The poetics of the ‘not yet’ in The Suspended Step of the Stork

Abstract

This paper looks at Theo Angelopoulos’ The Suspended Step of the Stork (1992) using John Holloway’s formulation of the theory of the ‘not yet’ (after Ernst Bloch). It suggests that the film denies a social reality where the subject is defined through the ontology of being (identity) and presents instead the subject as part of a social flow of doing. I will illustrate how this flow is embedded in the poetics of the film through the blurring of the ontological separation between subject and object in the element of ‘wandering’ split between the main character Alexandros, an old immigrant recluse and the increasing number of immigrants held at the national borders. I will also explore how the film reflects on the increasing number of national borders in the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century as signs of fixity and fragmentation. Subsequently, as seen in the film, it is the phenomenon of immigration that challenges notions of static identities and sustains the social flow of doing along with the hope of a radical change to the existing social conditions of today.