Intersubjectivity and the cinematic thing: diasporic Being-with in Claire Denis’s 35 Rhums

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that Claire Denis’s 35 Rhums (2008) emphasizes everyday things as mediators of intersubjective connectivity. The film’s repeated shots of household appliances (rice cookers), transportation (trains, cars), and infrastructure (urban buildings, tracks) combine with a visual style – organized around what the article terms the synthetic montage of things – that highlights the characters’ intersubjectivity. To build upon these claims, the article draws on the concept of Mit-sein or Being-with, a term developed by Martin Heidegger in his Being and Time (1927). The introduction of ‘Being-with’ in the analysis of 35 Rhums helps to demonstrate the significance of things in the context of intersubjective exchange. The article contends that the film goes beyond Heidegger’s limited thinking on the subject through its emphatic affirmation of a black diaspora in a French context. Cinematically, this affirmation counters the representational practices of much of both classic and contemporary cinema, which, the article argues, has tended toward a whitewashed vision of France.