Avengers' anti-Oedipal endgame

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 th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Distinktion (Aarhus) 2024-01, Vol.25 (1), p.56-70
Main Authors: Şima, Erdoğan H., Taşkale, Ali Rıza
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropocentrism
Anti-Oedipal
Avengers: Endgame
Crises
Crisis of agency
estrangement
Human agency
irony
Narratives
Recycling
Subjectivity
temporality
Time
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1600-910X
2159-9149
DOI:10.1080/1600910X.2022.2146732