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Article Excerpt
If [...] matter is the inverse of consciousness, if consciousness is
action unceasingly creating and enriching itself, whilst matter is action continually unmaking itself or using itself up, then neither matter nor consciousness can be explained apart from one another. --Henri Bergson, "Life and Consciousness" [I]mmortality cannot be proved experimentally. --Henri Bergson, "The Soul and the Body"
The short novel La invencion de Morel by Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999), praised by author and friend Jorge Luis Borges who wrote the book's prologue, has been rightly considered a notable example of fantastic literature (Suarez Coalla) in the same vein as H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau (Levine, "Science" 1981). Along with this irreproachable, if evident, comparison critics have explored the many dimensions of the work and have noted the significant connections between it and Derridean critique (Dowling), the work of Gilles Deleuze (Silva Echeto and Browne), the existence of post-scientific subjects (Kantaris), intertextuality (E. Smith), the discourse of perfection (Gonzalez), the psychoanalytic view of self (Snook), narration and representation (Fort), Borges's short story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (Block de Behar), parody (Levine, "Parody"), and of course the fiction/reality dichotomy (Rogachevsky). While its plot is certainly quite fantastic, and while it does merit this plurality of approaches, I believe that the fundamental trope of the novel--a three-dimensional cinematic recording machine on a remote island--suggests not merely the somewhat sensational importance of a play between fiction and reality considered in themselves, but, moreover, the crucial role that the distinct categories of space and time fulfill in our common perception and our theoretical practice. In this sense, La invencion de Morel may be considered Bergsonian.
The present account is by no means a study of the historical connection between Henri Bergson and Bioy Casares. Even so, it is important to note in passing that such an influence was plausible. Both the Argentine author and his frequent collaborator Borges were at some point familiar with the French philosopher, (1) whose works were translated into the Spanish language as early as 1900. (2) Certainly, Bergson exercised some degree of influence on the Spanish Generacion del '98, which can be seen as a precursor of the avant-garde narratives of the forties in Argentina. In an interview, Bioy Casares has admitted that he developed the short story "Historia desaforada" around a remark he purports Bergson made on the topic of intelligence (Sorrentino 204), (3) yet it is difficult to be precise regarding a conscious Bergsonian influence on the design of La invencion de Morel. Far more important than the possibility of a direct influence is the undeniable fact that they both shared a fundamental concern for larger philosophical questions and their concrete consequences. Bioy Casares shared with Bergson an interest in exploring the nature of not only time and space (see E. Smith), but also perception. Like Bergson's writings, La invencion de Morel underscores and ultimately dissolves the opposition between subjective and objective viewpoints, soul (mind) and body (matter), and even filmic representations and represented geographical space.
This essay will argue from a Bergsonian perspective, (4) first, that the problematic separation of space and time implicit in Morel's invention has philosophical roots and, second, that this philosophical schism presents methodological consequences of great interest to recent directions in the disciplines of film studies and geographical theory. Throughout, La invencion de Morel will serve as both illustration of, and simultaneous challenge to, the ill-founded schism between space and time. In fact, the cinematic apparatus at the heart of Bioy Casares's novel serves as a concrete, if fantastic, introduction to the recent and powerful methodological shifts that have brought film studies and geography together (see Cresswell and Dixon). Although Morel's machine is ultimately unsuccessful as a solution to immortality, its presence works to successfully explode that ill-founded perennial opposition between ideas/imaginaries on one side and material realities on the other. This essay will, thus, explore the pernicious effects of separating ideal and material realties, temporal consciousness and spatial extension, memory and matter--in short, time and space. Rather than introducing Bergson's concepts and the trends of film and geography theory first, this paper starts with the concrete and moves toward the theoretical, moving from Bioy Casares's narrative to a broad characterization of trends in film studies and critical geography. A discussion of the novel itself first serves to introduce the key methodological conceit of Bergsonian philosophy, which, in turn, is harnessed to explain the relevance of the recent methodological fusion of film and geography. Thus, the essay retains an emphasis on the importance of film through both the novel and Bergson's "cinemtaographical" metaphor for knowledge, while simultaneously moving from literary to philosophical to geographical concerns. What results from each of these interdisciplinary connections is a notion of process that defies traditional disciplinary boundaries and rejects the static oppositions that Bergson noted were characteristic of the intellect. The soul is thus reconciled with the body, mind with matter, and film space with geographical space.
At the heart of Bioy Casares's novel, on an island in the Western Pacific, there is a cinematic apparatus that harnesses the power of the tides. The purpose of this machine, as per the designs of its inventor, Morel, is to capture, produce, and, thus, recreate the images of a visiting group that the latter had brought to the island for just that purpose. The images projected by Morel's machine are three dimensional holograms with not only visual and sonorous, but also tactile and olfactory components. These holograms prove to be so life-like that, long after Morel and the group have gone, a nameless fugitive fleeing to the island takes them for real living beings. The thoughts and movements of this nameless fugitive, his fear, curiosity, and struggle to comprehend the peculiar nature of what he is experiencing, constitute the novel's narrative. Intercalated in the fugitive's text is a written speech in which Morel explains the cinematic machine he has created:
With my machine a person or an animal or a thing is like the station that broadcasts the concert you hear on the radio. If you turn the dial for olfactory waves, you will smell the jasmine perfume on Madeleine's throat, without seeing her. By turning the dial of the tactile waves, you will be able to stroke her soft, invisible hair and learn, like the blind, to know things by your hands. But if you turn all the dials at once, Madeleine will be reproduced completely, and she will appear exactly as she is; you must not forget that I am speaking of images extracted from mirrors, with the sounds, tactile sensations, flavors, odors, temperatures, all synchronized perfectly. An observer will not realize that they are images. And if our images were to appear now, you yourselves would not believe...
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