Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
Via Charles Péguy, the former socialist revolutionary and staunch anti-anti-Semite turned devout Catholic and eventually enthusiastic volunteer for battle upon the outbreak of the First World War, which took his life within days of entering the field, Dumont takes seriously (but for Dumont the serious is never without a dose of absurdity and irony, his problems coming in those comedies where he overdoses on these, badly: here, he skirts the line) the question of how it is possible for there to have been a figure who transfigures, in the singular locality of her psychic existence, in the feeling of being in advance of her time, and in the knowledge of the necessity of suffering, the difference between the “universality” of the Church and the collective locality of French nationalism, where this transfigurational capacity is what constitutes her angelic but fierce saintliness. Just as he takes seriously – or, at the very least, he takes it seriously as a necessary noetic experiment within the confines of the noetic laboratories that are the literary, philosophical and cinematic realms – the question of the role of transfiguration and transfigurational figures in the fostering of the philia, the spirit of social cohesion, required for any genuine process of national collective individuation.
Insofar as this is a question of the composition of scales through the operation of mysterious forces that exceed all these scales (even the universal), we can indeed call this intention cosmic. For Péguy, this is also the question of the composition of the three orders identified by Pascal (Maguire, Carnal Spirit, 2019, p. 87):
“As the methods of modern science were taking shape, Pascal had identified a ’carnal’ order of social, corporeal, material, political, and financial ambition and desire; an ’order of mind’ or conceptual understanding and genius; and finally, an ’order of love’, or charity. For Pascal these orders encompassed human experience, and the soul can move through them in an order of ascent, with the two lower orders finding their proper boundaries when understood from within the ultimate order of love. For Péguy, what is essentially modern is the ambition to achieve a loveless mastery and control over others and over experience through intellect, but without an organic, charitable relation to what is known and mastered, including one’s self.“
And it is a question of the impossible possibility of this composition in a world where the divine seems to have withdrawn, and where the sublunary realm is marked by the irreducibility of sin (even Jeanne’s task can get going only on the basis of a lie told to her father), or, we would prefer to say instead, with Bernard Stiegler, in an attempt to “dechristianize and tragedize these questions of desire and technics” (Stiegler, 2014b, p. 92), the irreducibility of “anthropy”.
Dumont finds a beautiful vehicle in which to incarnate all of this, in Lise Leplat Prudhomme, and clearly he should have embraced the artificiality of keeping the younger girl despite the passing of a few years. As soon as she is replaced by the older Jeanne Voisin, we feel the loss (which is not in any way the fault of the latter actress), and the impact of the final scenes is lessened as a result.
Insofar as this is a question of the composition of scales through the operation of mysterious forces that exceed all these scales (even the universal), we can indeed call this intention cosmic. For Péguy, this is also the question of the composition of the three orders identified by Pascal (Maguire, Carnal Spirit, 2019, p. 87):
“As the methods of modern science were taking shape, Pascal had identified a ’carnal’ order of social, corporeal, material, political, and financial ambition and desire; an ’order of mind’ or conceptual understanding and genius; and finally, an ’order of love’, or charity. For Pascal these orders encompassed human experience, and the soul can move through them in an order of ascent, with the two lower orders finding their proper boundaries when understood from within the ultimate order of love. For Péguy, what is essentially modern is the ambition to achieve a loveless mastery and control over others and over experience through intellect, but without an organic, charitable relation to what is known and mastered, including one’s self.“
And it is a question of the impossible possibility of this composition in a world where the divine seems to have withdrawn, and where the sublunary realm is marked by the irreducibility of sin (even Jeanne’s task can get going only on the basis of a lie told to her father), or, we would prefer to say instead, with Bernard Stiegler, in an attempt to “dechristianize and tragedize these questions of desire and technics” (Stiegler, 2014b, p. 92), the irreducibility of “anthropy”.
Dumont finds a beautiful vehicle in which to incarnate all of this, in Lise Leplat Prudhomme, and clearly he should have embraced the artificiality of keeping the younger girl despite the passing of a few years. As soon as she is replaced by the older Jeanne Voisin, we feel the loss (which is not in any way the fault of the latter actress), and the impact of the final scenes is lessened as a result.
Mini Review: Via Charles Péguy, Dumont takes seriously (but for Dumont the serious is never without a touch of absurdity and irony) the question of how it is possible for there to have been a figure who transfigures, in the singular locality of her psychic existence, the difference between the “universality” of the Church and the collective locality of French nationalism, where this transfigurational capacity is what constitutes her angelic but fierce saintliness.
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