The aporia of cinders and the aporetic structure of Hiroshima, mon amour

Date: 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m., Friday, October 28th, 2022
Place: Collaboration Room 1, Bldg.18, Komaba Ⅰ Campus, University of Tokyo

Speaker: Toni Hildebrandt（University of Bern）

Moderator: Yumi Matsui（University of Tokyo）
Commentator: Koichiro Kokubun（University of Tokyo）

Abstract:
My lecture presents a novel interpretation of the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) via a close reading of Jacques Derrida’s work, especially his late essay Cinders (feu la cendre), as well as Derrida’s and Sarah Kofman’s elaboration of the concept of (double) aporia. Hiroshima mon amour intertwines from the start two levels of narrative and discourse: it simultaneously tells a love story and reflects on the representability of a nuclear catastrophe. The lovers return again and again to the problem of naming Hiroshima and thereupon discussing the atomic bombing. The intertwining of the lovers’ bodies in the intimate space of the bedroom and the aporia of Hiroshima on the stage of world history opens up the aporetic field of discourse with a whole storm of discursive difficulties. Starting from the opening image of the fallout on the bodies of the lovers, I will unfold a specific aporetic structure that can only be understood when we repeatedly tie it back to the initial image and investigate the ambiguity of this material aporia. Ultimately this allows for the conception of a different aesthetic, beyond the classical categories of the beautiful and the sublime.

Language：English

Registration: Required
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Organized by: University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy （UTCP）

Co-organized by:
East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researcher, start-up grant（PI: Yumi Matsui）