every day words disappear | Michael Hardt on the Politics of Love

In Jean Luc Godard’s film classic Alphaville, a woman (played by Anna Karina) tries to express her feelings. "Help me", she says to the man beside her, because she has no idea how to say it: all words for love and affection have been banned from the vocabulary of the totalitarian city of Alphaville.

This scene forms the prelude to political philosopher Michael Hardt’s ponderings. Unlike Machiavelli, who in his famous treatise Il Principe advised future rulers that it is better to be feared than loved, Hardt suggests a society based on love as an answer to a world that suffers from permanent war. Not romantic, sexual love, but the recognition of the capacity for thought and action, and an affirmation of community spirit through joy, as he observed in recent popular uprisings.

Grimonprez continually intercuts Hardt’s argument with central scenes from Alphaville as a characterization of a dystopian society dictated by cruelty and fear. In this combination of documentary and fiction, Godard’s film acquires an unexpectedly topical dimension.