Jakub Babuśka
(University of Warsaw, University of Edinburgh)
Dorota Orzechowska
(University of Warsaw, University College London)
Abstract:
This paper investigates the concept of cruelty the cinematic exploration of violence in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence. The focus will be placed on the character of Tigrero, played by Klaus Kinski, who is ruthless bounty hunter who stands out from the usual cliché by achieving his cruel and clandestine deeds always adhering to normative law and abstaining from manifesting his desire. The aim of this paper is to examine whether violence exercised by a desiring subject is still thinkable. The key coordinates for this exploration will be provided by oeuvres of three authors, namely Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, and Antonin Artaud.
Lacan, in a lesser-known chapter of his Écrits, contrasts the Marquis de Sade’s ‘delight in evil’ with Kant’s universal imperative, ultimately suggesting that the pursuit of absolute cruelty – or its opposite, absolute altruism – requires the erasure of the subject as an enjoying being.
Furthermore, Baudrillard’s analysis of the era of simulation, complemented by Adam Curtis’s I Can’t Get You Out of My Head, underscores a contemporary landscape where cruelty seems to lose its substance, becoming a spectacle without real consequence.
Finally, the inclusion of Artaud further directs this inquiry. The Theater of Cruelty, which demands a visceral, transformative experience that shatters the boundaries between reality and representation, contrasts sharply with the cold, detached cruelty of institutions depicted in The Great Silence and Baudrillard’s world of simulacres.
Despite the intensity of political hysteria, outcomes that once might have threatened reality now merely reinforce the status quo. Hence, in these hyperreal times, we need to find out how to address more diffused cruelty which is detached both from subjectivity and from its old-fashioned transgressive allure.
Bios:
Jakub Babuśka graduated with an LLB from the University of Warwick and an MA in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London. He is currently continuing his legal studies at the University of Warsaw and is set to start a PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
Dorota Orzechowska holds a Mechanical Engineering degree (MEng) from the University of Warwick and is now studying for an MSc in Data Science and Ecology at University College London, as well as pursuing a Master’s in Philosophy at the University of Warsaw.
