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ABSTRACT
How do we deal with the inescapability of the political present? In making sense of an all too binding temporality such as the Anthropocene, we seem to find a standpoint in the crisis of the human agency. This political convenience is arguably what the Avengers’ endgame exposes: they survive their failing powers insofar as they ironize their agency. This article critically engages with our relationship to the seemingly inescapable anthropocentrism, specifically in the way it is ironically mirrored in Avengers: Endgame. The film thrives on a narrative ‘escape from human temporality, precisely by staging an atemporal agency. The narrative estrangement to the temporal norms makes crucial but subtle use of alternate history’s paradigmatic ‘what if’ to ironize the ‘human’ power. Avengers’ diegetic embrace of the non-diegetic crisis of agency stands in opposition to the neo-Malthusian ideal of escaping the inescapable. The political appeal of their endgame seems to lie with a shift of subjectivity: from intervening in their present to taking flight from the present. Beyond its cinematic framing Avengers’ endgame can be deemed, after Deleuze & Guattari, anti-Oedipal as it enacts the recycling of the anthropocentric conception of agency.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 It is that same ongoing sense of enduring crisis and a momentary illusion of ‘escape’ that expresses itself in the tragic heroism of Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005), Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018), Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019); in the focus on the contingently intersecting projects and lives in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (2014) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017); and in such gamified entanglements between becoming-human and the more-than-human agencies of Stray (Annapurna Interactive, 2022), Goat Simulator (Coffee Stain Studios, 2014) and Deeeer Simulator (Gibier Games, 2020).
2 After Michel Foucault who, in his Preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, states that ‘the individual is the product of power’; so it is ripe to be ‘de-individualized’ through ‘multiplication and displacement’ (Citation1983, xii).
3 See Mark See (Citation1983).
4 ‘[B]ecoming posthuman’, puts the emphasis on ‘anxieties concerning time: the longing to correct mistakes of the past, the panic of living in a hypersensitive present, and the fear of the premediated future’ (Ames cited in Schmeink Citation2017, 192). According to James Williams, ‘[t]o be posthuman is to become alien in many different ways at the same time’ (Braidotti and Hlavajova Citation2018, 28).
5 ‘China Bans Time Travel’. The New Yorker, April 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/china-bans-time-travel
6 As suggested in Anti-Oedipus: ‘Good people say that we must not flee, that to escape is not good, that it isn’t effective, and that one must work for reforms. But the revolutionary knows that escape is revolutionary […] provided one sweeps away the social cover on leaving’ (Deleuze and Guattari Citation1983, 277).
7 After Kathrin Thiele’s comparison of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to Tournier’s anti-Robinsonade. In the latter, we encounter a strange Robinson; he is ‘necessarily becoming-other in a situation that is utterly other to him’ (Thiele Citation2012, 60).
8 Tellingly, the film’s opening score is Traffic’s dark-toned yet playful Dear Mr. Fantasy.
9 It may not be possible to grasp ‘the present-day planetary condition of humanity’ except as an ‘extraordinary situation’ characterized by the absence of ‘order’ (Tyszczuk Citation2014, 70)
10 Freud has argued that ‘self ’s formation of a stable border between itself and the world ‘is accompanied by ‘a tendency to want to destroy or annihilate that distance’ (cited in Colebrook Citation2014, 18).
11 ‘The software (designed by Lawrence Livermore Labs) is called Persistics after the concept of persistent ISR – intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance – is tasked with identifying objects on the ground, and then tracking them indefinitely’ (See: Anthony, S. 2013. DARPA shows off 1.8-gigapixel surveillance drone, can spot a terrorist from 20,000 feet. ExtremeTech. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146909-darpa-shows-off-1-8-gigapixel-surveillance-drone-can-spot-a-terrorist-from-20000-feet)
12 As one of the creators of MCU admits: ‘we never said, “We’re going to make a cinematic universe.” We said, “We want to make a great Iron Man movie”’. See Holdier (Citation2018).
13 We cannot help but recognize the familiarly ‘complicated problem’ of overpopulation as inherently prone to anthropocentric simplification, as the issue of ‘too many people’” (See JV Chamary. 2018. Is Thanos Right About Overpopulation In ‘Avengers: Infinity War?. Forbes. 30 April 2018. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2018/04/30/avengers-infinity-war-overpopulation/?sh=2fca31021c58
14 See: Mignolo (Citation2012).
15 Foucault cited in Leonard (Citation2005).
16 This point is inspired by Holbraad’s ‘Preamble for E.V. de Castro’s The Relative Nature ‘where he discusses anthropology’s role as ‘multiplying our world’, as opposed to ‘explaining the world of the other’. See: Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. no. 3(3): 469–471. p. 492.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Erdoğan H. Şima
Erdoğan H. Şima is a Ph.D. researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland. The focus of his research is on the emergent subjectivities that challenge the ontological coherence of the neoliberal conception of security. His research has been published in New Political Science and Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook. He is currently completing a dissertation titled ‘“Placeless” defense: The normative turn in military technology’.
Ali Rıza Taşkale
Ali Rıza Taşkale is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University. During 2021–2022 he held an associate professorship at Near East University, Department of Political Science. His research has been published in Distinktion, Thesis Eleven, Rethinking Marxism, Northern Lights, Critique, New Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, Third Text, Theory, Culture & Society and Journal for Cultural Research, along with a number of book chapters in edited volumes. His book, Post-Politics in Context, is published by Routledge (2016). He's currently working on a project that explores the logical and structural relationship between speculative fiction and speculative finance.