Page - 95 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

94 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 construction has been tied to dismantling and deconstructing the reigning stand- ards of cinematic expression while simultaneously living up to the principle his hero Pierrot le Fou read to himself: “Language of poetry rises from the ruins.”29 INSTRUCTIVENESS OF GODARD’S CONCEPTUAL APPROACH FOR NATURAL SCIENCES AND BEYOND It is not unusual to find inspiration and guidance in a person who creatively ex- presses herself in a domain of the sciences, arts or humanities completely dif- ferent from the one in which one expresses oneself. Natural scientist as I am, dividing my efforts between research and teaching, I unreservedly live up to this dual role that artistic creation as envisioned by Godard and his New Wave com- rades ought to embody. Correspondingly, I believe that scientific presentations at conferences or in journals should always implicitly question the dominant presentation styles and methodological paradigms in parallel with providing meaningful basic and/or practical findings. To that end, my vision of a prolific scientist coincides with Godard’s vision of a complete artist as the one who uses his/her art to cleverly question the norms that dominate the field, while simul- taneously telling an inspirational story and enriching the collective knowledge or ethos of humanity. However, as must have been known to Godard, following such an approach causes many doors to be shut in one’s face, the reason being the sheepish, gate-guarding, paradigm-obeying inclinations of the typical recog- nized member of academia and of reigning artistic circles. The interdisciplinary promiscuity of attempts to restore romanticism and renaissance in the heart of scientific enterprise, at times as playful and seditious as Nana from Vivre sa vie, will thus be punished by professional extermination by the regular straitlaced members of the academic universe, much like the treatment that awaited Nana herself or Joan of Arc, whom Nana sobbingly watched from the dark of the Pan- théon theater at 13 rue Victor Cousin. “Follow that man; persecute Godard”,30 the Spanish film critic Manolo Marinero wrote at the peak of Godard’s assault on the art of cinema, and much the same whisperings ring behind the back of all those who walk through the fields of science in a style straightforwardly as- saultive to anything phony, insipid, and unpoetic in it. Regardless of these per- secutions, you and I should not cease to live up to the ideal of being Lemmy Cautions, souls on a mission to crash the cold, deterministic brain behind the wheels of modern science and use poetry to conquer the sterilely rigid mecha- nism governing its workings, a mechanism run by a computer program, not the infinitely lively, unpredictable, and imaginative human intelligence. 29 Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1965), 00:45:20. 30 Aller 2014.