The ethics of nullification: practices and representations of a-subjection in literature and cinema

Abstract

This article is the result of an investigation into how literature and cinema represented the practices of nullification throughout modernity. It seeks to give an understanding of how artistic expressions, notably literature and cinema, questioned/ question the condition of subjection of modern man, revealing points of difference and similarity in the power. It is a “genealogy of nullification.” A study that sought, among other things, to understand how behavior, throughout modernity, was theorized, fictionalized, presented and denounced under the optics of nullification, docile, subjection. From an empirical point of view, based on the work of Étienne de La Boétie, books by Franz Kafka and a novel by Assis Brasil, in the literary sphere, and between the films Aniki-bóbó (1942), Alphaville (1965) and the Argentine short film El employment (2008), in cinema, the purpose was to study, in a relation between History, Literature and Cinema, the practices and representations of power, and how they expressed themselves in varied ways over time. To understand this variety of styles, therefore, the article works with a broad notion of literature and cinema, as a way of giving vent to the most varied artistic experiences of writing and filming. Theoretically, the notion of nullification is approached in the light of the unfolding of the work of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.