Embodiment, Agency, and Ethics in Margarethe von Trotta’s Cinema: From Rosa Luxemburg (1986) to Hannah Arendt (2012)

Abstract:This article traces feminist filmmaking lineages from the New German Cinema into the twenty-first century via Margarethe von Trotta’s feature-length biopics. Conceptually, the article rethinks feminist authorship in response to twenty-first-century subject-critical frameworks, such as new materialism, Deleuzian philosophy, and actor-network theory. Connecting the third of these to feminist and queer performance studies and contemporary phenomenology, I propose a model of nonsovereign authorship that challenges traditional humanist (masculinist) conceptions of agency by emphasizing conditions and affordances of human embodiment and network entanglement. Importantly, this nonsovereignty does not void questions of intersectional feminist ethics and politics. Hannah Arendt’s focus on the Eichmann controversy and Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger together facilitate layered reflections on embodiment, agency, and ethics on the diegetic level. On the level of production, von Trotta’s long-term collaborations with Barbara Sukowa and Pamela Katz allow me to apply the concept of networked authorship to the legacies of second-wave feminist theory and practice.