Into the Zone: Chris Marker, Frédéric Boyer and the Poetics of Space-Time

Abstract

Through analysis of works by Chris Marker and Frédéric Boyer, this study considers the inextricability of place and time in the constitution of environment. Both authors offer attempts to see environment in its spatiotemporal fullness through what I call a poetics of space-time. In Marker’s film Sans soleil (1983), various geographic and virtual spaces are juxtaposed through their differing temporal dimensions; they form a matrix that is regulated by globalization, mediated by technology, tradition and, most significantly, time. This heterogenous quality of contemporaneity de-centers representations of the earth based upon place. Boyer assesses the ethical and political consequences of these temporal considerations in Quelle terreur en nous ne veut pas finir ? (2015), an essay that emphasizes how subjective unawareness of questions of time and their relation to questions of space contributes to the most menacing problems facing humanity. From these works, I conclude that thinking about how time structures space is necessary for more adequately representing and understanding the earth.

Keywords:

• Temporality
• contemporaneity
• film
• media
• environment
• technology

Notes

1 This term might bring to mind Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, however, I employ it with an eye toward Glissant’s Poetics of Relation in which he considers that “poetry [...] imparts form to a knowledge” (81). The poetics of space-time would thus give form to knowledge of environment.

2 One could add the “films imaginaires,” which recount voyages to the United States and Mexico, published in Commentaires, and also La Jetée which, in the present context, expands the notion of travel film to include both geographic travel and time travel.

3 I disagree with the suggestion that Marker sought to make a “postmodern” film, following Lionel Ruffel’s view that “thinking with the post is thinking like a modern, that is, thinking of time as a succession with befores and afters, with sequences, with ruptures and borderlines” (113). Sans soleil stands in opposition to (post-)modern time for its capacity to encompass multiple temporalities.

4 I am thinking particularly of the regime of cultural autonomy from nature that Philippe Descola calls “le grand partage” or what Bruno Latour calls the modern constitution’s work of purification.

5 This recalls the film’s epigraph, from Racine’s preface to Bajazet: “L’éloignement des pays répare en quelque sorte la trop grande proximité des temps.”

6 This invites the possibility of relating Heise’s work on environmentalism to her first book, Chronoschisms, which deals explicitly with time and technology.

7 Marker offers a similar reflection: “J’aurai passé ma vie à m’interroger sur la fonction du souvenir, qui n’est pas le contraire de l’oubli, plutôt son envers. On ne se souvient pas, on récrit la mémoire comme on récrit l’histoire” (5:00–5:10).

8 Boyer remarkably renders this spatiotemporal myopia in his 2014 poem Dans ma prairie, which represents flight toward a place without time, community or responsibility where one seeks in vain to escape this terreur en nous. Unfortunately, I have neither the space nor the time to discuss it here.

9 This loss of messianism evokes Marker’s notion of an “amnésie du futur que l’Histoire dispense, par miséricorde ou par calcul” (1:07:17–1:07:22).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jackson B. Smith

Jackson B. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of French and Italian at Princeton University. His research considers the relationship between time, narrative and memory in French cinema, literature and theory. He has recent or forthcoming articles in La Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, Symposium and New Review of Film and Television Studies.