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Eye witness – memorialising humanity in Steve McQueen’s Hunger

2009; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s1744552309990127

1744-5531

Eugene McNamee,

Foucault, Power, and Ethics

This paper builds on a developing field of enquiry regarding the potency of film as an intervention into normative patterns in popular culture which are recognisable in a legal pluralist sense, and that relate to more standard legal analyses of constitutional development. The argument is developed that Steve McQueen in Hunger has made a film which marries a particular filmic formal device of lingering on highly aestheticised details of human behaviour with an overall filmic sensibility of refusing ‘politics’ in favour of ‘humanity’. The film demonstrates a resounding success, both in critical terms and in having the film accepted on its own terms of ‘humanity’. The suggestion in this paper is that the ongoing processes of ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland and other post-conflict societies may have something to learn from the marriage of idea and aesthetic form in Hunger . ‘People say, “Oh, it’s a political film” but for me it’s essentially about what we, as humans, are capable of, morally, physically, psychologically. What we will inflict and what we will endure.’ (McQueen, quoted in O’Hagan, 2008)