Seizures of Chance

Abstract

This chapter explores temporality and analogical potentials in Pier Paolo Pasolini's screenplay about Saint Paul. Focusinng on Pasolini's novel, Petrolio, it asks what codes eventally emerge into operativity making events narratable, temporalized. Petrolio, it argues, can be read as a repetition of the quest to approach the codes or schēmata of and in the very appearing of narrativity, a quest on which linear temporal flows and coherent narrations of cause and effect often enough flounder or are inverted. It also considers the Paulinism of Jacques Lacan, the singular aura or surplus value in relation to religion, and the inversion of an image of cinematic rebellion into a form of normalizing participation within a more diffuse and consumerist political economy. Finally, it links a free-floating surplus of production within the economy of power relations to both the ancient Paul and his return in late capitalism.