamsof Oumarou Ganda the dreams of the oppressed — thehope against all hopes that someday..?

Like Jaguar, Moi, un Noir is a film that obliterates theboundaries between fact and fiction, documentary andstory, observation and participation, objectivity and sub-jectivity. Rouch calls Moi, un noir and Jaguar works of"ethno-fiction," works in which the "fiction" is based uponlongterm ethnographic research. In this way, both Jaguarand Moi.un Noir are biting critiques of the staid academi-cism that pervades the university in Europe and NorthAmerica. Imprisoned by eighteenth century intellectualistassumptions in a postcolonial epoch, the academy was andis ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of the changingworld. These films, which are also indictments of Europeanmodernity, remind us that in a world in which expectationsare continuously subverted, the sky, to paraphrase Artaud,can suddenly fall down on our heads. The intent of thesefilms is clearly political; through the subversion of "re-ceived" categories, they invite us, challenge us to confrontour own ugliness — an exercise in Artuadian "cruelty."

LA PYRAMIDE HUMAINE

Rouch's early critique of European modernity does not endwith Moi un Noir. As Rouch is fond of saying, "one filmgives birth to another." Moi, un Noir prompted Rouch tomake another film set in Abidjan — La Pyramide Humaine.In this film, the title of which is taken from one of PaulEluard's Surrealist poems, Rouch explores the relationsbetween French and African students at an Abidjan highschool. Here viewers observe the divergent lives of impov-erished African and affluent European students. Some ofthe African students hate the Europeans; some of theEuropean students are unabashedly racist. The studentsargue about colonialism and racism. The debate intensifieswhen a new female student from Paris begins to date anAfrican. This social act, which taps the fear of interracialsexuality, unleashes a torrent of emotion and prejudice onboth sides. While Moi, un Noirfocused upon the plight ofAfrican migratory workers, La Pyramide Humaine sets itssights on the sexuality of interracial relations in a colonialstate — a volatile topic in 1959- Not surprisingly, the filmwas banned in most of Francophone Africa. And yet, even

54 Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 Visual Anthropology Review

today, it speaks eloquently to issues of the repressed fear ofinterracial sex and of liberal duplicity and racism in Europeand North America.

La Pyramide Humaine is also very conscious of its ownconstruction. Rouch qua filmmaker appears in severalsequences of the film, using his presence to carefully weavea subplot through the text. The main story involves theconfrontation of two worlds, two sets of prejudices; it isabout how confrontation can be transformative. The sub-plot recounts how the making of the film transformed thelives of the actors. The subplot, then, subverts the speciousboundary between fact and fiction and shows how filmconstructs and transforms, how film is "cruel" in theArtaudian sense. Shot in color, this film is "cruel," indeed,for it impels viewers to acknowledge in black and white theirculturally conditioned sexual fears and fantasies.

PETIT A PETIT

"One film gives birth to another." Mot, un AW gave birthto La Pyramide Humaine, which gave birth to Rouch's mostfamous work, Chronique dun Ete", a film about Rouch's own"tribe," les Francais. In I960 how did the French deal withdifference — with Jews, Arabs, and Africans? The film,which was politically provocative, is considered a landmarkin the history of the cinema for two reasons: 1) it is amongthe first works filmed in synchronous sound; and 2) itlaunched the Nouvelle Vague in French cinema. In the1960s Rouch continued to film in Africa. He completedThe Lion Hunters in 1964, and began to film the magnifi-cent Sigui ceremonies of the Dogon of Mali in 1967.5 Buthe wanted to make yet another film in France and decidedon Jaguar II, which he called Petit a Petit, after the corpora-tion formed by Damore, Lam and Illo in the original Jaguar.

The scenario of Petit a Petitfocuses upon two entrepre-neurs, Damore and Lam, who want to build a luxury hotelin Niamey, Niger, which would cater exclusively to Europe-ans. But Damore and Lam know nothing about Europeans.Like a good anthropologist, Damore decides to travel toParis to study the lifeways of the French tribe: to observe andmeasure them. How else would they know how to designthe hotel's interiors? How else would they know how toorder sofas and beds of the correct dimensions? And soDamore1 flies to Paris, where he embarks on his study. ButLam becomes quite so worried about the impact of Franceon Damore's being, he decides to join his friend in Paris.With great humor, Rouch tells the story of Damore andLam's Parisian experience. As in Jaguar, Damore1 and Lamturn the tables of our expectations. Europeans are usuallythe filmmakers, not the filmed. Europeans are usually the

observers, not the observed.Among the most memorable scenes occurs on the Place

Trocadero, between La Musee de l'Homme and theCinematheque Francaise, a space filled with academicsignificance. It is winter and Damore, posing as a doctoralstudent, approaches several French people armed withanthropometric calipers.

"Excuse me sir," he says to an elderly gentleman, "I amstudent from Africa working on my thesis at the university.Would you permit me to measure you?" With thegentleman's willing consent, Damore measures his skull,his neck, his shoulders, his chest and waist. Damore thenapproaches a young woman, and again makes his request.He measures her dimensions and then asks:

"Excusez-moi, mademoiselle, mais est-ceque je pourraisvoir vos dents?"

The woman opens her mouth."Ah oui. Tres bien. Merci, mademoiselle."

There is much, much more to this film, but I describe thisscene to underscore Rouch's ongoing contempt of theacademy's conservatism, its uneasiness with innovation andchange. Throughout his films Rouch casts aspersions onwhat he calls "academic imperialism." Such a theme blazesa "cruel" trail for scholars who believe in the superiority ofReason.

And so, Rouch's films of ethno-fiction cut to the fleshand blood of European colonialist being. His films compelus to reflect upon our latent racism, our repressed sexuality,the taken-for-granted assumptions intellectual heritage. Inso doing, Rouch's films expose the centrality of powerrelations to our dreams, thoughts and actions. Suchexposure is a key ingredient to a cinema of cruelty.

THE POET'S PATH

During my research on Rouch's oeuvre I wond ered why thephilosophical aspects of his work — embodied in filmicimages — are underappreciated in Europe and unknownin North America. Why is it that until recently contempo-rary critics in European and North America rarely, if ever,considered the pioneering work of Rouch? The answer, Ithink, is that most critics, philosophers and anthropologistsare still part of the academy that Rouch so skillfully re-proaches for its conservatism. Academics are still bound toreason, to words, to plain style. Scholars seek the discursiveand eschew the figurative. Images are transformed intoinscriptions that form a coherent discourse. Poetry andwhat Merleau-Ponty called "the indirect language" are out-of-academic bounds.

More than a generation ago Jean Rouch understood

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 55

the transformative power of poetry. Many of his films arepoetic in the sense recently invoked by Trinh T. Minh-ha(1992:86)

For the nature of poetry is to offer meaning in such away that it can never end with what is said or shown,destabilizing thereby the speaking subject and expos-ing the fiction of all rationalization... So to avoidmerely falling into this pervasive world of the stereo-typed and the cliched, filmmaking has all to gain whenconceived as a performance that engages as well asquestions (itsown)language... However... poeticprac-tice can be'difficult' to a number of viewers, because inmainstream films and media our ability to play withmeanings other than the literal ones that pervade ourvisual and aural environments is rarely solicited.

Literalness is the curse of the academy, and yet the strongpoetic undercurrents of a few films and ethnographiessomehow survive.

Because of their literalness, academics are often the lastpeople to stumble upon innovation. Such is the case inanthropology — visual or otherwise. One of my philoso-pher friends admitted that professional philosophers are 50years behind the times. For inspiration, he advised me, lookto the arts. Indeed, for most of us the epistemology of plainstyle means that photography and film are, to use JakeHomiak's phrase, "images on the edge of the text" (1991).In Rouch's case, this means that his films are most oftenjudged in terms of technological innovation rather thanphilosophical lyricism.

A generation before the "experimental moment" inanthropology, scores of filmmakers, artists and poets evokedmany of the themes that define the condition ofpostmodernity: the pathos of social fragmentation, therecognition of the impact of expanding global economies,the cultural construction of racism, the legacy of academicimperialism, the quandaries of self-referentiality, the re-wards of implicated participation, the acknowledgment ofheteroglossia, the permeability of categorical boundaries(fact/fiction//objectivity/subjectivity). In one of his manyinterviews Rouch said:

For me, as an ethnographer and filmmaker, there isalmost no boundary between documentary film andfilms of fiction. The cinema, the art of the double, isalready a transition from the real world to the imagi-nary world, and ethnography, the science of thoughtsystems of others, is a permanent crossing point fromone conceptual universe to another; acrobatic gymnas-tics where losing one's footing is the least of the risks.(Rouch 1978)

Perhaps the way to the future of anthropology is to follow

Rouch's "cruel" path and confront the sometimes inspir-ing, sometimes fearsome world of incertitude.

The sky is lower than we think. Who knows when itwill crash down on our heads?

NOTES

1 This scenario is reproduced from Echard and Rouch(1988).2 Williams' semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis ofSurrealist film is an important contribution. Contrary tothe uncritical analysis of the Surrealism and the cinema thatpreceded her work, Williams suggests that Surrealist films"are about the signifying processes of desire in the humansubject." Her careful frame by frame analysis of Un chienandalou is revelatory and demonstrates how Surrealistfilmmakers used formal cinematic devices to promote theirrevolutionary ends.3 Tyler (1987) makes a similar point in his analysis ofPaul Friedrich's poetry, some 50 years after the initialpublication of Artaud's manifesto.4 Influenced by Aristotle's writings on trance in ThePolitics, a group of French scholars consider possession as akind of cultural theater (see Schaeffner 1965, Leiris 1958,and Rouget 1980). This hypothesis is a highly attractiveone, but my own suspicion is that while spirit possession isdoubtless a dramatic form, one cannot reduce such acomplex phenomenon to "drama" or "theater" (SeeStoller1989)- The great majority of Rouch's films are aboutSonghay possession ceremonies, a ritual that has fascinatedhim since 1942 when he witnessed his first ceremony inGangell, Niger.5 For a detailed analysis of Rouch's Sigui films and theirrelation to the Dogon origin myth, see Stoller 1992.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Artaud, Antonin1958 The Theatre and Its Double. (Mary Caroline Richards,

trans). New York: Grove Press.1956 Antonin Artaud: Oeuvres Completes. Paris: GallimardBalakian, Anna1986 Surrealism. Chicago: University of Chicago PressBermel, Albert1977 Artaud's Theatre of Cruelly. New York: Taplinger

Publishing Company.Breton, Andre*1929 Manifestes du Surrealisme. Paris: Kra.

56 Volume 8 Number 2 Fall 1992 Visual Anthropology Review

Buck-Morss, Susann.d. The Cinema Screen as Prothesis of Perception: A

Historical Account. A paper read at the AnnualMeetings oftheAmerican Anthropological Association,Chicago, Illinois, November 17-21, 1991.

Clifford, James1988 The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press.Echard, Nicole and Jean Rouch1988 Entretien avec Jean Rouch. A Voix Nu. Entretien

d'hier a Aujourd'hui. Ten-hour discussion broadcastin July of 1988 on France Culture.

Gibbal, Jean-Marie1988 Les GertiesduFleuve. Paris: PressesdelaRenaissance.Homiak, John1991 Images on the edge of the Text. Forthcoming in

Wide Angle.Kuenzli, Rudolph (ed.)1987 Dada andSurrealist Film. New York: Willis, Locker

and Owens.Leiris, Michel1980 LaPossession etsesAspects Theatraux Chez Us Ethiopiens

de Gondar. Paris: Le Sycomore.Levi-Strauss, Claude1955 Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Plon.Lippard, Lucy (ed.)1970 Surrealists on Art. Englewoods Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice

Hall.Montaigne, Michel de (Donald Frame, trans.)1948 The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Palo Alto,CA:

Stanford University Press.Predal, Rene (ed)1982 Jean Rouch, un griot Gallois. Special issue of

CinemAction 17. Paris: HarmattanRichman, Michelle1990 Anthropology and Modernism in France: From

Durkheim to the College de Sociologie. In Modernist

Anthropology, ed. Mark Manganaro, 183-215-Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rouget, Gilbert1980 La Musique et la Trance. Paris: Gallimard.Schaeffner, Andre*1965 Rituel et Pre-Theatre. In Histoire des Spectacles, 21-

54. Paris: GallimardStoller, Paul1989 Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession

Among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

1992 The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography ofjean Rouch.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Trinh, T. Minh-ha and Nancy Chen1992 Speaking Nearby: A Conversation with Trinh T.

Minh-ha. Visual Anthropology Review 8(1): 82-91.Tyler, Stephen1987 The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric

in the Post-Modern World. Madison: University ofWisconsin Press.

FlLMOGRAPHY

Bufiuel, Luis and Salvador Dalf1929 Un chien andalou. ParisBufiuel, Luis1931 L'age d'or. ParisRouch, Jean1949 LesMagiciens de Wanzerbe. Paris: Comite des Films

Ethnographiques (CFE).1955 Les Maitres Fous. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.1957 Moi, un Noir. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.1959 La Pyramide Humaine. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.1960 Chronique dun £ti. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.1964 The Lion Hunters. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.1967 Jaguar. Paris: Films de la Pleiade.

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