Mediating the elemental: an immaterialist ethics for ecomaterialist media theory

ABSTRACT

Up until the 19th century, the notion ‘medium’ described the natural elements – e.g. earth, water, fire, and air. John Durham Peters’ media philosophy (2015) demonstrates how contemporary technical media rely on this forgotten elemental dimension; as cultural techniques, media can reveal the elemental’s environmental sense. Against its broader philosophical background, I extend Peters’ account into a ‘trans-materialist’ film-philosophy: I claim that the notion of the elemental stands, and mediates, ‘between’ the materialist tradition – currently operative in ecomaterial media theory (e.g. Cubitt; Ivakhiv; Parikka; Parks; Starosielski; Vaughan) – as well as the ethico-existential, immaterial dimension that belongs to the elemental. Two philosophical readings support this mediating aspect of the trans-material philosophy: Levinas’ immaterialist ethics ([1961] 1969) and Bachelard’s ‘material imagination’. Levinas’ ethics underscore that existence is defined in relation to alterity; the enveloping elemental environment enables developing a relational sense of self. Additionally, Bachelard’s materialism invites us to reimagine our cosmic connection to the material world – and I argue it is the medium of film that expresses this potential most dynamically. As moving audiovisual image, cinema’s technical form fosters, for the immersed spectator, a renewed sense for our elemental environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecomaterialism/Ecocinema theory
• elemental philosophy
• mediation
• film-philosophy
• environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See Keathley (2006) for a more detailed account of this cinephiliac moment, cf. 58–60.

2. Schonig’s theory of ‘contingent motion’ demonstrates how both early cinema and contemporary CGI rely on the depiction of such natural ‘incidentals’. I share Schonig’s attention to the phenomenological importance of such moments of contingent motion, but I insist on underlining the ecological-environmental potential of the ‘medium’ of the elemental.

3. Starosielski (2019) recently provided a helpful overview, to which I return to below.

4. I take the term ‘ecomaterialism’ from Vaughan (2018, 2019) and use it here as an umbrella term for the recent ‘paradigm shift’ in ecocinema theory – even if others have suggested alternative approaches (e.g. Cubitt’s ‘ecocritique’ – cf. 2019, 2020). Notice, furthermore, that while Vaughan seems particularly concerned with the production and consumption of media, I take the term to also constitute the experience of being immersed in the cinematic world.

5. For other ecomaterialist approaches in media studies, see, for example, Bozak 2012; Cubitt 2005, 2017, 2020; Gabrys 2013, 2016; Maxwell and Miller 2012, 2020; Parikka, Strauven, and Parikka 2013, 2015, 2017; Parks 2012, 2020; cf. Rust, Monani and Cubitt 2016); for an overview. My focus is on the recent materialist turn, though Lisa Parks suggests (2020, 643) a longer genealogy of ‘media ecology’ going back to Fuller, McLuhan and even Postman. I also leave out of consideration the broader trend of ‘new materialism’ – cf. Coole and Frost (2010) and Iovino and Oppermann (2014).

6. See Parks (2020) for an insightful recent assessment of the ‘media’ of media studies, with further references.

7. Peters reads Canadian media studies (Innis, McLuhan) and German media theory (Kittler, Siegert, Krämer) through an environmental lens (inspired by the archaeologist Leroi-Gourhan).

8. (Parks 2009, 2012). Parks describes this as the ‘transparency’ of infrastructure (2012, 65–6); her critical purpose is to turn these cultural technologies phenomenologically intelligible. Cf. also Parks (2015); and Parks and Starosielski (2015) for more on media infrastructures. Peters’ thinking about infrastructures is also shaped by Geoffrey Bowker and Leigh Star’s Sorting Things Out (1999).

9. Peters (2015), 102. The reference to Heidegger is to The Origin of the Work of Art ([1950] 1971a).

10. There are promising parallels to Erich Hörl’s approach of ‘media ecology’ (cf. Hörl and Burton 2017); I postpone a more detailed comparison with this original take on technological media as embodying a transformation of sense.

11. Some even trace the word ‘medium’ back to Aristotle; more decisively, in the late Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas adopts the Latin version ‘medium’ which gets picked up in the early modern period (e.g. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, amongst others). Peters (2015, 46–9) gives a short (selective) contextual description of this etymology; cf. Guillory (2010) for a more extensive analysis from a literary perspective (not concerned with the material environment/elements).

12. I intend to develop this argument in more detail elsewhere, in particular along the lines of Fay (2018) and Schonig (2018) and their revision of Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of cinema as ‘redemption of physical reality’ ([1961] 1997).

13. My descriptions are based on Apocalypse Now Redux, the 2001 version of the film.

14. Tomasulo (1990) reads the film’s conflicting ideological stance as simultaneously prowar/antiwar and often uses the elements-as-text to underline his claims: in addition to the double role of fire throughout the film (as both ending and starting the film, the upriver journey, etc.), Tomasulo also highlights how the waves (in the scene described above) ‘break both ways … [they] can break right and left simultaneously’ (Kilgore, quoted in Tomasulo 1990, 154).

15. Before the late 2010s, film theory shows a surprising lack of theoretical reflection on the natural elements; the most prominent exception to this being the film-philosophical concepts of ‘liquid perception’ and ‘gaseous perception’ of Gilles Deleuze (cf. Cinema 1 ([1983] 2013, 89–95).

16. Ecocinema theory itself has a longer tradition that goes back to at least the late 1990s; I cannot provide a succinct overview here. Vaughan (2018) aptly synthesises the short history of ecocinema theory, with an excellent eye for the shift from ‘representation’ to ecomaterialism; key edited editions are Willoquet-Maricondi (2010); Weik von Mossner 2014); and, especially Rust, Monani and Cubitt (2013, 2016).

17. For instance, Lu and Mi (2009), Lin 2009, Lioi 2016, D’Aliola 2012a, 2012b, Bao (2015) and Walton (2018). Most entries on this non-exhaustive list typically explore the tropes of a specific element, without providing a substantial definition of the elemental as an overarching framework.

18. In fact, Ivakhiv briefly discusses Apocalypse Now (2013, 162–7) and places it in the Herzogian tradition of ‘ethnographic encounter’ with ‘the Other’ in the heart of nature – i.e. transposing Western characters in foreign environments – which in turn invites self-evaluation.

19. Vaughan does not discuss Apocalypse Now. I can’t do full justice here to the environmental issues at stake in this production. Additionally, such an analysis should include the problematic choice of location (the Philippines substituting Vietnam), which – amongst other issues – involves Coppola’s dubious alliance with President Marcos; exploitation of local laborers; the ignorant choice to employ indigenous Ifugao as stand-ins for Kurtz’s Vietnamese highlanders; and disregarding the longer history of (American) imperialism in the Philippines. Standard sources on the contested production are the making-of documentary Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Bahr, Hickenlooper, and Coppola 1991) and Peter Cowie’s The Apocalypse Now Book (2001); for narrative accounts on the production of the film, cf. Eleanor Coppola’s Notes (1995), and Travers (2016); for academic criticism of these issues, see Sussman (1992), Tolentino (2002), and Chong (2012).

20. It goes beyond the scope of this paper to establish whether these diverging approaches are mutually exclusive, yet one can readily observe that while most narrative-thematic interpretations ignore the material aspect of cinematic production and consumption, some production-oriented ecomaterialists, such as Vaughan, push back against the textual analysis of representations of elemental material.

21. This characterisation of the elemental in cinema is inspired by, and offers a variation of, Martin Lefebvre’s work on filmed landscapes (2006, 2011).

22. Some production-oriented ecomaterialist accounts could articulate more clearly how such materialist awareness would be accessible from within the spectator’s experience of film (and not merely as extra-textual, post-reflective understanding).

23. It seems to me that the cinema offers an immersive layer of experience that precedes narrative themes; I am preparing a more detailed account of the elements’ role in disclosing this immersive filmworld.

24. See below my discussion on the Böhmes distinction between ‘elementarism’ and the ‘doctrine of the elements’.

25. For instance, both O’Brien and Vaughan use the elemental framework as a broader structure; rather than defining the concept of elemental/the elements, their ecomaterialist claims operate on the basis of an assumed, intuitive ‘blueprint’ of the diverse meanings of the elemental.

26. In what follows, I suggest a theory of the elemental as ontological foundation that facilitates the ethico-existential encounter that precedes other aspects of the cinematic experience. Although this layer of experience is phenomenologically prior to other aspects of cinematic experience, this does not inhibit or exclude other theoretical interpretations of the elemental (such as, for instance, Apocalypse Now inviting political, economic, and post-colonial extension of the elemental).

27. Here Morton echoes Peters’ idea of ‘weird media’, adding the etymology of ‘weird’ as related to the old Norse word for vortex (Morton 2015, 278).

28. My research on the elemental stands in the philosophical tradition that is eloquently researched by (Macauley 2010). Cf. also Böhme and Böhme (1996).

29. In addition to the cosmologies of various indigenous cultures, I particularly think here of wu xing, the Chinese fivefold model of wood, earth, fire, water, and metal. Notice that Furuhata (2019) observes that the five ‘elements’ is a misnomer, for they should instead be conceived of as five ‘phases’ or ‘complementary dynamic cycles of interaction’ (2019, n.p.). For a brief comparison between the framework of the four elements and the Chinese model (as well as other cultural traditions), cf. Macauley (2010), 74–84.

30. Cf. Empedocles’ fragments collected in Waterfield (2000, 133ff). Notice the overlap between Empedocles’ model and the correlational model of wu xing.

31. I thank Annie Sandrussi and Brigid Martin for their assistance on articulating this point.

32. My work below expands on my earlier work on elemental imagination – see de Roo (2019).

33. In the following, my intention is to discuss Levinas’ philosophical notion of the elemental. I have had to bracket out the vexed issue of Levinas’ anti-representational aesthetics. Insightful takes on the issue of pictorial representation and Levinas are offered in Cooper (2006), Staehler (2010), and Krassoy (2016), cf. Davis (2019) for a critical reading of Levinasian film theory.

34. Elemental sensibility is more widely shared between existential phenomenologists: think, for instance, of Heidegger’s insistence on earth/world dichotomy; Sartre’s and Camus’ (literary) work; and Merleau-Pony’s philosophy of nature. Cf. Macauley (2010), 293–325.

35. Levinas develops his philosophy as uprooting Heidegger’s ‘being-in-the-world’. Cf. Fagenblat (2019) for a recent account of this philosophical background, and especially Levinas’ ‘double critique’ of Heidegger.

36. Besides Heidegger’s phenomenology, Levinas’ philosophy is in conversation with various traditions in religious (Talmudic) philosophy; his notion of transcendence obviously has theological connotations, yet for Levinas this nonetheless remains primarily an ethical encounter. As my primary aim is developing a conceptual description of the elemental, the following discussion must leave unexplored to what extent a technically mediated encounter is problematic for Levinas’ theological ground for ethics.

37. Levinas (1969 [1961], 131). I focus here, of course, exclusively on the elemental; the former two terms have been widely picked up in Levinasian philosophy – cf. Perpich (2019) for an overview of, and further references on, ‘the face of the Other’.

38. The following passage is based on Levinas (1969 [1961], 130–42); citations are from page 131, unless otherwise noted.

39. The translator’s rendering of the French ‘milieu’ as ‘medium’ picks up the Latin root of ‘in media res’: mi-lieu is placed in the midst of things; yet in addition, observe that in French, milieu has an environmental connotation, too, referring to surrounding nature. My uptake of this concept aims, of course, to resonate with this double connotation implied in Levinas’ use of the term ‘milieu’. I must emphasise, however, that Levinas’ ‘milieu’ cannot signify the sense of medium as vessel or channel for communication, and this evocative play on words is entirely mine.

40. Levinas complements Heidegger’s early ‘moody’ existentialism with a firm emphasis on the physical sensation of appreciating the surrounding elemental: being ‘thrown’ in the world becomes, instead, a ‘bathing’ in the world (Levinas 1969 [1961], 132–3).

41. It is important to indicate that this affective level of elements anticipates a political layer too, for The Searchers’ opening scene relies, of course, on an ideologically charged atmosphere where the threat posed by Native American Comanches gets first expressed in the haunting elemental environment. In developing this notion of elemental mediation, one cannot disregard the political-historical space in which cinematic entertainment takes place.

42. Elsewhere I have demonstrated the issues that arise when building a phenomenology of film too neatly on Heidegger’s earlier work – see de Roo (2024).

43. The image of the sheltering home or abode recurs, in fact, in Totality and Infinity: by setting up our home in the world – thus sheltered, yet open to the elements – one develops a sense of inner self (cf. Section II, ‘Interiority and Economy’). Levinas’ image of the home approaches the later Heideggerian, quasi-environmental sense of dwelling in the world (Heidegger 1971a).

44. Levinas’ translator Alphonso Lingis has developed this ethical dimension, with more emphasis on the sensuous experience of the living world; especially insightful is the notion of ‘the imperative’ for the elemental (1988, 1998). Dylan Trigg’s notion of ‘elemental horror’ (2017, Ch. 1) captures well that, for Levinas, the elemental is not necessarily agreeable.

45. Bachelard shares a significant overlap with Sallis’ notion of ‘elemental imagination’ (2000, 2012); the latter combines Levinas’ notion of the elemental with a deconstructive reading of the notion of imagination; unfortunately, there is not room to develop this overlap here.

46. In his early epistemology Bachelard indicates that the ‘first images’ of the natural, phenomenal world (2002a [1938], 20) are the starting point to develop the scientific mind.

47. For instance, the ‘Narcissus complex’ of water’s mirror image ([1983 [1942], Ch. 1) is quite different from the heavy depth of water as expressed by Edgar Allan Poe (Ch. 2); alternatively, the aerial dynamics of flight and falling express psychological poles of freedom and failure (1988 [1943], Ch. 1 and 2).

48. Bachelard seems to derive this idea from romantic post-Kantian aestheticians like Schelling and Fichte, who theorised imagination as an objective force, decoupled from the artist. While Bachelard is not very explicit about this background, Sallis gives a detailed account of this philosophical trajectory (cf. Sallis 2000, esp. 67–8). (Sallis rarely mentions Bachelard.)

49. Bachelard refers to Eugène Minkowski’s Vers une Cosmologie (1936) for first having coined ‘reverberation’ [retenticement]. Notice, too, that in the French verb ‘retentir’ echoes its cognate verb ‘retenir’ (to keep, to maintain), so that the acoustic metaphor also suggests something more lasting.

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Ludo de Roo

Ludo de Roo obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. His research combines phenomenological film-philosophy and ecomaterialist media theory. In ecocinema theory, he explores elemental approaches in environmental humanities and classic Chinese philosophy; in film-philosophy, he has co-edited a dossier on Heideggerian film-philosophy (for Film-Philosophy) and published in Projections.