Documentary Intersubjectivity

Abstract

In this paper, I propose that documentary can effectively navigate the slippage in idealism between solipsism and intersubjectivity. Following the pluralistic idealisms of Leibniz and Berkeley, as well as the dual-aspect monisms of Hegel and Schopenhauer, I develop a documentary monadology that establishes the ontological basis for documentary as a form of phenomenological description espoused by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. In this context, I employ Carolyn Forché’s poetry of witness to examine two documentaries – Burnat and Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras (2011) and Tatian Huezo’s Tempestad (2016). In analysing these works using documentary monadology and phenomenology, I arrive at contemporary feminisms of Haraway and Neimanis. These thinkers extend the previous discourses, and alongside a reframing of Grierson’s notion of the creative treatment of actuality, reveal documentary to be a form of situated knowledge in the idealist tradition and a site for posthumanist Husserlian intersubjectivity.