HEART OF THE MATTER

Abstract:

In this essay I will look at four recent films that have organ transplantations “at their heart”: 21 Grams (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003), L'Intrus (Claire Denis, 2001), Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears, 2002) and Heart of Jenin (Leon Geller and Markus Vetter, 2008). Each film in its own way shows how Nancy's concept of the intruder balances in a different dynamics between biopolitical and biophilosophical concerns and proposes in various ways a changed concept of sacrifice, transforming sacrifice from religious offering into political or ethical resistance and allowing a-religious strivings to persist.

Keywords:

• organ transplantation
• sacrifice
• Body without Organs
• biopolitics
• biophilosophy

Notes

1 In Denys Arcand's film Jesus of Montreal (1989) this was made explicit. Here, the actor who plays Jesus in a modern update of the passion play dies and his organs are taken from his body. Filmed from a high angle, Jesus' body on the operating table seems to be on a cross.

2 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 12–13.

3 Ibid. 7. For the inclusion of technics and technology in Western philosophy, see also Bernard Stiegler's three volumes of Technics and Time.

4 For the emergence and scope of organ transplantation and global trade in biomaterial, see Geesink and Steegers, Nier te Koop, Baarmoeder te Huur [Kidney for Sale, Womb for Hire].

5 Foucault, History of Sexuality 143. Here, the word biopower appears for the first time. The first explicit mention of biopolitics is in Foucault's “Il faut défendre la société.” See also Hardt and Negri, Empire. For an insightful account of various conceptions of biopolitics, see Dean.

6 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 1.

7 Deleuze and Guattari, “The Body without Organs” in Anti-Oedipus 9–16; and “How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs?” in A Thousand Plateaus 149–66.

8 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 13.

9 Other organ transplantation films that go beyond the Frankenstein myth are, among others: Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978), EMR (James Erskine and Danny McCullough, 2004), Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (Serdar Akar and Sadullah Sentürk, 2006), Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008), My Sister's Keeper (Nick Cassavetes, 2009), and Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010). There are quite a few Korean films that have organ trafficking in their action-plot. For instance, Heartbeat (Yoon Jae-keun, 2010), The Man from Nowhere (Lee Jeong-beom, 2010) and The Traffickers (Kim Hong-Sun, 2012). For an extended discussion of Coma, see Pisters, Matrix of Visual Culture 61–64. Another film that should be mentioned here is Anand Gandhi's film Ship of Theseus (2012) which brings together three different stories of organ transplantation in a beautiful and intelligent way. For an analysis of this film, see Pisters, “Transplanting Life.”

10 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations 227.

11 For a review, see Hahn.

12 For a special issue on the Nancy–Denis encounter, see Film-Philosophy 21.1. See <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n1/morrey.pdf> for an introduction by the editor of this issue which features an article by Nancy on Denis's film Trouble Every Day and four other articles on the Denis–Nancy collaboration.

13 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 9.

14 See also Hovet.

15 See the PBS Wide Angle series website for background information and the full documentary: <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/heart-of-jenin/introduction/4991/>.

16 For elaborate studies of the different significances of the heart, see Jager; Young.

17 Eknoyan.

18 Ibid. 3467.

19 Ibid. 3468.

20 Ibid. 3470.

21 Hovet 3.

22 Gibson 700.

23 Hardt and Negri, Multitude. See also Bordeleau.

24 Gibson 694.

25 Agamben 14.

26 See, for instance, the hundreds of responses to the introduction of the film on the PBS website: <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/heart-of-jenin/introduction/4991/>. Basically, every responder has new facts and additional perspectives to add. Or the blog post on Jewlicious: “Was Heart of Jenin Heartfelt or Heartless?” available at <http://www.jewlicious.com/2009/07/was-heart-of-jenin-heartless-or-heartfelt/>.

27 Stotsky. While Stotsky is very right that all this could never have happened without the excellent Israeli medical staff, one could continue the contextualization and ask why there are few Arab medical staff and facilities on the West Bank. But his point is well taken and valuable. A similar point is actually made at the end of Arcand's film Jesus of Montreal. Here the Catholic hospital is overcrowded and simply sends the severely wounded Jesus back on the streets. The Jewish hospital, on the other hand, acts adequately and while being too late to save him they do rescue his organs for transplantation.

28 Alliez 1.

29 Žižek 174.

30 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 8.

31 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 154. Here, Deleuze and Guattari talk about the curse on desire when desire is uprooted from its field of immanence and brought in connection to a (normative) transcendental principle. In the following plateau Deleuze and Guattari explicitly address European racism and degrees of deviance in relation to the White-Man face as the Christ face in painting where “the face of Christ [is used] to produce every kind of facial unit and every degree of deviance” (178).

32 Alliez 1.

33 Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus 9.

34 Ibid. 15.

35 Ibid. 12.

36 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 11.

37 Deleuze 9.

38 Cull 48.

39 See, for example, the reviews by Rene Rodriguez, Rob Gonsalves and others at <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/21_grams/>.

40 Hahn 56.

41 Pisters, The Neuro-Image 98–124.

42 Hahn 53.

43 Ibid. 56.

44 Morrey i.

45 Beugnet 43.

46 Claire Denis – L'Intrus Entretien: Olivier Bombarda, available <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPGmjCq-OFo>.

47 Beugnet 46.

48 Weeda, “Nieren afstaan uit naastenliefde” [Donating Kidneys out of Charity] 8–9.

49 Nancy, “L'Intrus” 12–13, qtd at the beginning of this essay. In his book on Nancy, Derrida also emphasizes the link between the opening of the body by technology and the need to go beyond the Christian body in Nancy's work. See Derrida.

50 McMahon 70.

51 For an extended analysis of images of resurrection in Denis's films, see Morrey, “Open Wounds.”

52 Adamek 196.

53 Shaviro 129–30.

54 Nancy, Ground of the Image. As he explains in the first essay of the book, “The Image – the Distinct,” Nancy defines “sacred” here in a non-religious way as something that is distinct, separate.