Joan Copjec, "Twenty Shovelsful of Dirt"

"Fantasies of Capital: Alienation, Enjoyment, Psychoanalysis"
- A Jnanapravaha Mumbai Conference (December 16 - 18, 2016)
Day 3 / Session 3 - Joan Copjec, "Twenty Shovelsful of Dirt"
This paper is the final section of a longer project that explores the war on bodies and fatigue waged by capitalism. It confronts the biocapitalist conceptions of the two targeted terms with the quite different conceptions developed in psychoanalysis and grounds the analysis by focusing on a single film text, Abbas Kiarostami's 1997 film, Taste of Cherry. Set in a barren, flinty landscape, the film depicts Iran as a country suffering from battle fatigue and a man, Mr. Badii, who wants not simply to commit suicide, but to have an accomplice throw twenty shovelsful of dirt on his grave.