The work of the invisible, the invisibilisation of work: The negation-image in Harun Farocki’s filmography

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyse the phenomenon of the invisibilisation of factory work through the film Arbeiter verlassen die fabrik [Workers Leaving the Factory] (Farocki, 1995). To this end, it examines the operations of what is referred to here as the negation-image, which determines the complex differential relationship between what we see and what we do not see in the factory images used by the German filmmaker, in the context of imagomachy—the political battle between images—and reflection-centredness—the epistemic battle between visual paradigms. The concept of the negation-image is explained here in three dimensions. The first involves the analysis of an essential structural feature of the first film in the history of cinema, La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (Louis Lumière, 1895); namely, that in every image there is something we see (in this case, the mirror image of cinema) and something we do not (the factory under capitalist conditions of production). The second dimension is the analysis of Farocki’s strategies for conceiving of this film based on the method of variations and the practices of reorganisation of the archives into categories. Finally, the third dimension defines the concept of the negation-image as a reflection on the political-epistemic nexus between the visible and the invisible.