The Political Uncanny, or the Return of the Repressed: Caché

Abstract

Suture opens up the possibility of a reference to a radically conceived outside of film that cannot be integrated diegetically in a simple way. This aesthetics is based on a mode of film that does not superimpose but endures this radical, unbridgeable gap. This becomes political with regard to the constitution of the subject kept open in this way, which is neither interpellatively nor narratively closed. It is the constant perceptible presence of the Absent One that history allows to seep into films, as I demonstrate in an analysis of Michael Haneke’s Caché. In Caché the gaze of the videos articulates the historical guilt of the protagonist and reveals his entire social and political positioning.