ABSTRACT

How do we deal with the inescapability of the political present? In making sense of an all too binding temporality such as the Anthropocene, we seem to find a standpoint in the crisis of the human agency. This political convenience is arguably what the Avengers’ endgame exposes: they survive their failing powers insofar as they ironize their agency. This article critically engages with our relationship to the seemingly inescapable anthropocentrism, specifically in the way it is ironically mirrored in Avengers: Endgame. The film thrives on a narrative ‘escape from human temporality, precisely by staging an atemporal agency. The narrative estrangement to the temporal norms makes crucial but subtle use of alternate history’s paradigmatic ‘what if’ to ironize the ‘human’ power. Avengers’ diegetic embrace of the non-diegetic crisis of agency stands in opposition to the neo-Malthusian ideal of escaping the inescapable. The political appeal of their endgame seems to lie with a shift of subjectivity: from intervening in their present to taking flight from the present. Beyond its cinematic framing Avengers’ endgame can be deemed, after Deleuze & Guattari, anti-Oedipal as it enacts the recycling of the anthropocentric conception of agency.

摘要

我们如何应对政治当下的不可避免？在理解诸如人类世这样过于束缚的时间性时，我们似乎在人类机构的危机中找到了一个立足点。这种政治上的便利可以说是复仇者联盟的结局所暴露的：只要他们讽刺他们的机构，他们就能在他们失败的权力中幸存下来。这篇文章批判性地探讨了我们与看似不可避免的人类中心主义的关系，特别是它在复仇者联盟中具有讽刺意味的反映方式：Endgame. 这部电影的成功在于叙事“逃离人类的时间性，恰恰是通过上演一个非时间性的机构”。对时间规范的叙事疏远使得交替历史的范式“假设”成为讽刺“人类”力量的关键但微妙的使用。复仇者联盟对代理人的非剧情危机的剧情拥抱与逃避不可避免的新马尔萨斯主义理想背道而驰。他们残局的政治吸引力似乎在于主观性的转变：从干预他们的现在到逃离现在。除了其电影框架之外，复仇者联盟的结局可以被视为，在德勒兹和加塔利之后，反俄狄浦斯，因为它制定了以人类为中心的代理概念的循环。