<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This work sets off to offer a polemical response to postcolonialist theories advanced by Homi Bhabha in his seminal work <italic>The Location of Culture</italic>, particularly to Bhabha’s famous notions of <italic>ambivalence</italic> and <italic>mimicry</italic> purportedly used as methods of struggle against colonialism. Reading Béla Tarr’s film <italic>Werckmeister Harmonies</italic> (<italic>Werckmeister harmóniák</italic>, 2000) as an allegory for the colonization of a former colonial agent in the guise of an ambiguously framed post-imperial Hungary now on the eve of Soviet invasion, I turn Bhabha’s notions on their heads, and thus de-stereotype the simplistic hierarchy that sees the colonial agent dominate the colonized subject in a top-down approach. To achieve this, I bring into play Kuan-Hsing Chen’s notion of deimperialization as well as the psychoanalysis of Octave Mannoni in order to show that rather than being a straightforward misreading of the Other by an uninformed Self, the relationship between colonized and colonizer appears more like a failed attempt at acquiring the most basic knowledge of the psychological functioning of the Self on both sides of the colonized/colonizer divide.</p></abstract>

This work sets off to offer a polemical response to postcolonialist theories advanced by Homi Bhabha in his seminal work The Location of Culture, particularly to Bhabha’s famous notions of ambivalence and mimicry purportedly used as methods of struggle against colonialism. Reading Béla Tarr’s film Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák, 2000) as an allegory for the colonization of a former colonial agent in the guise of an ambiguously framed post-imperial Hungary now on the eve of Soviet invasion, I turn Bhabha’s notions on their heads, and thus de-stereotype the simplistic hierarchy that sees the colonial agent dominate the colonized subject in a top-down approach. To achieve this, I bring into play Kuan-Hsing Chen’s notion of deimperialization as well as the psychoanalysis of Octave Mannoni in order to show that rather than being a straightforward misreading of the Other by an uninformed Self, the relationship between colonized and colonizer appears more like a failed attempt at acquiring the most basic knowledge of the psychological functioning of the Self on both sides of the colonized/colonizer divide.

The Postcolonial Self and the Other in Béla Tarr’s <italic>Werckmeister Harmonies</italic>

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Postcolonial Self and the Other in Béla Tarr’s 

This work sets off to offer a polemical response to postcolonialist theories advanced by Homi Bhabha in his seminal work The Location of Culture, particularly...

The Postcolonial Self and the Other in Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

Publié en ligne: 19 janv. 2018

Pages: 31 - 49

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ausfm-2017-0002

Mots clés
Bhabha, Tarr, postcolonial, Hungary, Werckmeister

© 2017 Lucian Tion, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Postcolonial Self and the Other in Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

Publié en ligne: 19 janv. 2018

Pages: 31 - 49

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ausfm-2017-0002

Mots clésBhabha, Tarr, postcolonial, Hungary, Werckmeister

© 2017 Lucian Tion, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
Bhabha, Tarr, postcolonial, Hungary, Werckmeister