Melancholy and Darkness. Dilemmas of Subjectivity in the Dark series

Article Sidebar

Imagen de portada realizada por Julio Pantoja. Buenos Aires. 2017. Restos de un afiche sobre una pared de la ex Esma. En el poster desgarradp se alcanza a ver una foto de Pablo Lasansky tomada el 30 de marzo de 1982 de la represión a la marcha obrera de la CGT.
PDF (Español (España))
Published: Dec 13, 2023
Keywords:
melancholy; TV series; subjectivity; affections; Julia Kristeva.

Main Article Content

Ariel Gómez Ponce
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Abstract

Dark is a German TV series that, despite its obsession with time travel and the end of time, portrays melancholy as its predominant emotional experience. To account for this, the article recovers some arguments from Julia Kristeva’s semiology: a theoretical conception that historicizes the meaning of affects as a modality of significance that constitutes subjectivity. In Kristeva’s terms, melancholy deploys an affective semiotics that is linked to fragility of love, finding its resonances in corporality, but also in a decentred temporality that would respond to the depressive economy of postmodern culture. Netflix fiction inventively presents this melancholic pathos, not only capturing epochal breaks related to subjectivity and its way of inhabiting time, but also proposing such affect as an dark tonality that flows throughout its visuality, more specifically through those procedures of representation linked to chromaticism, temperatures and aesthetic composition. From this reading, the article seeks to demonstrate how Dark manages to make melancholy a matter of content, but also of form.


 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Gómez Ponce, A. (2023). Melancholy and Darkness. Dilemmas of Subjectivity in the Dark series. Heterotopías, 6(12), 1–23. Retrieved from https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/heterotopias/article/view/43630
Issue
Vol. 6 No. 12 (2023): Discourses, representations, and appropriations of the contemporary city. A look at urban habitation
Section
Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Those authors who have publications with this journal, accept the following terms: Those authors who have publications with this journal, accept the following terms:


a. The authors will keep their copyright and guarantee to the journal the right of first publication of their work, which will be simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike (by-nc-sa) Attribution License; no commercial use of the original work or any derivative works is allowed, the distribution of which must be done with a license equal to the one that regulates the original work.

b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., deposit it in an institutional telematic archive or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.

c. Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work through the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematic archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which may lead to interesting exchanges and increase the number of citations of the published work. (See The effect of open access).

 

Author Biography

Ariel Gómez Ponce, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

 

Ariel Gómez Ponce is Assistant Researcher at the Center for Research and Studies on Culture and Society (CONICET and National University of Córdoba, Argentina). He holds a PhD in Semiotics, is a Professor of Spanish as a Mother Tongue and Foreign Language at the UNC, and has a Post-Doctorate in Social Sciences. Currently, he is the Director of the research program "Studies on Pop Culture. Local forms, global designs and semiotics of the popular" (CEA, FCS, UNC) and as Academic Coordinator of the PhD in International Studies (CEA, FCS, UNC). In addition to numerous specialized articles, he has published the book Depredadores. Fronteras de lo humano y series de TV (Babel, 2017), has edited with Pampa Arán the book Fredric Jameson: una poética de las formas sociales. Claves conceptuales (Edicea, 2020) and, together with Silvia Barei, Lotman revisitado. Perspectivas latinoamericanas (Edicea, 2022). From the perspective of a materialist semiotics of culture (Bakhtin, Lotman, Kristeva, Jameson), he is dedicated to the study of current popular and mass culture, problematizing how television series question subjectivities in late capitalism.

References

Arfuch, L. (2016). El “giro afectivo”. Emociones, subjetividad y política. deSignis, 24, 245-254.

Amícola, J. (2003). La batalla de los géneros. Novela gótica versus novela de educación. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora.

Arán, P. (2016). Julia Kristeva, audaz lectora de Bajtín. En Arán, P. (ed.). La herencia de Bajtín. Reflexiones y migraciones (pp. 17-34). Córdoba: Edicea.

Bartra, R. (2021). Melancolía y cultura. Las enfermedades del alma en la España del Siglo de Oro. Barcelona: Anagrama.

bo Odar B. y Friese J. [creadores] (2017-2020). Dark [serie de televisión]. Temporada 1-3. Alemania: Wiedemann & Berg - Netflix.

Bontems, V y Lohoucq, R. (2019). Las ideas negras de la física. Agujeros, materia y cuerpos: por qué abunda lo oscuro. Buenos Aires: Autoría Editorial.

Bordelois, I. (2006). Etimología de las pasiones. Buenos Aires: Libros del Zorzal.

Colquhoun, M. (2021). Egreso. Sobre comunidad, duelo y Mark Fisher. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra.

Crespo, I. (2017). “Dark”, misterio sin nostalgia. El País, edición digital. Recuperado de https://elpais.com/cultura/2017/12/01/television/1512131212_503549.html

Culleré, C. (2008). Un oscuro esplendor. El doble y el laberinto en la novela gótica. Córdoba: Editorial Babel.

Elgue-Martini, C. (2008). Melancolía y nostalgia: Algunas reflexiones teóricas. Revista de Culturas y Literaturas Comparadas, 2(1), 11-22.

Greimas, A. (2022). Da nostalgia. Estudo de semântica lexical. Estudos Semióticos, 18(1), 1-8.

Gómez Ponce, A. (2021). Dark, o el ocaso de la temporalidad. En Duarte J. (comp.). Spoilers del presente. Ver series para ser de nuestra época (pp. 199-214). Córdoba: Editorial Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

Gómez Ponce, A. (2022). It’s not an affect: It’s HBO. Los afectos en los tiempos seriales del capitalismo tardío. En Aguilar Alcalá, S. y Gómez Camarena, C. (eds.), La venganza de la televisión: el audiovisual contemporáneo y sus nuevas preguntas (pp. 79-100). México: Editorial Universidad Iberoamericana.

Illouz, E. (2012). Por qué duele el amor. Una explicación sociológica. Barcelona: Katz.

Ivanov, V. (2002). Bosque. En R. Acosta (ed.). El árbol del mundo. Diccionario de imágenes, símbolos y términos mitológicos (pp. 85-88). La Habana: Criterios.

López Seoane, M. (2023). Donde está el peligro. Estéticas de la disidencia sexual. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora.

Jameson, F. (1996). La teoría de la posmodernidad. Madrid: Editorial Trotta.

Jameson, F. (2014). El fin de la temporalidad. En Jameson, F. Las ideologías de la teoría (pp. 752-778). Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia

Klein, E. [creador] (2021). Time, explained. Explained [serie de televisión]. Temporada 3, Episodio 12. Estados Unidos: Vox / Netflix.

Kristeva, J. (1986). Al comienzo era el amor. Psicoanálisis y fe. Barcelona: Gedisa.

Kristeva, J. (1988). Poderes de la perversión. Ensayo sobre Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.

Kristeva, J. (1995). Las nuevas enfermedades del alma. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.

Kristeva, J. (2009). Historias de amor. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.

Kristeva, J. (2015). Sol negro. Depresión y melancolía. Buenos Aires: Editorial Waldhuter.

Kristeva, J. (2019). Cada sesión es una poética, cada persona una poesía. Una conversación con Julia Kristeva. Entrevista por Mariano Horenstein. Calibán. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicoanálisis, 17(1), s/n.

Negroni, M. (2015). La noche tiene mil ojos. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra.

Paris, D. (2003). Julia Kristeva y la gramática de la subjetividad. Madrid: Campo de Ideas.

Sarlo, B. (2003). La pasión y la excepción. Eva, Borges y el asesinato de Aramburu. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.