Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.4W2

[The first item to note about the movie, Brazil, is that the object that brings society into organization is purely nonsensical.  The object is “security”, which makes no sense at all, since the security apparatus tortures and kills innocent people, attempting to identify members of the resistance.

This nonsensical object resonates with Rene Girard’s “conflictual mimesis”, where a mimetic rivalry loses sight of “what they were fighting over” (acquisitive mimesis) and focuses purely on confronting the demonic other (thinkanti-object).  In conflictual mimesis, each rival appears as a double with respect to the other.

Brazil artfully points out that the one of the doubles does not have to actually exist.  The “rival” (here, the terroristic resistance) may be the projection of an anti-object by a pro-object sovereign.  This explains why innocent people are rounded up and tortured while the security apparatus can never find the terrorists.

Do the terrorists even exist?

Well, they must be. Bombs are going off everywhere.  Or maybe, the bombs are overloaded environmental conditioning ducts.

The second item to note is that thinkdivine makes it appearance through dreamy fantasies that interpellate the hero’s impossible journey.  Recall, the relation between “the denial of lawessential” and “lawessential” is that of “impossibility”.

As the movie goes, the dream is actualized, by a synchronic event, and this leads to madness (chaos) and capture (control), fulfilling the logic of thinkpro-object, stigmatizing and punishing the naïve, confused and innocent thinkanti-object hero.

The third item to note is that the only option for the subject is withdrawal into Nothingness.  In Nothingness, the hero finds salvation.  In Nothingness, the security apparatus blames the victim.

Here, Rene Girard has spoken most eloquently on the uniqueness of Christ as the way into the Nothingness of the Eclipse of Thinkdivine.]