☛ François Truffaut at Work by Carole Le Berre, tr. from French by Bill Krohn, New York: Phaidon, [2004]2005, flaps photograph (both front and back) by André Dino, December 1958. © MK2/André Dino.

This is a behind-the-scene photo depicting the shooting of the very last (and very famous) sequence of François Truffaut’s film Les 400 coups (The 400 Blows). It was shot by still photographer André Dino at Villers-sur-Mer (in Normandy) between December 16 and December 22 1958 (I got the date from Truffaut: A Biography by Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, tr. by Catherine Temerson, University of California Press, [1996]2000, p. 132). The film premiere at the 12th Cannes Film Festival on May 4th where it won the Award for Best Director (see official site) and was released in France on June 3rd of the same year.

Below is another behind-the-scene photo shot by André Dino most likely during the same days of December 1958 (source of hi-res version). It shows François Truffaut (left) and Jean-Pierre Léaud (right) sitting in the same Citroen 2CV used for the final tracking shot on the beach. Léaud appears to be rolling a cigarette:

François Truffaut (left) and Jean-Pierre Léaud (right) are sitting in the tracking car used for shooting the very last sequence of “The 400 Blows” (behind-the-scene photo by André Dino, December 1958, © MK2/André Dino)

André Dino (IMDb) was a still photographer on many iconic French films of the same period. He worked on Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958), on Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958) and Play Time (1967). He also played a small role in some of them.

I was quite surprise to find a picture of him with Jacques Tati on the set of Mon Oncle (I couldn’t track back the original source: I believe it was first uploaded to the Internet on October 2006 by the blog If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger):

Jacques Tati (left) and André Dino (right) on the set of “Mon Oncle” (1958). Unknown photographer.

There isn’t much information about André Dino online. The first two photographs shown above belong to the Collection Cahiers du Cinéma but aren’t accessible online (see its Photothèque). Some more behind-the scene photographs shot by Dino during the production of The 400 Blows are also kept at the Cinémathèque Française (see Cine-Ressources.net).

Finally, I found the following image in Carole Le Berre’s book, on page 26. While he was still searching for the definitive title for his film, François Truffaut filled a small index card with various ideas.

“Truffaut searches for a title for his first feature film” (in “François Truffaut at Work” by Carole Le Berre, New York: Phaidon, 2005, p. 26)

What we are dealing with here is really space. For more than forty years now we have known that we are living in the epoch of space (Foucault was one of the first to tell us this in the 1960s). More often than not, this epoch of space is juxtaposed against the epoch of history that would have come earlier, which then died out little by little in the second half of the twentieth century. There can be no doubt that this century will be remembered for the suspicions it raised against history, since history was at the center of the previous century’s attention. Yet it is not enough merely to diagnose the succession and the substitution of a spatial model for a temporal one given that there are deeper and more complex reasons that account for putting forward the spatial schema (or that of spacing) in a horizon such as the present one.

☛ The Minnesota Review: “Dialogue on the Philosophy to come” (the excerpt quoted above is from Jean-Luc Nancy), tr. by Thimothy Campbell, no. 75, Fall 2010, p. 72 (PDF: subscription may be required)

From the same issue I quoted earlier (“Koinonia without power?” July 3, 2011) comes this dialogue between Roberto Esposito and Jean-Luc Nancy. The whole discussion could be divided in six major themes: space (71-74), the link between philosophy and politics (74-79), community (79-82), ethic and ontology (82-83), technology (83-85) and body (85-87). Following are quotes taken from each of those themes.

1. Jean-Luc Nancy continues his reflexion on the concept of space. Those ideas are actually a summary of a preface he wrote for Benoit Goetz’s book La Dislocation (editor’s website) (pp. 72-73):
   

   The history in which Enlightenment thinkers, Romantics, and proponents of industrial progress recognized themselves was for the most part the history of the conquest of space: the completion of the process of the colonialization, independence, and development of the Americas; territorial realignments in Europe; and immigrations that were the effect of the two preceding phenomena—all accompanied by a growing technical mastery of maritime and terrestrial distances [>p. 73] (steam, air, pistons), of electric communications either underwater or above, and of the spaces of urban and interurban circulation. In that epoch the streets, the railroads, the cables, and the cities in which we live acquired their present configuration. The surface of the planet no longer has any terrae incognitae, maps no longer contain blank spaces: Timbuktu and Lhasa, the deserts and the North and South Pole—everything has already been explored. Expeditions to far-off territories have achieved their mission and now give way to a conquest of interplanetary and interstellar space that does not have the same rhythm or meaning. This is because we are no longer dealing with uncovering the secrets of the earth but rather of coordinating the extension of transmissions in the confines of a reciprocal surveillance and the intimidations of economic and political powers [potenze].

2. Jean-Luc Nancy again on the relation between philosophy and politics (p. 76):
   

   Philosophy and politics are founded together in the field of an essential withdrawing: that of the gods, that of being-together (the gods were custodians of the totality and the totality was assembled by their own gods), or, to put it better, in the withdrawal of presence. If one can define “metaphysics” as a “metaphysics of presence,” the sense given to it by Nietzsche and then by Heidegger (a definition that as such is to be attributed of course to Derrida), then we also need to understand that the “presence” of metaphysics is the effect of a relation of loss with regard to an originary or divine presence.

3. Roberto Esposito on the idea of community (p. 82):
   

   We need to be ever on the lookout for every substantialist lapse of the idea and the practice of community.

4. Esposito on the the relation between the ontological question and the question posed by ethics (p. 82):
   

   In other words, beginning with the coincidence without remains between world and sense and therefore with the refusal to postpone meaning to something that is not the present condition of existence itself, how is political activity thinkable?

5. Nancy on technology, love and losses (p. 84):
   

   If you prefer, I am in agreement about the “finality without goals,” or a goal that one could define as a non-fulfillment similar to that of art, of eroticism, or of love: not the satisfaction, being satiated, or entropy, but the further branching out of energy, including falls and absences, suspensions and losses. A goal without a telos; can we define it that way?

6. Those are Nancy final words, and the last words of this dialogue. As they stand here, they are indirectly related to the concept of body (p. 87):
   

   Yet all of us know well enough this act of debasement and of suspicion, this aristocratic contempt for the common; that is, all of us who are not part of the people [popolo], given that effectively we are not a part. As university professors, “intellectuals” etc., we surely are not a part, and yet, if we look closely, are we really exempt from banality? Do we not perhaps like bread just like everyone else, and are not we passionate about a soccer match? Perhaps we have not looked enough at this aspect of things. When all is said and done, if politics and ethics (but aesthetics as well) have a meaning, it has to do with daily life and the daily possibility for each of us—for people [gente]—to be in meaning [di essere nel senso], which is to say for all of us to take part in the exceptional, in discord, and in what is distinctive.

More entries mentioning Jean-Luc Nancy or Roberto Esposito.

☛ The Complete Peanuts 1965 to 1966 (Vol. 8) by Charles M. Schulz, Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2007, p. 19. The comic strip above was originally published on February 12, 1965. © 2012 United Features Syndicate, Inc

These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers. […] We are all consumers now, consumers first and foremost, consumers by right and by duty. The day after the 11/9 outrage George W. Bush, when calling Americans to get over the trauma and go back to normal, found no better words than “go back shopping”. It is the level of our shopping activity and the ease with which we dispose of one object of consumption in order to replace it with a “new and improved” one which serves us as the prime measure of our social standing and the score in the life-success competition. To all problems we encounter on the road away from trouble and towards satisfaction we seek solutions in shops.

☛ Social Europe Journal: “The London Riots – On Consumerism coming Home to Roost” by Zygmunt Bauman, August 9, 2011.

A few days later, Slavoj Žižek reacted to Bauman remarks:

Zygmunt Bauman characterised the riots as acts of ‘defective and disqualified consumers’: more than anything else, they were a manifestation of a consumerist desire violently enacted when unable to realise itself in the ‘proper’ way – by shopping. As such, they also contain a moment of genuine protest, in the form of an ironic response to consumerist ideology: ‘You call on us to consume while simultaneously depriving us of the means to do it properly – so here we are doing it the only way we can!’ The riots are a demonstration of the material force of ideology – so much, perhaps, for the ‘post-ideological society’. From a revolutionary point of view, the problem with the riots is not the violence as such, but the fact that the violence is not truly self-assertive. It is impotent rage and despair masked as a display of force; it is envy masked as triumphant carnival. (London Review of Books: “Shoplifters of the World Unite” by Slavoj Žižek, August 19, 2011).

Finally, Stuart Hall commented the riots in an interview he made with The Guardian. The interview was published just yesterday:

“The riots bothered me a great deal, on two counts. First, nothing really has changed. Some kids at the bottom of the ladder are deeply alienated, they’ve taken the message of Thatcherism and Blairism and the coalition: what you have to do is hustle. Because nobody’s going to help you. And they’ve got no organised political voice, no organised black voice and no sympathetic voice on the left. That kind of anger, coupled with no political expression, leads to riots. It always has. The second point is: where does this find expression in going into a store and stealing trainers? This is the point at which consumerism, which is the cutting edge of neoliberalism, has got to them too. Consumerism puts everyone into a single channel. You’re not doing well, but you’re still free to consume. We’re all equal in the eyes of the market.” (The Guardian: “The Saturday interview: Stuart Hall” by Zoe Williams, February 11, 2012).

Photo from The Big Picture blog over at Boston.com: “London Riots” by Lana Turner, August 8, 2011 (26 photos total).

A rioter throws a burning wooden plank at police in Tottenham Aug. 7, 2011. (Lewis Whyld/PA/AP)

Socialism ― or the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, ―that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, ―is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of “modern ideas” and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralysed. Men follow―but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists―and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! ―and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come. Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, “one must possess something in order to be some one.” This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: “one must desire more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth―that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism “a will to the denial of life” is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in socialistic society life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots. The earth is big enough and man is still unexhausted enough for a practical lesson of this sort and demonstratio ad absurdum― even if it were accomplished only by a vast expenditure of lives―to seem worth while to me. Still, Socialism, like a restless mole beneath the foundations of a society wallowing in stupidity, will be able to achieve something useful and salutary: it delays “Peace on Earth” and the whole process of character-softening of the democratic herding animal; it forces the European to have an extra supply of intellect, ―it also saves Europe awhile from the marasmus femininus which is threatening it.

☛ The Complete Works Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol XIV: The Will to Power : An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values, tr. by Anthony M. Ludovici and edited by Oscar Levy, Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, § 125, p. 102-103. Internet Archive.

Given the controversial nature of The Will to Power (see in French La volonté de puissance by Paolo D’Iorio), the reference used above will eventually become obsolete: the quote should be referenced as a fragment of Nietzsche’s posthumous work. To my knowledge, a complete and critical edition of those posthumous fragments has yet to be edited in English. However, such an edition is already available in French and in German. Both are based on the critical text established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. The French version was edited by Gallimard: Oeuvres philosophiques complètes, vol. XI, tr. by Michel Haar and Marc de Launay, Paris, 1982. The German version exist online as a digital edition through Nietzsche Source: learn more about the Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsche’s Works and Letters (eKGWB).nIn the German Digital Critical Edition, the fragment about socialism quoted above is referenced as followed: NF-1885, 37[11].

Nietzsche wrote down those thoughts on the summer of 1885 (in June or July). It really is tempting to read what he says about the “vast expenditure of lives” as an accurate prediction of what various communist regimes of the twentieth century would eventually turn out to be accountable for.

I thought about Nietzsche’s comment on socialism while reading On the shores of politics by Jacques Rancière. In a chapter titled “The Community of Equals” the French philosopher discusses the use of “the standard of equality” as the main founding principle for the ”communitarian body”:

For it may well be that relations of community and equality are themselves but a never-ending settling of accounts. By taking a closer look at the accounts presented by equality to community we shall see the image of the single great body crumble, and encounter all the deficit and discord which ensure that the community of equals can never materialize without some cement plugging that carcks in the image, without some obligation to keep tallying members and ranks and retranslating the terms of the formula. (tr. by Liz Heron, London: Verso, [1990]1995, p. 65)

On the shores of politics was first published in French in 1990. A second edition revised and expanded was published in 1998. Below is the French version of Rancière’s quote as it appears in the 1998 edition:

Les rapports de l’égalité et de la communauté ne sont peut-être eux-mêmes qu’un incessant règlement de comptes. Regarder de plus près ces comptes de l’égalité avec la communauté, c’est voir se fragmenter l’image du grand corps, rencontrer le déficit ou le discord qui fait que la communauté des égaux ne peut jamais se donner corps sans quelque plâtrage, sans quelque obligation de recompter les membres et les rangs, de boucher les fissures de l’image, de retraduire les énoncés de la formule. (éd. Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1998, p. 132).

To be fair, I should make a note that Rancière’s project aims at questioning the relationship between the principle of equality and the community, whereas Nietzsche’s quote is essentially an irrevocable condemnation of socialism as an attempt to build a society on the ideal of equality.

See also Balzac on equality between human beings.

☛ March To The Moon: photo from the Gemini IV mission depicting astronaut Edward White during NASA’s very first EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity), June 3, 1965, 19:45 GMT, shot with a Zeiss Planar 80mm lens mounted on a Hasselblad 500c 70 mm camera on Kodak Ektachrome film. Photo ID: S65-30431_G04-H. Flash is required to access some features. All photographs are in the public domain. Processed images (all except RAW) should be credited to NASA/JSC/Arizona State University.

Original captions read as follow:

Astronaut White floats in zero gravity of space northeast of Hawaii. White is attached to the spacecraft by a 25-ft. umbilical line and a 23-ft. tether line,both wrapped in gold tape to form one cord. In his right hand White carries a Hand-Held Self-Maneuvering Unit (HHSMU). The visor of his helmet is gold plated to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the sun.

This is one of 363 hi-res restored photographs related to the Gemini IV mission. Processed (enhanced) photographs for all Gemini missions were recently made available by NASA online. Each photographs is offered in three different resolution. The one I’m using is the smallest one: it’s a 553 kB 600×626 PNG file. One can also download a medium resolution (a 7MB 2205×2300 PNG file), a full resolution (a 28.1 MB 4410×4600 PNG file) or even an uncompressed RAW image (a huge 60.9 MB 4410×4600 TIFF file). Learn more about how the scans were made and how the original photographs were restored and enhanced.

The Gemini Program was the second human spaceflight program ran by NASA. It was preceded by the Mercury program (during which astronaut Alan Shepard became the very first American to orbit in space: see previously here “50 Years Ago: First American In Space”) and followed by the Apollo program (which ran from 1961 to 1972) and the Space Shuttle program (from 1981 to 2011).

An overview of the Gemini program is also available at the John F. Kennedy Space Center website:

The Gemini Program was conceived after it became evident to NASA officials that an intermediate step was required between Project Mercury and the Apollo Program. […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced December
7, 1961, a plan to extend the existing manned space flight program by development of a two-man spacecraft. The program was officially designated Gemini on January 3, 1962. It was named after the third constellation of the zodiac, featuring the twin stars Castor and Pollux. The program was operationally completed with the Gemini XII flight.

First spotted via WIRED.com

― Mais quelle est votre attitude maintenant vis-à-vis de la religion?
― Je n’ai pas d’attitude. J’ai été élevé dedans. Je pourrais répondre «Je suis toujours athée, grâce à Dieu.» Je crois qu’il faut chercher Dieu dans l’homme. C’est un attitude très simple.

☛ L’Express: “Luis Buñuel: athée grâce à Dieu” by Michèle Manceaux, May 12, 1960, p. 41.

Image from Luis Buñuel’s interview in L'Express, May 12, 1960, p. 41

That’s the original form of the quote known in English as “Thank God I’m an atheist”. Here’s an English translation of the original exchange between Luis Buñuel and Michèle Manceaux (as quoted above):

― But now what is your attitude towards religion?
― I have no attitude. I was raised in it. I could answer “I’m still an atheist, thank God.” I believe we must seek God within man himself. This is a very simple attitude.

Seventeen years later, Luis Buñuel had a different attitude toward the subject of religion. He discussed it during an interview he gave for The New Yorker:

Buñuel’s work is born of the humor of a sad man distressed by his own vision of the world but with a fond eye for the mass of self-deceptions that make life bearable. He is one of the most mannerly men I have ever met. The only thing that stirs him to impatience is the sort of charity that is seen as a virtue by people who don’t question the anguish that makes charity necessary. “I’m not a Christian, but I’m not an atheist either,” he says. “I’m weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine ‘I’m not an atheist, thank God’ It’s outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called ‘Mexican Bus Ride,’ about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It’s guilt we must escape, not God.” (The New Yorker: “Long Live the Living!” by Penelope Gilliatt, December 5, 1977, p. 54)

There’s most likely a small confusion when Buñuel quotes his own aphorism: instead of “I’m not an atheist, thank God” ―which doesn’t correspond what he said in 1960― one should read “I’m an atheist, thank God”. That’s the “aphorism” Buñuel didn’t agree with anymore in 1977.

Image from Luis Buñuel’s interview in The New Yorker, December 5, 1977, p. 54

☛ The New Yorker: cover art by Peter Arno, October 27, 1928. © Condé Nast, 2012.

Peter Arno was a famous American cartoonist. His cartoons were published in The New Yorker from 1925 up until 1968. From the book The comic worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams, and Saul Steinberg by Iain Topliss:

By that date [May 1930] Peter Arno (1904-1968) was the most celebrated and influential cartoonist working at The New Yorker ―and perhaps in America― a position he consolidated over the next twenty years. His drawings of clubmen and chornies, dowagers and doormen, lushers and lechers, comically compromised in the cabaret world of hotel lobbies, gentlemen’s clubs, theaters and speakeasies of a New York City that was the very capital of capitalism, had made him the most famous cartoonist of his day. The first collection of his drawings, Peter Arno’s Parade, with an enthusiastic introduction by William Bolitho, was issue in 1929 by the libertarian publisher Horace Liveright (of Boni and Liveright fame) and was so successful it was reprinted twice within a month of its appearance. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, p. 21)

A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.

☛ W.H. Auden The Life of a Poet by Charles Osborne, London: Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 1995, p. 339. Amazon.

I was able to track down the original source for this quote with the kind assistance of Alan Jacobs, editors of The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton University Press, 2011; Amazon).

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was an Anglo-American poet. From the BBC website:

He continued to publish poetry including ‘The Age of Anxiety’ (1947) for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He collaborated with Kallman on the libretto for Stravinsky’s opera ‘The Rake’s Progress’ (1951). From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford University.

Below is a selection I made from Auden’s obiter dicta. What are those exactly? They are a collection of passing remarks made by Auden and noted by his friend and biographer Charles Osborne (obiter dicta is Latin for “said in passing”). They are not part of any poem or book written by Auden and remain undated. There are four pages of such remarks. They appear at the very end of Osborn’s book, on chapter 13 (PDF).

• I always have two things in my head – I always have a theme and the form. The form looks for the theme, the theme looks for the form, and when they come together you’re able to write. (336)

• The problem with the behaviouralists is that they always manage to exclude themselves from their theories. If all our acts are conditioned behaviour, surely our theories are, too. (337)

• The older one gets, the more one values the age of friendship, as if it were a vintage. (337)

• My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain. (338)

• Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. (338)

• I don’t go along with all this talk of a generation gap. We’re all contemporaries, anyone walking this earth at this moment. There’s a certain difference in memories, that’s all. (338)

• I admire the young when they’re anti-money, but what they mustn’t do is take money from papa and then criticize his way of life. (339)

What I realized during this Australian Open is that Nadal sets the tone for this state of affairs more than anyone else, certainly more than Federer. Roger is so cool and frictionless that, most of the time, he seems less like a prism of epic intensity than a dispassionate analyst of it.6 Djokovic, since his ascent, has been so much better than everyone else that he’s largely been able to act like a careful clinician, the administrator of his own talent. And Murray has lost to the other guys so often that his anger and frustration seem basically inconsequential. In other words, the game may be epic for the fans, but you won’t always catch that ground note of holy-shit intensity if you only watch the other three players. Left to themselves, they don’t exactly project deep contact with the secret fires of time.

Nadal, though? He plays like he’s fighting giants. It’s not just the sneer, or the muscles, or the hair, or that forehand — you know, the one where he swoops the racket all the way around his head like he’s whipping the team pulling his chariot. It’s also that frantic tenacity that used to drive me so nuts. Federer seems devastated when he loses but he also seems to sense losses coming and accept them before they arrive. When Nadal falls behind, he turns the match into life and death. He gets mad. He hesitates less. He hits the ball harder. He doesn’t look sad or scared. He looks defiant, and he plays like he’s possessed.

☛ Grantland: “Nadal vs. Djokovic: Here We Are Again, My Friend” by Brian Phillips, January 30, 2012.

Great sport journalism for what must have been, by all accounts, an epic 5 hours 53 minutes Grand Slam match (I haven’t watched it). This colorful analysis offered by Brian Phillips ―which could have been titled “Battle of the Titans” or more simply ”Titanomachy”― is just as interesting as those produced by David Foster Wallace (see “Federer as Religious Experience” by David Foster Wallace, August 20, 2006).

The match was played at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia. It started on Sunday January 29, 2012 and finished around 1:40 the next Monday morning (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

About Brian Phillips:

He is a staff writer at Grantland, and his work has appeared in Slate, Deadspin, The New York Times Magazine, The Awl, The New Republic, The Hudson Review, and Poetry, among other publications. (The Run of Play: About)

In 2007, he founded The Run of Play: “a blog about the wonder and terror of soccer”.

I first found Phillips’s article via more than 95 theses, Alan Jacobs‘s Tumblr blog.