Terror and Awe

Abstract

In Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia de la luz(2010), the relatives of those imprisoned and disappeared in Chile’s Atacama desert search for the bodies of their loved ones. Simultaneously, archaeologists examine traces of the pre-Columbian societies that inhabited the area and astronomers explore the origins of the universe by analyzing light emitted from distant stars. Moving through these diverse regions of the past, the film variously captures anthropological, archaeological, geological, and cosmological durations. In contrast to interpretations which propose that this depiction of temporality allows for healing following Chile’s brutal dictatorship, this chapter employs Henri Bergson’s conception of time, Greg Hainge’s ontology of noise, and Jane Bennett’s conception of enchanted materialism to propose that Guzman’s film transmits awe and terror to the audience in an embodied manner. Reflecting on the religious connotations of Guzmán’s film in the light of the work of León Rozitchner and Gustavo Gutiérrez, the chapter proposes that the film is underpinned by the logic of the felix culpa and becomes an act of communion designed to reactivate past political struggles. This is to say that, at once scientific and theological, Nostalgia de la luz establishes the foundation for an immanent posthuman politics.