the suspended aesthetic: slavoj Žižek on eastern european film

ROBERT BIRD

THE SUSPENDED AESTHETIC: SLAVOJ ZIZEK

ON EASTERN EUROPEAN FILM

ABSTRACT. Slavoj Zizek’s writings on Krzysztof Kieslowski and AndrejTarkovskij represent direct challenges to the Central and Eastern Europeantradition of spiritual art and to dominant aesthetic concepts as such. Herefuses to separate the solemn films of Kieslowski and Tarkovskij frompopular culture and stresses their import as ethical statements by theirdirectors. Despite this ethical emphasis, Zizek makes an important contri-bution to philosophical aesthetics. He implicitly defines art as a suspensionof reality which reveals time in its fragility and potentiality. Defining Zizek’saesthetics in terms of suspension helps to explain his partiality for Kies-lowski and Tarkovskij and bears comparison to the Russian tradition ofphilosophical aesthetics, in particular Aleksej Losev and Alexander Bakshy.

KEY WORDS: aesthetics, aesthetic distance, Aleksej Losev, AlexanderBakshy, Andrej Tarkovskij, film theory, Krzysztof Kieslowski, narrativesuspense, Nikolaj Berdjaev, Slavoj Zizek, suspension

INTRODUCTION

Slavoj Zizek has devoted an important and impressive body ofwork to major filmmakers of Central and Eastern Europe,especially Krzysztof Kieslowski and Andrej Tarkovskij. Zizek’swritings on these two major artists of the cinema have brokennew ground in the interpretation of their works. In particular,Zizek gleefully disregards the almost religious reverence inwhich Kieslowski and Tarkovskij are often held, particularly intheir native countries. Zizek’s readings of Kieslowski andTarkovskij are also instructive with regards to Zizek’s intel-lectual position vis-a-vis Central and Eastern European culture,particularly towards an important tradition that focuses onlinks between aesthetics and religion. Zizek is basically hostiletowards this ‘‘mystical’’ tradition in East European aesthetics.In fact, I argue that he is distrustful of aesthetics as such, unlessit is subordinated quite firmly to ethical concerns. In his

Studies in East European Thought 56: 357–382, 2004.� 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

pan-ethicism and rejection of an autonomous aesthetic realmZizek bears an unexpected resemblance to the Russian philos-opher of freedom Nikolaj Berdjaev. However, as in the case ofBerdjaev, Zizek’s challenge to critical platitudes can serve toinvigorate ideas of religious aesthetics in Eastern Europe, forexample in the work of Aleksej Losev. In particular, afteranalyzing Zizek’s stimulating responses to Tarkovskij andKieslowski, I focus on the concept of suspension, which cap-tures the dialectic of aesthetic distance and ideological/religiousengagement both in Zizek’s aesthetics and in the spiritual art ofEastern Europe.

THE CONTRARIAN

Slavoj Zizek not only avoids being identified in terms ofgeography, at times he even flaunts his exclusion from Centraland East European traditions. One of his most provocativestands is his advocacy of the thought and deeds of V. I. Lenin,whom Zizek promotes as a palliative to the post-communistmalaise of the radical Left in the West. Zizek is aware of thealmost universal rejection of Lenin by those who have experi-enced developed socialism first-hand, but he is openly derisiveof the anti-Leninists’ ‘‘common sense,’’ which he identifies withStalinist totalitarianism. He writes: ‘‘What we should stick to isthe madness (in the strict Kierkegaardian sense) of this Leninistutopia – and, if anything, Stalinism stands for a return to therealistic ‘common sense’’’ (RAG: 5). Seeing Lenin in thismanner as a ‘‘holy fool’’ or a Kierkegaardian ‘‘knight of faith’’fantasizes away the brutality of the man’s rule and its conse-quences. A similar intellectual provocation is his repeated claimthat the censorship in Hollywood under the Hayes office was‘‘much stronger than in the Soviet Union’’ (TIS: 253). In thisview Zizek seems closest to western revisionist historians whoseek to dispel the very idea of the Soviet Union as a totalitarianstate. The revisionists have underscored the complex negotia-tions between various interest groups within Soviet societywhile underplaying the influence of its punitive coercion. Thecomparison between Hollywood and the Soviet film industry,

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while apt and intriguing, is fraught with many layers of com-plications which Zizek intentionally ignores in order simply toreverse the accustomed view of things, true to his status asintellectual agent provocateur.

Such a studied irritation of post-communist sores is com-plemented by Zizek’s tendency to denigrate the non-communisttraditions of Eastern Europe, most notably those which linkreligion and art. For example, Zizek flaunts his conflation ofKieslowski’s and Tarkovskij’s serious art with Hollywood pulp,passing lightly from discussion of Kieslowski’s Decalogue to apopular American film starring Bruce Willis. Zizek likewiseaccuses Tarkovskij of following the Hollywood method ofadapting novels to the screen, specifically in the case of Stani-slaw Lem’s Solaris (TIS: 234). In his unceremonious ridicule ofEastern European self-importance Zizek allies himself withpost-modernists in Eastern Europe, such as the Russian writerVladimir Sorokin. Zizek approvingly quotes Sorokin’s send-upof Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, although he also non-chalantlymistakes the name of Solzhenitsyn’s famous interlocutorAleksandr Tvardovsky, as if to underscore his lack of concernwith Russian writers’ earnest struggle for freedom of expressionunder the Soviet regime (OB: 60–61).1

It is therefore somewhat of a surprise that Zizek would de-vote such attention to two ‘‘mystics’’ among east Europeandirectors whom, in Zizek’s own words, many film theorists‘‘abhor’’ as ‘‘New Age obscurantists’’ (FRT: 101). The super-natural and even religious themes in the films of both Kies-lowski and Tarkovskij might seem inappropriate for Zizek’sbrand of psychoanalytic critique, which requires ‘‘subjects,’’not spirits. In fact, however, Zizek’s book The Fright of RealTears: Krzyzstof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory isonly ostensibly about Krzysztof Kieslowski and Andrej Tar-kovskij in their own right. In actuality the book is framed as amanifesto against film historians David Bordwell and NoelCarroll, who in 1996 heralded the demise of psychoanalytic filmtheory with a collection of essays entitled Post-Theory. Zizek’sparadoxical appeal to Kieslowski and Tarkovskij in his defenseof radical ‘‘theory’’ reflects his strategy of joining battle onenemy territory. In The Fright of Real Tears Zizek is battling

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both ‘‘post-theory’’ and ‘‘post-communism’’ on the territorywhich seems least conducive to both Lacanian theory andLeninist communism: the implicitly anti-communist, explicitlyspiritual art of Eastern Europe. Zizek combines the crisis oftheory and the crisis of the Left by addressing theory-resistantfilmmakers from Marx-resistant countries.

It is worth asking how Zizek imagines the conflict. His taskat hand is the demonstration of the universal (even metaphys-ical) legitimacy of Lacan and the materialism of EasternEuropean film. On the one hand, Zizek constructs his variousopponents as so many kinds of obscurantists. The post-theorypartisans are called ‘‘cognitivists and popularisers of the hardsciences’’ with whom the ‘‘exponents of post-modern/decon-structivist cultural studies’’ are locked in a ‘‘global battle forintellectual hegemony and visibility’’ (FRT: 2). In fact, forZizek this battle is no more than shadow-boxing: the opponentsof postmodern theory are a mere ‘‘parody’’ of themselves,insofar as they fail to comprehend their enemy (FRT: 4-5).Similarly, ‘‘‘post-secular’ obscurantist readings’’ of Kieslowskiand Tarkovskij do not make any claim on Zizek’s attention,Tarkovskij’s theoretical pronouncements are dismissed as‘‘cheap religious obscurantism’’ and Kieslowski’s screenwriterKrzysztof Piesiewicz is condemned as hopelessly ‘‘religious-apolitical’’ (TIS: 242; FRT: 189). Both the filmmakers them-selves and non-Lacanian film theorists are thus cast togetherinto the common purgatory reserved for retrograde enemies offree thought.

On the other hand, Zizek constructs his own partisans as acuriously disembodied and denatured population, a ubiquitousyet unspecified ‘‘we,’’ which is defined only by its commonappeal to ‘‘our standard ideological tradition’’ (FRT: 126, 102).This ‘‘we’’ seems ultimately to denote well-read post-modernleftists with a deep knowledge of American pop culture.2 Thisdematerialized collectivity contradicts the definition of univer-sality to which Zizek often appeals. He views universality asrooted necessarily in the authenticity of a ‘‘concrete socialconstellation’’: ‘‘the fundamental lesson of dialectics is thatuniversality as such emerges, is articulated ‘for itself,’ onlywithin a set of particular conditions’’ (FRT: 8). Zizek seems

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reluctant to investigate the particularity (indeed, peculiarity) ofthe conditions within which he himself has appeared and whichhave formed his view of Tarkovskij and Kieslowski amongother things. However, by Zizek’s own dialectical logic, histheoretical method could rise to universality only if rooted inthe specific conditions of his own appearance. In fact, Zizek’sresponse to Tarkovskij and Kieslowski betrays his own root-edness in the specific conditions of late-socialist Central andEastern Europe. My task in part is to reconstruct Zizek’s aes-thetics by exploiting his connections to various aspects ofEastern European art and theory.

PAN-ETHICISM

The elusive identity of Zizek’s authorial voice is no mere trifle,since his argument often rests on the authority of this denuded‘‘we.’’ Moreover, these subjective judgments are taken up in anirresistible sparkle of dialectic. Within the bounds of his sub-ject-matter Zizek has developed an impregnable theoreticallanguage capable of absorbing anything from Hegel to Hitch-cock, from psychoanalysis to terrorism. Zizek’s universe ap-pears as a gigantic symbolic construct that is fully transparentto thought, despite the pervasion of the ‘‘Real’’ and of variousunnameable ‘‘Things,’’ which can always be molded intofamiliar Lacanian nightmares. Engaging with this language onits own terms is a losing proposition, for in the Hegelianmovement of his thought, any negation of Zizek’s positionbecomes its own self-negation, implicit in his original stanceand sublimated in his next step.

Given the allure of his pan-logical method, it is important torecognize that its application is based precisely on the sub-jective, ethical judgment of Zizek’s ‘‘we.’’ In my view, Zizek’span-logicism is actually a variant of pan-ethicism, which re-duces all communicative situations to a basic judgment of rightand wrong, or of ‘‘subjecthood’’ and ‘‘obscurantism’’ in Zizek’sparlance. The main criterion of ethical judgment is the auton-omy of the subject. For Zizek, as for Kant, ‘‘direct access to thenoumenal realm would deprive us of the very spontaneity


which forms the kernel of transcendental freedom’’ (FRT:153).3 Zizek recalls a school friend who had found himselfunable to write an essay on good deeds, claiming that he hadnever performed any; for Zizek, the refusal to make up a gooddeed for a passing grade raised the boy from the level of simplemorality to that of ethical action. This is ‘‘the ethical dimensionproper in the strict Kantian sense,’’ where free actors choosethe right action without any coercion, whether by worldly or byheavenly powers (FRT: 136–137). As he says in his discussionof Heinrich von Kleist, man is ‘‘a free being who, due to hisvery freedom, feels the unbearable pressure that attracts andties him to the earth where he ultimately does not belong’’(FRT: 153). It is this tension between dependence and freedomthat defines Zizek’s underlying sense of things and informs hissuspicion of any truths which are proffered on institutionalauthority, whether of the government or the church.

From Zizek’s concern with the free subject as an ethical actorthere follows quite directly a near rejection of the aesthetic as anautonomous set of values. The artwork becomes an ethical ac-tion performed by its author.4 In the practical sense, Zizekprefers ‘‘not to talk about [Kieslowski’s] work, but to refer to hiswork in order to accomplish the work of theory. In its veryruthless ‘use’ of its artistic pretext, such a procedure is muchmore faithful to the interpreted work than any superficial re-spect for the work’s unfathomable autonomy’’ (FRT: 9). ForZizek, art is above all ethical action which operates most hon-estly and effectively in the same realms of Imaginary, Symbolic,and Real, as does all human life. In this he is the latest repre-sentative of a Marxist tradition which has repeatedly tried toreconcile economic materialism and cultural humanism, in or-der to theorize how autonomous art might at the same timeexhibit social commitment and achieve social engagement.

At this level of abstraction, if one brackets all of theobvious differences in background and context, Zizek can beprofitably compared to the Russian philosopher NikolajBerdjaev (1874–1948). Like Zizek, Berdjaev augments a basi-cally Kantian epistemology with an enthusiastic embrace ofSchelling’s metaphysics of freedom which leads him to a po-sition that has commonly been termed existential and

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personalist. For Berdjaev, freedom meant the rejection of any‘‘objectification’’ of spirit, whether as dogma, tradition, orartwork. The human subject, centered upon the quest forfreedom, must project himself as a relentless act which neversettles into objecthood. This creative act is essentially partic-ipation in the Abgrund (abyss) of God as absolute freedom, aterm which Berdjaev takes from Schelling and Jakob Boehme.Berdjaev’s inner creativity resists communication in anyobjective form. A curious testimony to Berdjaev’s immunity toaesthetic expression (particularly the cinema, which he at-tended regularly), and the aesthetically uncontaminated natureof his thought, emerges from his following confession from1934: ‘‘Everywhere – in the woods, in the cinema – I continuethe inner work connected to my creative project [tvorchestvo].This work never ceases within me, and often the most sig-nificant thoughts come to me utterly independent of theexternal conditions’’ (Berdjaeva, 2002: 37, cf. 41).5 Signifi-cantly, Berdjaev feels he has nothing to learn from the cinema,only from his own ratiocinations at the cinema.

A case in point is Berdjaev’s major work of aesthetics Smysltvorchestva (The Meaning of Creativity, 1916), which basicallyrates the creativity of ethical action higher than that of art:

Culture in its most profound essence and in its religious meaning is a greatfailure. Philosophy and science are failures in the creative cognition of truth;art and literature are failures in the creation of beauty; family and sexual lifeare failures in the creation of love; morality and law are failures in thecreative power of man over nature [. . .] Culture achieves not knowledge, butsymbols of knowledge, not beauty, but symbols of beauty, not love, butsymbols of love, not the union of people, but symbols of union, not powerover nature, but symbols of power. (Berdjaev, 1994a: 299)

Berdjaev merges Marxist and Gnostic ideals of liberation into avision of disalienated creativity in freedom, i.e., in the realm ofthe absolute. Berdjaev’s philosophical language pales next toZizek’s; he was fundamentally hostile to fine conceptual dis-tinctions such as Lacan provides. Yet the underlying pattern issimilar: an ethical disgust at inauthentic existence results in therejection of aesthetic expression as mere simulacrum capable ofrevealing only its own lack of authenticity.


For Zizek, as for Berdjaev, all symbolic action must beunderstood against the abyss which it papers over, within ‘‘theradical discontinuity between the organic continuity of ‘life’and the symbolic universe’’ (EYS: 53). In his reading ofSchelling, Zizek focuses on the moment of decision when Godacted as subject to counter the subjectless primordial abyss;‘‘creation,’’ the ‘‘pronunciation of the Word in God,’’ the‘‘founding gesture of consciousness’’ and ‘‘decision’’ is anopening and an illumination of spiritual light (TIR: 32-33). Thisdecision inheres in the subject as the unconscious basis of theSelf, ‘‘the highest deed of my self-positing’’ (TIR: 34). Thusachieving selfhood is always predicated on an unconsciousdecision in favor of freedom: ‘‘In this precise sense, freedom isatemporal: a flash of eternity in time [. . .] Schelling’s effort hereis to think freedom as the atemporal abyss of identity [. . .] andas the predicate of a free Subject who decides in time’’ (TIR:35). However the temporal subject’s atemporal origin meansthat human life is ‘‘marked by a maximum gap between pos-sibility and actuality’’ (TIR: 57): ‘‘his terrestrial life is a spec-tacle of horrors; on the other hand, the true world, the world ofspirits, appears to him as a spectral, unattainable Beyond’’(TIR: 58). Zizek identifies this split as endemic to the materi-alist subject: ‘‘if Freedom is to actualize itself – that is, to be-come the predicate of a free Entity – it has to ‘contract’ theopaque Ground’’ (TIR: 72). This is where, for Zizek, Schellingconverges with Lacan: ‘‘the symbolic order can never achieve itsfull completion and close its circle, since its very constitutioninvolves a point at which Meaning stumbles upon its boundaryand suspends itself in Enjoy-Meant [Jouis-sense]’’ (TIR: 75). Inthis manner the potential for being can never be realized, butalways remains in suspension.

Something similar to this cosmology underlies Zizek’s basicethical stance, usually expressed in terms of the Lacaniansubject. The ethical subject must abhor imaginary fantasies andseek to base his symbolic identity upon the unnameable Real onwhich he is founded. However, he must also recognize that anyother person is likewise indeterminate in his core being and thathe has a choice of perceiving the other according to his ownfantasies or according to the symbolic identity which the other

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projects: ‘‘since I cannot take hold of the Other, of the abysswhich forms the elusive centre of her being, directly, I can onlytake her at her Word’’ (TIR: 71). Zizek recognizes that thisethical injunction bears a distinct resemblance to Kant’s cate-gorical imperative and the complementary aesthetic judgment:

the concrete formulation of a determinate ethical obligation has the structureof an aesthetic judgment, that is, of a judgment by means of which, instead ofapplying a universal category to a particular object or subsuming this objectunder an already-given universal determination, I as it were invent its uni-versal-necessary-obligatory dimension, and thereby elevate this particular-contingent object (act) to the dignity of the ethical Thing. (TIR: 169)

Zizek stresses that this reclamation of the categorical impera-tive does not posit some transcendent final instance:

In so far as we ‘‘reify’’ the moral law into an agency that exists ‘‘in itself’’and exerts its pressure upon us from without, we reduce its status to that of arepresentation (of a voice and/or gaze) [. . .] In clear contrast, the moral Lawqua pure transcendence is no longer an entity that exists independently of itsrelationship to us; it is nothing but its relationship to us (to the moral sub-ject). [. . .] that which appears as the Law ‘‘in itself,’’ existing independentlyof the subject, is effectively a subjective phantasmagoria, a spectral non-entity that merely materializes, gives body to, the non-purity of the subject’sethical stance. (TIR: 172)

Each ethical act is a confrontation with the abyss of freedom(i.e., the Real), and as such is a symbolic suicide (EYS: 44).Indeed, the definition of the act as the subject’s withdrawal fromreality, which Zizek calls a ‘‘suspension of constituted reality,’’is the point at which Zizek’s psychoanalytic approach convergeswith German idealism. Aesthetic representations are like anyethical act in that they ‘‘suspend’’ constituted reality and rees-tablish its relation to the Real, projecting the deed within asymbolic fiction (EYS: 52). For Zizek, the contradiction be-tween mental construct and stubborn reality can only be over-come in pragmatic action, just as Zizek seeks to overcome the riftbetween theory and art in ‘‘the work of theory’’ (FRT: 9).Based on the parallel with Berdjaev, I would venture to argue

that Zizek’s denial of the aesthetic is not merely a function of


his adherence to Lacan, but bears deep connections to thetraditions of Central and Eastern European thought. Thiskinship is especially palpable in the creative appropriation ofSchelling’s early metaphysics combined with a broad suspicionof the aesthetic. This means that Zizek’s unlikely encounterwith Kieslowski and Tarkovskij occurs on a fertile ground ofphilosophical and aesthetic debate which makes them idealsparring partners. That Zizek is nonetheless able to makeimportant aesthetic judgments demonstrates that he is a farmore subtle thinker than Berdjaev. Lacan’s distinction betweenthe Imaginary and the Symbolic provides Zizek with two dis-tinct methods of coping with the intrusion of the Real intohuman existence. Unlike the ‘‘false representation’’ of theImaginary realm, the Symbolic provides a means of authenticrepresentation. For example, Kieslowski began his film careerwith documentaries in order to demonstrate the falsity of offi-cial propaganda, but ‘‘then he noticed that, when you let go offalse representation and directly approach reality, you lose realityitself, so he abandoned documentaries and moved into fiction’’(FRT: 121; Zizek’s italics). It follows that the achievement ofauthentic (i.e., symbolic) representation, which avoids hidingthe protuberances of the Real, is dependent upon establishingthe appropriate distance from which to represent reality. Yetthis is not aesthetic, but ethical distance; Zizek commendsKieslowski’s move to fiction precisely as ‘‘a shift from moralityto ethics’’ (FRT: 137). Here again the aesthetic conditions of artdissolve in ethical judgments; Zizek is not interested in judginga film as beautiful, touching, cathartic, etc., but only as moralor ethical.A key difference between Zizek and Berdjaev can be illus-

trated by their respective responses to Heidegger’s concept oftime. Berdjaev commented on Sein und Zeit that Heidegger‘‘sees the ontological basis of Dasein, i.e., of the existencethrown into the world, or of objectification in my terminology,as temporality’’ (Berdjaev, 1994: 284). However, for Berdjaev,it is wrong not to differentiate between time as care and time ascreativity, or between time as fear of the future and hope for thefuture. Indeed, only the latter interpretation of time as creativeliberation is, for Berdjaev, authentic insofar as it overcomes

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objectified time and reasserts lost eternity. Berdjaev embracesAugustine’s vision of an eternal present formed out of thetemporal shards of eternity (op.cit.: 284–285). ‘‘If, according toHeidegger, care temporalizes being, then creativity may liberatebeing from the power of time [. . .] Creative flight itself escapestime and de-temporalizes existence’’ (op.cit.: 287). For Zizek,by contrast, temporality remains, as for Heidegger, the mostobtrusive form of resistance thrust up by the Real against ourattempts to ‘‘gain access to consistent reality’’ (FRT: 100), andis therefore a guarantor of authenticity in symbolic communi-cation. Zizek links time as the Real to the figure of earth inHeidegger’s aesthetic treatise Der Ursprung des Kunstwerks;earth/time is what juts out of the rift that the work of art opensup in the world. In many respects, this aesthetic appears relatedto the Russian Formalists’ concept of defamiliarization orBrecht’s Verfremdung: art is seen as a jarring, discomfortingexperience that causes the subject to question both the fictionpresented by art and the fictions with which he endows his ownlife. Ironic distance allows for ideological engagement. In thismanner the equation between the Lacanian Real and Heideg-ger’s earth provides artworks with a specific function in Zizek’suniverse, but is this function not merely that of a signpost intothe temporal void, or rather as a running illustration of Laca-nian metaphysics? Is there nothing that art, and only art, canactually reveal to viewers that is beyond the ken of theory?I will argue that art performs a vital function for Zizek as the

revelation of potentiality which calls for ethical action. Whilethis potentiality can never be actualized, neither can it ever beexhausted. Art succeeds in suspending the very potential oftime in a way which renders it measurable by the viewingsubject and applicable to his real life.

CINEMA AS GEISTIGE KORPERLICHKEIT

Zizek’s analyses of Kieslowski and Tarkovskij are filled withinsightful observations, some witty, some quite momentous,almost all couched in Lacanian terminology. A good example ishis discussion of Kieslowski’s Decalogue 6, which concerns a


young voyeur who enters into direct contact with the object ofhis obsession with disastrous consequences. When the womanconfronts the boy at his job in the post office, Kieslowski‘‘elevates a common phenomenon like the glass reflection of ahuman face into the momentous apparition of the Real forwhich there is no place in our experience of reality’’ (TIS: 67).However, Zizek’s satisfaction with this Lacanian conclusioncauses him to stop his interpretation at this point and compareKieslowski’s film to Sixth Sense, a Hollywood film starringBruce Willis. Is this an intentionally provocative denigration ofKieslowski to the level of Hollywood, or is it the natural effectof Zizek’s homogenizing analytical gaze?For Zizek, the artist’s intention is always crystal clear, even

when the film form is not, and this authorial intention becomesa matter for ethical judgment outside of any formal consider-ations. Of Tarkovskij’s Solaris, for example, Zizek contem-plates two readings, a Jungian one and a correct one. InJungian terms, the ‘‘point’’ of the planet Solaris is ‘‘simply [the]projection, materialization of the (male) subject’s disavowedinner impetuses’’ (TIS: 234). But for Zizek a spiritual reality ofthis kind is merely an imaginary fantasy that feeds on thesubject’s own unacknowledged desires, which form animpregnable core of subjectivity. ‘‘In fact,’’ Zizek continues,‘‘what is much more crucial is that if this ‘projection’ is to takeplace, the impenetrable Other Thing must already be here – thetrue enigma is the presence of this Thing,’’ which Zizek definesas Lacan’s Real (TIS: 234). Even if the Jungian reading ismoral, it is incapable of rising to the ethical, which is the pre-serve of Lacanian theory. Furthermore, the form of the film, ofwhich he enthusiastically approves as ‘‘materialist theology’’(EYS: 103), is ultimately inconsequential with regards to thepreferred reading. Zizek gleans from an interview with Tar-kovskij that the director ‘‘obviously opts for the Jungianreading, according to which the external journey is merely theexternalization and/or projection of the inner initiating journeyinto the depth of one’s psyche’’ (TIS: 234). By contrast,according to Zizek, the ‘‘point’’ of the original novel byStanislaw Lem ‘‘is precisely that Solaris remains an impene-trable Other with no possible communication with us’’ (TIS:

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234). There is a grievous reduction involved in discussing awork based on its ‘‘point’’ as if it is something separable fromthe film form. Zizek’s analysis seems to assume some primor-dial narrative ‘‘Solaris’’ which yields a finite number of possibleinterpretations, from which artists effectively choose as if on anelection ballot. Since the ‘‘point’’ of the film narrative is equallycommunicable via a three-hour film or a two-page magazineinterview, Zizek denies the aesthetic work any autonomousvalue whatsoever. The ‘‘crucial dilemma’’ of Tarkovskij’s filmsis not an aesthetic question at all, but rather one of ascertainingthe author’s standpoint; Zizek asks, ‘‘is there a distance be-tween his [Tarkovskij’s] ideological project (of sustainingmeaning, of generating new spirituality, through an act ofmeaningless sacrifice) and his cinematic materialism?’’ (TIS:254). Likewise, Zizek is prepared to blame the screenwriterZbigniew Piesiewicz ‘‘for the alleged religious-apolitical turn ofKieslowski’s late work’’ (FRT: 189, n.1) as long as Kieslowskihimself demonstrates sufficient distance from his own films’religious discourse.Zizek’s ideological bioses do not preclude his readings of the

films from opening up completely new aspects of the works inquestion. Zizek’s Lacanian framework provides a neat way toconceptualize Kieslowski’s move from documentary filmmak-ing to increasingly elaborate fictions. For Zizek, Kieslowski’sinitial cinema verite proved incapable of capturing the gaps andrifts which puncture phenomenal reality and bear witness to thepervasive Real in the formless beyond; Zizek remarks that thedirector’s ‘‘fidelity to the Real [. . .] compelled Kieslowski toabandon documentary realism’’ (FRT: 71). In order to ‘‘su-ture’’ the gap in reality, Kieslowski began to create ‘‘spectralfantasies’’ which frankly bear the mark of the Real: ‘‘the onlyway to depict people beneath their protective mask of playing is,paradoxically, to make them directly play a role, i.e., to moveinto fiction’’ (FRT: 75). However Kieslowski’s evolution as anartist can be explained just as well without Lacan in termsof the conditions of communist Poland. Kieslowski himselfdefended his use of documentary film by referring to theyawning gap between social reality and the media image ofit in a communist society. The discrepancy between ‘‘official’’


and ‘‘real’’ reality was itself commentary on shortcomings ofsociety and its self-representation. Eventually, however, herealized that documentary film-making is severely limited bothin terms of the subject matter available to it and in the sincerityit can capture on film. Frank engagement with social realityrequired that the camera be removed from reality at thedistance of fiction.In this manner, what to Zizek seems an inexorable conflict

between ‘‘spiritualist mysticism’’ and ‘‘materialism’’ is actuallyexplicable as a dialectic between ideological engagement andaesthetic distanciation, between ethics and art. Zizek allows fortwo possible interpretations of the abundant coincidences andfatalistic accidents in Kieslowski’s films: they either indicatethe director’s faith in some higher reality, or else his tacitacknowledgement of an unnarratable core within the narrative.Of course, Zizek is quite concerned to demonstrate the prece-dence of the latter interpretation, arguing that, ‘‘The verynotion of alternative realities is also grounded in the excess ofdocumentary material which resists incorporation into a singlenarrative: it can only be organized as the texture of multiplenarrative lines’’ (FRT: 77). Zizek’s materialist reading ofKieslowski brazenly ignores any supra-logical significance, butit also issues a steep challenge to those who would seek deepermeaning in the film. In fact, this is the challenge of Kieslowski’sfilms themselves, which communicate an aura of mystery instories of the everyday: whence the mystery? It is a paradox offilm that the most materialist filmmakers are also the mostreligious, but it is a paradox that bears great value for aesthetictheories that would seek to make room for the supernatural.Zizek’s unwillingness to countenance positive spiritual

meaning limits his sensitivity to much of Tarkovskij’s cinematicworld, but it also frees him from the hieratic cliches that oftenaccompany discussions of Tarkouskij’s films. This is certainlythe case in Zizek’s reading of the problematic crucifixion scenein Andrei Rublev, when a summer landscape suddenly andinexplicably changes to a wintertime enactment of Christ’s viadolorosa by actors in traditional Russian garb. The stylizationof the scene after Bruegel’s winter landscapes has often beentaken as evidence of its earnestness. Zizek, however, following

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Antoine de Baecque, highlights the scene’s overwrought andheavy-handed presentation; he mercilessly brands the scene as‘‘mockery and satire’’ of Tarkovskij’s own ‘‘most sacred gestureof supreme sacrifice’’ (TIS: 242; de Baecque, 1989: 98). Thesame freshness pervades Zizek’s interpretation of Tarkovskij’suse of sound (TIS: 255) or the director’s notorious long take,which is usually taken as a sign of the scene’s especial solemnityand gravity. Zizek discusses a scene in Nostalgia where the fe-male protagonist Eugenia erupts into a sudden hysterics‘‘against the hero’s tired indifference, but also, in a way, againstthe calm indifference of the static long shot itself, which doesnot let itself be disturbed by her outburst’’ (TIS: 233). Zizek’sirreverent observations liberate the viewer from pious presup-positions and draw attention to the play of detached gaze andembodied materiality in Tarkovskij’s world.Zizek often fails to heed the cues of his own insightful

observations. In the case of Eugenia’s hysterics, for example,despite his intuition of a more subtle interplay between cameraand character, Zizek reduces the entire scene to Tarkovskij’s‘‘barely concealed disgust for a provocative woman’’ (TIS:233). Here, as so often is the case, Zizek unabashedly readsTarkovskij’s authorial position into the film based on extra-neous evidence. However Zizek also allows for a more positive(i.e., ‘‘materialist’’) interpretation based on the density of timewithin Tarkovskij’s cinematic world. Zizek notes that thetemporal ‘‘anamorphosis’’ in his films makes Tarkovskij per-haps the most illustrative example of the time-image, whichGilles Deleuze identified as the defining characteristic of con-temporary film, and of Tarkovskij in particular (TIS: 249;Deleuze, 1985: 60–61). Unlike Deleuze, however, Zizek fails tonote any of Tarkovskij’s own thoughts on the nature of time inhis aesthetic writings. Zizek refuses to attribute the materialtexture of Tarkovskij’s cinematic aesthetic to the directorhimself, concluding that, ‘‘to use Althusserian terms, there is adimension in which Tarkovskij’s cinematic texture undermineshis own explicit ideological project, or at least introduces adistance towards it, renders visible its inherent impossibilityand failure’’ (TIS: 242). A more sensitive reading of Tarkov-skij’s theoretical musings might suggest that he was not blind to


the formal discontinuities and impossibilities of his cinematicworld, but Zizek is unwilling to countenance Tarkovskij exceptas a symptom of some general crisis.6

Another case of Zizek failing to utilize the full potential ofhis own observations concerns Tarkovskij’s Stalker. Com-paring Tarkovskij’s film to the original novel by the brothersStrugatsky Piknik na obochine (Roadside Picnic), Zizek ac-cuses Tarkovskij of an ‘‘idealist mystification’’ insofar as ‘‘heshrinks from confronting this radical Otherness of the mean-ingless Thing, reducing and retranslating the encounter withthe Thing to the ‘inner journey’ towards one’s Truth’’ (TIS:238). Yet Zizek finds it possible to ‘‘redeem’’ Tarkovskij’s filmby insisting on a materialist reading of it, refusing to attributesupernatural origin to the Zone, which instead appears as thevoid of ‘‘phantasmatic space’’ (TIS: 238). Zizek presents theZone as basically indeterminate, which makes the film itselfindeterminate as well, an exercise in positing an explicitlymeaningless sacrifice or podvig. Zizek’s reversal of the usualinterpretation of the film shifts attention from its ostensibleideology, which can be surmised only from Tarkovskij’swritings and interviews, to the actual film as a material arti-fact and to the viewer’s experience before it. The Stalker’scommitment to the Zone and its dubious secret parallels theviewer’s own commitment to the film, which attains meaningonly as a physical experience of attending to a matter of greatobscurity and opacity. The film attains meaning for the viewerprecisely because it refuses to foist meaning upon him; insteadit brings the viewer to the very edge of meaninglessness andextorts from him a decisive act of faith or dereliction. How-ever Zizek fails to develop his observations here, and else-where he shows himself to be comfortable imposing adeterminate meaning on the Zone as the ‘‘post-industrialwasteland’’ that is the ‘‘obverse of the incessant capitalistdrive to produce’’: ‘‘The ultimate irony of history is that itwas a director from the Communist East who displayed thegreatest sensitivity to this obverse of the drive to produce andconsume’’ (TFA: 41). Of course, it is possible to view thisaspect of Tarkovskij’s film as a commentary on the funda-mental identity of capitalist and Marxist versions of

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materialism, both of which promote ideals of economic con-sumption and prove incapable of preserving the spiritualtextures of life. However Zizek’s allegiance to Marx closes offthe interpretation of the film and prevents it from revealinganything authentic about Marx and communist society.Zizek’s analyses still succeed in elucidating Tarkovskij’s aes-

thetics. Tarkovskij’s long tracking shots and attentive explo-ration of material texture exemplify the double movement ofdistance and engagement which Zizek identifies also in Kies-lowski. However, while he recognizes the immediacy of Tar-kovskij’s cinematic texture, Zizek refuses to acknowledge theimmediacy of its effect on the viewer: ‘‘What [. . .] redeemsTarkovsky is his cinematic materialism, the direct physicalimpact of the texture of his films: this texture renders a stanceof Gelassenheit, of pacified disengagement that suspends thevery urgency of any kind of quest’’ (TIS: 248-249). In fact, Iwould argue that this distancing effect translates Tarkovskij’smaterial immediacy into spiritual immediacy and ethical action;the viewer leaves the cinema not with the intention of copyingthe Stalker’s unlikely quest ‘‘in real life,’’ rather with a renewedbelief in the potential for meaning in reality, and with the moresignificant imperative of explicating life as meaningful. As inKieslowski, removal to the distance of fiction vouchsafes ameaningful engagement with reality.

THE SUSPENDED GAZE

Throughout these passages, indeed throughout Zizek’s entirecorpus of writings, one notes constant reference to ‘‘suspen-sion’’ or ‘‘suspense,’’ which however remains undefined as aterm.7 However, as I have suggested above, the idea of thefictional ‘‘suspension of reality’’ and its subsequent recalibra-tion vis-a-vis the Real is the fulcrum of Zizek’s ethics andaesthetics. I would like to suggest that Tarkovskij andKieslowski are important to Zizek insofar as their works areamong the most radical suspensions of reality in contemporarycinema, and that this concept of suspension (very different fromthe narrative suspense typified by Hitchcock) provides a key to


an overall aesthetic framework shared by these film-makers andtheir latter-day Slovenian exegete.Zizek’s concept of suspension originates in Hegelian Aufhe-

bung: ‘‘the fundamental gesture of a dialectical analysis is pre-cisely a step back from content to form, i.e., a suspension ofcontent which renders visible anew form as such’’ (EYS: 133).This dialectic of suspension and vision must be constantly re-peated at each level of knowledge. Symbolization is a suspen-sion that imposes a preliminary form on inexpressible content,but this form itself must be suspended to prevent it beingmistaken for the content. The ethical act, for Zizek, is ‘‘themoment when the subject who is its bearer suspends the net-work of symbolic fictions which serve as a support to his dailylife and confronts again the radical negativity on which they arefounded’’ (EYS: 53). This ethical suspension is achievable onlyin ritual or art. In his analysis of A River Runs through It, Zizekidentifies two levels of reality: the inner decomposition of BradPitt’s character, and his redemptive fishing trips with his fatherand brother. These trips signify ‘‘a kind of sacred family ritual,a time when the threats of the life outside family are tempo-rarily suspended’’ (EYS: 197). However this suspension isconstantly undermined. What provides the film with aestheticefficacy is ‘‘tension between the two levels [. . .] the gap thatseparates the explicit narrative line from the diffused threat-ening message delivered between the lines of the story’’ (EYS:197). This gap is the source of suspense in the classical,Hitchcockian sense, as the viewer’s tense anticipation of thedenouement. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the two levels correspondto two temporal planes, which culminate in a single 360� shot(which bears a clear resemblance to the 360 � shot aroundKris’s cabin in Tarkovskij’s Solaris): ‘‘It is this multiple reso-nance of surfaces that generates the specific density, the ‘depth’of the film’s texture’’ (EYS: 199).The definition of aesthetic suspense as the ‘‘multiple resonance

of surfaces’’ resulting in a dense physical texture approaches thepeculiar suspension of Kieslowski’s and Tarkovskij’s films,which combine engaged attention with a detached gaze. InKieslowski, as Zizek notes, each film presents multiple possibleoutcomes (EYS: 206). As discussed above, Kieslowski originally

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showed the contingency of life via cinema verite, but later aban-doned this approach as a documentary fallacy: real, lived timecan be shown only with great aesthetic care, which requiresreduction to a consummate narrative and removal into the fic-tional realm. For Zizek this distanciation from documentary tofictionwas a shift frommorality to ethics (FRT: 137). Zizek notesthat each film in Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy ends withtears caused by ‘‘the painful act of gaining the proper distancetowards (social) reality after the shock which exposed her/himnaked to reality’s impact’’ (FRT: 177). Whereas the real tears ofthe documentary films bring the viewer into dangerous proximityto raw pain, the fictional tears affirm the ‘‘regained distance’’ thatallows for happiness (FRT: 177–178).Tarkovskij’s aesthetics of suspense eschews narrative interest

almost entirely and creates a dense cinematic texture mainly byencouraging a peculiar kind of attention on the part of theviewer. Tarkovskij emphasized using the synaesthetic potentialof cinema to reveal the temporal texture of life. Andrei Rublev isostensibly a biographical (or hagiographical) study of its pro-tagonist, the most famous medieval Russian icon-painter. Thetwo most suspenseful sequences, however, feature two othercharacters who appear nowhere else in the film and whoseadventures serve almost as bookends to Rublev’s less eventfulstory. The first sequence concerns Efim, a medieval aeronautwho eludes a crowd of superstitious folk, clambers into a crudeballoon at the top of a church tower, and lurches vertiginouslyalong a river before crashing to earth, never to be mentionedagain. The second sequence occurs at the very culmination ofthe film, at a time when Rublev has renounced icon-painting andis bound by an oath of silence. The viewer meets Boriska, animpudent and indolent youth who bluffs his way into the con-fidence of the Grand Duke and improvises an ultimatelysuccessful bell. Soaring weightlessly, the camera adopts thebird’s-eye perspective of a creative spirit in full flight, driven byinner necessity and guided by irrational faith, but in both casesthe camera returns to the earth, which imposes itself forcefullyonto the lives of the characters and onto the screen. At firstglance, the two scenes appear to be mere allegories for AndrejRublev himself, who rose above a brutal and crude age in the


contemplation and communication of transcendent calm andbeauty.8

Taking this allegorical approach a step further, however, onesees that these isolated scenes of creative heroism reflect whatTarkovskij called ‘‘the equivocal position of cinema between artand production’’ (Tarkovskij, 2002: 281; 1986: 164). In bothcases the creative project is homespun medieval technology,which uses crude pulleys and a cruel expenditure of humanlabor to achieve a primal human aspiration – to fly, to ring abell. There occurs a literal suspension of objects – one of whichcomes crashing down, one of which stays gloriously aloft andbecomes a thing of resonant beauty. So Tarkovskij, in AndreiRublev, employs the raw technology of cinematography tocapture the inner life of his hero within his own sense of time.The tension in the film arises less from the anticipation of itsnarrative denouement than from the very precariousness of thefilmmaker’s own suspension of everyday reality against theheavy pull of earth. The resulting heaviness of time meritsZizek’s particular approval:

Pervading Tarkovsky’s films is the heavy gravity of the earth, which seemsto exert its pressure on time itself, generating an effect of temporal ana-morphosis, extending the dragging of time well beyond what we perceive asjustified by the requirements of narrative movement (one should confer hereon the term ‘‘earth’’ all the resonance it acquired in late Heidegger). [. . .]This time of the Real is neither the symbolic time of the diegetic space northe time of the reality of our (spectator’s) viewing the film. [. . .] This inertinsistence of time as Real, rendered pragmatically in Tarkovsky’s famousslow five-minute tracking or crane shots, is what makes Tarkovsky sointeresting for a materialist reading; without this inert texture, he would justbe another Russian religious obscurantist. (TIS: 249; FRT: 102).

Thus, as Zizek indicates, Tarkovskij’s cinematic materialism isindeed linked directly to his ideological project of sustainingmeaning, insofar as both involve immersion into living time,understood as the obtrusive presence of the inconceivablewithin human existence. Both Tarkovskij’s spiritualist texts andhis materialist films therefore manifest a seemingly meaninglessand empty sacrifice, which justifies itself only as the breakingdown of comfortable fictions and the revelation of a potentialfor meaning in reality and of a potential for ethical action.

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In his analysis of Tarkovskij, Zizek is careful to acknowledgethe importance of Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the time-image,of which Tarkovskij’s films are ‘‘perhaps the clearest example’’(TIS: 249). Yet it is not immediately clear how well Zizek’saesthetics of defamiliarization sits with Deleuze’s Bergsonianaesthetics of attention. In a recent essay Jon Beasley-Murrayhas opposed Deleuze’s ‘‘time image’’ to Lacanian gaze theoryprecisely on the issue of distanciation. He claims that theaccentuation of ‘‘the distance between spectator and screen’’ ingaze theory contrasts with Deleuze’s definition of the time-image as the ‘‘unfolding of the image in the real time thatbecomes the lived time of thought and the body’’ (Beasley-Murray, 1997: 39). ‘‘Rather than entering into a relation ofdistance and synchronicity established between subject andscreen (understood in terms of fetishism, disavowal, and soon), what opens up is an ‘optical unconscious’ [. . .] in whichbodily sensation of time is prioritized over its narrative dis-junctive coding’’ (Beasley-Murray, 1997: 49). Zizek demon-strates that the dense temporal texture of Tarkovskij’s films isin fact due precisely to their complex distanciation fromeveryday reality, their suspension of both the symbolic andthe real in pure time. In Tarkovskij’s own words, he soughtto ‘‘immerse the viewer into [the heroine’s] state [and] brakethe instant of this state, accentuating it’’ (Tarkovskij, 2002:218; 1986: 110). The effect of this is that the various levels ofreality involved in watching a film interact in their commonsuspension. Tarkovskij complained about ‘‘montage’’ film-makers precisely because ‘‘they don’t let the film continuebeyond the borders of the screen, that is to say, they don’t letthe viewer plug his own experience into what he sees beforehim on celluloid’’ (Tarkovskij, 2002: 229; 1986: 118). Theviewer’s own life is another dimension that thickens theexperience of time on the screen.

I would therefore disagree with Zizek’s claim that in Tar-kovskij’s films ‘‘spiritual reconciliation is found not in elevationfrom the gravitational force of the earth but in a full surrenderto its inertia’’ (TIS: 233). The peculiar effect of Tarkovskij’saesthetic is precisely the interplay of elevation (distance) andgravity (immediacy), suspended together in (or as) the passage


of time. In this, Tarkovskij is fully in the tradition of Russianaesthetics. I have already noted the Formalists’ de-familiar-ization as one variety of aesthetic distance. In addition to thispurely cognitive category, however, one can cite AleksejLosev’s concept of detachment, by which he defines theexpressive realities of art and myth.9 Losev illustrates the dif-ference between aesthetic and mythic detachment by depictingdifferent attitudes towards a theatrical performance. Spectatorsof the performance as art do not react to the play as real events,but remain seated regardless of the needs or actions of theactors in their fictional roles. Art ‘‘removes us from ‘reality’ and‘interest’,’’ claims Losev (Losev, 2001: 85). Myth, by contrast,distinguishes itself from ‘‘normal reality’’ by manifesting‘‘something unexpected and almost miraculous’’ (op.cit., 86).The ‘‘mythic subject’’ believes in myth as ‘‘literal reality,’’rushing to the stage to participate in the spectacle (ibid.). Whilethe spectator of an artistic performance does not believe in thefactual nature of the representation, the mythic subject expe-riences myth as reality whose meaning is different than onewould usually expect. Losev defines these two distinct types ofdetachment as ‘‘detachment from the fact’’ (i.e., fictiveness) and‘‘detachment from the meaning, the idea of everyday andnormal life’’ (ibid.). ‘‘Myth takes the side of things that makessense of them and animates them, which makes them variouslydetached from everything that is excessively usual, prosaic andquotidian’’ (op.cit., 96). While Losev is contrasting myth andart, he ends up basically projecting mythic detachment as amodel for all cognition, since it alone is capable of elevatingexperience to understanding: ‘‘Real things are things that areunderstood in some way,’’ Losev writes (op.cit., 45). Appliedback to art, Losev’s cognitive model projects an ideal of en-gaged attention and detached interpretation on the part of theviewer, capable of both deepening the viewer’s participation inreality and broadening his apprehension of it. Tarkovskij’s artpursues a similar goal of drawing and fixing viewers’ attentionupon representations in suspended time in order to deepen theirexperience of lived time. Tarkovskij himself expressed this inalmost Heideggerian terms: ‘‘The goal of art is to prepare manfor death’’ (Tarkovskij, 2002: 141; 1986: 43).

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The gap between Losev’s theory of detachment and Tar-kovksy’s cinema of time is bridged somewhat by AlexanderBakshy, who came of age in symbolist Russia but became anEnglish-speaking theater and film critic. Bakshy’s fundamentalinsight was that aesthetic detachment was the condition sinequa non of art in the modern sense. In the introduction to hisbook Paths of the Modern Russian Stage, Bakshy wrote:

the phenomenon of art arises neither in the work itself, nor in the spectator,but just between them, in that line of contact and division, which is estab-lished by their reaction one upon the other. Stated in other words, thismeans that a detached observation of an object asserts its reality for thespectator, or, what is the same, brings out its form as an entity complete initself. But it is obvious that the object viewed must possess certain propertiesthat would enable it to assert itself against the spectator, and here thedistinction between a work of art and an ordinary object is made manifest inthe greater power with which the former realizes its particular ‘‘self’’ in themedium selected. (Bakshy, 1918: xiv-xv; Bakshy’s italics)

This insight led Bakshy to develop a highly original theory offilm as the frank presentation of fiction, rather than the simu-lative representation of reality. Bakshy postulates that thebracketing of the fiction qua fiction would allow the spectator tofocus fully on the object, to engage with its meaning. Any artisticwork or performance requires a suspension of the usual laws ofreality and a tacit acceptance of its autonomous integrity. Takentogether with Losev’s philosophical concept of detachment,Bakshy’s cinematic aesthetic suggests the broad contours of theaesthetic tradition within which Tarkovskij worked.

By encouraging viewing stances of increasing attentiveness,both Tarkovskij and Kieslowski eschewed simplistic ideologicalformulae in their fictional films and stressed instead the openpotential for meaning in reality. Their suspension of reality asfiction engages viewers’ attention less through narrativeuncertainty than through a more basic anxiety about mean-inglessness, what Zizek calls a ‘‘multiple resonance of surfaces.’’In Losev’s terms, this aesthetic distanciation can be distin-guished from mythical detachment precisely because it affirmsnot a particular meaning, hallowed by tradition and expli-cated by narrative, but the very possibility of meaning in a


dangerously empty world. In other terms common to Tarkov-skij and Zizek, this art reveals not the actualization of time inaction, but rather time itself as the potential for action.Ambiguous as it may seem in this provisional form, the conceptof suspension thus unites Zizek with his favored exemplars ofEastern European cinema. In addition, the similarities betweenZizek’s readings and the works of Bakshy and Losev indicatehow his insights might yield a fuller aesthetic theory, shiftinghis focus from ideological platitudes to the open dialectic be-tween ideological engagement and formal distanciation. Itmight even transpire that Zizek’s universal appeal is rooted inhis particular background in the tradition of suspended art,which Tarkovskij and Kieslowski made common currency inthe waning Soviet bloc.

CONCLUSION

As a materialist and Lacanian, Slavoj Zizek is naturally hostileto any art that professes religious significance. His readings ofTarkovskij’s and Kieslowski’s films are constructed in con-scious opposition to these directors’ own ‘‘obscurantist’’ incli-nations. However Zizek’s underlying position intersects withEastern European traditions of religious aesthetics in signifi-cant ways. First, like Nikolaj Berdjaev, Zizek stresses not theaesthetic qualities of the artwork, but rather its status as theartist’s ethical gesture. Second, this panethicism leads Zizek toassert that art achieves ethical meaning through a suspension ofreality in fiction. Specifically, the suspension of reality reveals itas time and as potentially meaningful. This aesthetics of sus-pense bears comparison to other traditions in Eastern Euro-pean aesthetics, represented here by Tarkovskij, Aleksej Losev,and Alexander Bakshy.

NOTES

1 Of course this could just be a mistake, but Zizek elsewhere demonstrates apenchant for such games of hide-and-seek with the reader; see for examplehis accidental self-ridicule in FRT: 5–6, 32–3.

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2 Zizek seems to write specifically for an American academic audience; seeEYS: vii-viii.3 The close correspondence between the thought of Lacan (and, implicitly,of Zizek) and Kantian ethics, specifically Kant’s analysis of the freedom ofthe will in Critique of Practical Reason, is demonstrated by Zizek’s colleagueAlenka Zupancic’s book Ethics of the Real, especially the chapter ‘‘Subjectof Freedom’’ (2000: 21–42).4 It should be noted that Zizek is far from the most radical denier of theaesthetic; he calls ‘‘misplaced’’ the reported idea of Fredric Jameson thatKieslowski should be held accountable for the death of the son in Decalogue1 (RAG: 219).5 This and all subsequent translations from the Russian are my own.6 Here I acknowledge a suggestion by Evert van der Zweerde, who hashelped in many ways to clarify and improve my essay.7 Zizek’s arch-rival Noel Carroll has provided the most detailed analysis ofclassic suspense in cinema; see Carroll 1996: 94–117.8 For a more detailed reading see Robert Bird, Andrei Rublev (London:BFI, forthcoming).9 Cf. Robert Bird, ‘‘Mind the Gap: The Concept of Detachment in AleksejLosev’s The Dialectic of Myth,’’ Studies in East European Thought v. 56 nos.2–3 (2004) 143–160.

REFERENCES

Bakshy, Alexander. The Path of the Modern Russian Stage and Other Es-says. John W. Luce & Company, Boston, 1918.

Beasley-Murray, Jon. ‘‘Whatever Happened to Neorealism? – Bazin, Dele-uze, and Tarkovsky’s Long Take,’’ Iris 23 (Spring, 1997), pp. 37–52.

Berdjaev, N.A. Filosofija svobodnogo dukha. Respublika, Moscow, 1994.Berdjaev, N.A. Filosofija tvorchestva, kul’tury i iskusstva, Vol. 1. ‘‘Liga,’’Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1994a.

Berdjaeva, Lidija. Professija: zhena filosofa, E. V. Bronnikova. (ed.) Mol-odaja gvardija, Moscow, 2002.

Bordwell, David, and Noel Carroll. Post-Theory, The University ofWisconsin Press, Madison, 1986.

Carroll, Noel. Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, New York, 1996.

De Baecque, Antoine. Andrei Tarkovski, Editions de l’Etoile/Cahiers ducinema, Paris, 1999.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema-2: L’image-temps, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris,1985.

Losev, Aleksej Fedorovich. Dialektika mifa: Dopolnenie k ‘‘Dialektikemifa,’’ Mysl’, Moscow, 2001.

Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time, Kitty Hunter-Blair (Trans.), Uni-versity of Texas Press, Austin, 1986.


Tarkovskij, Andrej. Archivy, dokumenty, vospominanija. P. D. Volkova.(ed.) EKSMO-Press, Podkova, Moscow, 2002.

Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant. Lacan. London, Verso, NewYork, 2000.

Department of Slavic Languages and LiteraturesThe University of Chicago1130 E. 59th StreetChicago, IL 60637USAE-mail: [email protected]

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the suspended aesthetic: slavoj Žižek on eastern european film

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