In Excess: Sergei Eisentein's Mexico - Cineclub

had located in the mechanization of life. Eisenstein critiques Bergson’s
vitalism as being merely a polemical tool against positivism, and proposes
instead a dialectical model best embodied, according to Eisenstein, in
Posada’s work. The main drive of this essay lies in the distinction Eisenstein
draws between what he calls the formal properties of dialectical
thinking, and the “true” dialectical process. This distinction, according
to him, illuminates the nature of laughter: “A structure becomes funny
when while distorting the dialectics in its essence, in its form it has the
pretensions to all the signs and elements of a true dialectical process. The
condition for a comic structure is its nondialectical essence accompanied
by formal dialectical features.” 57 Eisenstein then illustrates this rather
tricky distinction through an example of the way that prelogical thinking
is related to true dialectical processes. This is where his experience in
Mexico is once again accorded central importance, and Posada is used as
the main illustration of Eisenstein’s dialectics.
Prelogical (or sensuous or primitive) thinking fascinated Eisenstein
in the period around the making of ¡Que Viva Mexico! Moreover, it often
seems very diffi cult to tell whether he is advocating a return to the
older forms of perception—the ways of regress, as he himself terms them
in his notes to Method—and whether this return would be derived fi rst
from aesthetic activity, from which it would insinuate itself into the social
whole, or whether the method that he tries to formulate is, in fact,
something quite different. It is to be noted that we started the discussion
of the “Prologue” by considering the consequences of this ambiguity.
Having come full circle along with Eisenstein’s fi lm via a tour of Mexican
history and culture, we are now returning to the same problem. How
does one read Eisenstein’s “regress” and his insistence on the key importance
of prelogical thought as anything but politically and artistically
regressive? How can one place this concept, which became so central for
Eisenstein, in relation to his insistence on the dialectical nature of his
theoretical framework? As a result of this diffi culty, Eisenstein scholars
have either ignored this later development of his thought, as did most
earlier scholars, or insisted on a complete switch, as do David Bordwell
and, more recently, Oksana Bulgakowa—a switch from the “dialectical”
Eisenstein to the “organic” Eisenstein. However, Eisenstein at the end of
his life explained this relationship as follows, referring specifi cally to his
experiences in Mexico:
It has long been noted that prelogic in the nature of its expression
is almost literally identical to dialectical formulations. There
is, however, a big difference between a similarity in essence and a
168 : chapter four