Objectivity, Speculative Realism, and the Cinematic Apparatus

This article argues that speculative realism can learn from film theory, especially Jean-Louis Baudry's apparatus theory. Two films—Tectonics (Peter Bo Rappmund, 2012) and Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, 2014)—are analyzed as calling attention to a reality beyond the human while simultaneously exposing cinema's limited ability to represent that reality. These self-reflexive gestures suggest that humans, like films, are implicated in a particular way of seeing from which they cannot escape. But this need not condemn us to a hopeless anthropocentrism, as by interrogating the limits of these perspectives we might make contact with the unrepresentable outside of thought.