January 11, 1983
There we are! So, for each type of image, I have: on one hand, signs of bipolar composition, on the other hand, signs of genesis or extinction, at least, by type of image I will then have. But far from organizing them, it is not a rule, but I will have a minimum, I do not know what the maximum will be, it will be to your taste, we can always make others, above all, we can always create other types as well. No, it’s not quite an organization table; it’s an open-choice table of categories. You can create as many as you want.
Seminar Introduction
In the second year of Deleuze’s consideration of cinema and philosophy, he commences the year by explaining that whereas he usually changes topics from one year to the next, he feels compelled to continue with the current topic and, in fact, to undertake a process of “philosophy in the manner of cows, rumination… I want entirely and truly to repeat myself, to start over by repeating myself.” Hence, the 82-83 Seminar consists in once again taking up Bergson’s theses on perception, but now with greater emphasis on the aspects of classification of images and signs drawn from C.S. Peirce. This allows Deleuze to continue the shift from considering the movement-image, that dominated early 20th century cinema, toward a greater understanding of the post-World War II emphasis on the time-image.
For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, all of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki, and with the generous assistance of Marc Haas.
English Translation
Buster Keaton in Beckett’s “Film”
Calling this return to his analysis of Peirce’s three categories and the nine classes of signs a “blackboard session” (hence, numerous gaps in the recording), Deleuze lays out the links between the categories and previously identified images. With at least two signs of composition (with two poles) per image, this proliferation of four signs per image type serves to expand an open list of approximately twenty types of signs. Referring to Beckett’s “Film” and Pasolini’s cinema theory, Deleuze proposes signs for the perception-image (as the category of Zeroness); then for the affection-image (as the category of Firstness, of the face and faciality). With this image’s sign of composition defined, the recording stops before Deleuze can address the sign of genesis (although in the previous session, Deleuze ad proposed two kinds of “qualisign”). While the session ends, in fact, with a one-minute fragment that actually corresponds to the first part of session 6, listeners and readers of session 8 must rely on Deleuze’s usual recap in the next session for any lost final details.
Gilles Deleuze
Seminar on Cinema: Classification of Signs and Time, 1982-1983
Lecture 07, 11 January 1983 (Cinema Course 28)
Transcription : La voix de Deleuze, Farida Mazar, rereading : C. O (Part 1); no transcriber indicated for Part 2; additional revisions to the transcription and time stamp, Charles J. Stivale
Translation, Charles J. Stivale
Part 1
So, can I, can I, can I assume that you have in mind Peirce’s classification graph, the graph that joins together both the classes of images and the classes of signs? Can I assume that? [Pause] Let’s assume that! [Pause] You remember? [Pause; several students reply and Deleuze laughs] Have you reviewed your Peirce graph over the vacation?
So, since we saw that this graph excited us in the end, but greatly caused us problems, and that we were looking for an “other” graph, now we move on to an attempt which we can outline then, according to everything we have seen here during this first trimester, and then today we will set up this graph, with the rules that I proposed, that we will sometimes need — being so rich in the creation of terms – we’ll have need of a term from Peirce. But it will also happen that we will have to use this term from Peirce in another sense. Of course, we are making no pretense of being right. In that way, it’s for specific reasons, for the reasons that we were attempting to outline another graph.
So, this other graph, I would like to present it both in its entirety and then gradually fill it in today. As a result, this lesson is a chalk session, because [Pause; Deleuze moves towards the board] let’s see that, up there, up there, I have [Pause; Deleuze writes on the board] what I can call as I please, since I have justified it during the first trimester, the movement-image, matter-image, light-image. We know in advance that these are not necessarily the only types of images; but we start off from this first great type. And for some reasons that we have seen and others that we have not seen, it will be our task today to proceed like that, by going in reverse, by going forward, all that, we are discerning a certain number of kinds of movement-images. [Pause]
The first kind of movement-image is the perception-image [Pause] This fits the category of “thing”, and to give it a number, we are calling it — I already tried to say why, but we will see it more precisely today — we are calling it: Zero, there you go. [Pause]
A second category, a second type of movement-image, the affection-image, which this time no longer corresponds to the thing, but to the quality or to potency [puissance], to the quality-potency. And there we come across something that we have seen thanks to Peirce, it is as a mode of existence, Firstness, which is “one by itself”. [Pause] I leave a blank here based on a kind of intuition.
And a third kind of movement-image, we have, we have the action-image which therefore corresponds to actions, no longer to things, nor to qualities-potency, to actions or to forces, to forces in action and which corresponds to Peirce’s Secondness. You remember, whatever is real or whatever is active is ultimately a duel and is understood as effort and resistance.
And then we have yet another type of image which we called the “mental image”, and which corresponds no longer to the thing, nor to quality-potency, nor to action, but to the relation. And our previous sessions had been devoted to analyzing this notion in relation to the problem it posed in the domain of images. And this mental image corresponds, roughly for the moment, to what Peirce calls Thirdness, the mental of the relation. Once again, why is the relation the mental? It’s because the relation is the mode in which the mind sees fit to compare two things or the circumstance that causes the mind to compare two things. But the comparison here is as the irreducible act of the mind.
Why is there a hole here? [Deleuze indicates the graph, probably between Firstness and Secondness] Because I have the feeling that between affection and action, there is a kind of passage. You will tell me, ok, let’s accept that! But if you put a passage there, if you put a passage there, we’ll have to put one everywhere. Fine. What might show I’m right is that in Peirce — but you will see a difference right away — he takes into account what he calls “degenerated forms”. He tells us: there is a degenerated Secondness, or there is a degenerated Thirdness. But in Peirce, “degenerated” has an odd meaning, in any case, not a physical meaning; it’s not a transition. What proves this? He tells us, for example, an example of Secondness: Peter dines at Paul’s, this is a couple, it’s a Secondness, an example of Secondness, Peter dines at Paul’s. But as in the Latin phrase, “Lucullus dines at Lucullus’s,” it is a degenerated Secondness, Peirce tells us.[1] Likewise, when a pin binds two pieces of paper together, I take two pieces of paper, I pin them, he tells us: this is not a real Thirdness because these are two duos: the first piece of paper plus the pin, the second piece of paper plus the pins, to the point that I can subtract one of the two papers without anything changing from the other pair, from the other pair that remains as pinned paper. He will tell us, this was a degenerated Thirdness.
We don’t really need such a conception which is solely a logic of degeneration. We need a real transition, I am saying, that is, almost the opposite of degenerated, what will be called “the embryonic”. Between affection and action, there is a degenerated affection which is at the same time an embryonic action. What would that be? Even if it means justifying this later, and then also depending on those who were here, on what I did last year, this is what I would like to call the “impulse-image”, between the affection-image and the action-image, and which would not refer to things, nor to qualities-potency, nor to actions, nort to relations, but which would refer to “energies”, as if there is a special domain of energy between potencies and defenses. And so here, this would be the embryonic Secondness. [Pause; Deleuze writes on the board] Here we have the beginning.
Does it stop there? There’s no reason, no reason for it to stop there. I am just commenting that here I am proceeding like this because I am trying to do it in small steps. I am saying, for Peirce, it stops there. There is nothing, he repeats it a thousand times, there is nothing beyond Thirdness. Why? Because when there are more than three, in fact, it’s combinations of triads and duels. For Peirce, Thirdness, the mental image, is a real “closure” of the image system. For us, maybe, maybe, but there are a thousand things that have already indicated to us, which have already indicated to us without doubt it’s not. In any case, we leave it open, perhaps it’s not at all, it is not the end, the mental image, it is not at all the end, there are many other things. [Pause]
But, we saw, and here according to Peirce, that every kind of image corresponded — I seem to have forgotten this, I have not forgotten it, I’m holding it in reserve; why did I put in there an intermediary, a transition between this and that, whereas between this and that, there is no transition, and between this and that there is no transition? This is a problem that remains for us. — I am saying, in the other direction of my graph, I have corresponding signs, signs corresponding to each type of image. And here I am not going back into that because these were acquisitions of our previous sessions. We were led to look for a completely different conception of the sign from Peirce’s… [Interruption of the recording] [15:33]
… which as such, referred to a type of image; that is, it is an image such that I can say it’s the case of, it is an image such that I can say it is the case of a perception-image, it is the case of an affection-image, it is the case of an impulse-image, it is the case of an action-image, it is the case of a mental image. So, a sign was necessarily a particular image, but insofar as it referred to a type of image or represented a type of image. In order to be a sign, it is still necessary for it to represent a determinable point of view. Okay, fine! What is this determinable point of view? A sign would first be a particular image that represents a type of image from a point of view of composition, from a point of view of that type’s composition. [Pause; Deleuze writes on the board]
And without being able to fully justify it at the time, I added the composition of one type of image is its bipolar nature, as if all these types of images were bipolar. And undoubtedly, the relation between the two poles varies in the types of images, but whether by an abstract distinction or by a real distinction, there is always a way or there may always be a way to distinguish two poles for each type of image, two poles at least, so that I would have bipolar signs of composition. [Pause] Or [Pause] a particular image may refer to one type of image in terms of the genesis of that type or the extinction of that type. [Pause] There you go! For each type of image, therefore, on the one hand, I have signs of bipolar composition, and on the other hand, signs of genesis or extinction. [Pause]
At a minimum, by type of image, I will therefore have — but far from closing any off, this is not a rule — but I would have a minimum — I do not know what the maximum will be, it will be as you like, we can always make others, especially since we can always create other types too; no, it’s not a graph of categories entirely; this is an open graph of categories, at your choice, you construct as many as you want — I am saying, I would have in the signs of composition, I would have at least two of them, depending on whether one of the two poles dominates. Each sign of composition will be bipolar, but there will be a prevalence of one of the two poles. It will give me two signs of composition. [Pause] And then I’d have a sign of genesis and a sign of extinction, and sometimes they’ll be the same, sometimes they’ll merge or will tend to merge; at other times, they will stand out very firmly.
Let’s set an average; on average, I would have four signs per image type, at least, those four signs being just the start of an open list, you can look for it; four signs per type of image would already be enough for us; four signs per type of image makes us four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty, a very considerable advantage over the Peirce classification which has much less. [Laughter] So obviously this one is better. [Laughter] So, well, there you go, we know what… Our goal today is gradually to fill it all in.
So, I’m coming back, and going in reverse. I come back to the problem: but after all, why have we introduced an intermediary here when we already had enough? [Deleuze indicates on the board successively] and between here and here, and then between there and there. The answer seems simple to me. It’s because the types of images are not at all equivalent to each other. The perception-image has a privilege, not a privilege, it has a characteristic, it has a property: it’s that it continues through all the others. In fact, the affection-image must be perceived, the action-image must be perceived, the mental image must be perceived. The perception-image is not valid for itself, it accompanies [others]; as soon as it is presented, it accompanies all other types. From then on, I have an answer: if the perception-image — that’s even why the perception-image is a degree zero, we’ll see it better later, the one that Peirce completely ignored — and in any case, if we manage to present the perception-image, there is no place for seeking a transition from perception to affection since the perception-image accompanies, extends itself — here, it would be necessary to have several dimensions for my graph — it extends itself under the other types of images.
Okay, that’s taken care of; it’s normal that there is no intermediary there. And here, why is there no intermediary either?[2] The answer becomes starkly obvious; you don’t have to search long. It’s because, contrary to what Peirce thinks, we were led to think that the mental image is not at all a closure but that the mental image is quite another thing, that it has a completely different function, namely that it’s the place where the set of movement-images are placed into crisis, that is, it is itself the passage of the movement-image to another type of image. This is only the graph of images subsumed by the movement-image. We will therefore need another graph when we are more secure in our analyses, another graph about kinds of images that may be “other” than the movement-image. But if this hypothesis is confirmed, we would understand that there is no intermediary since it is the mental image which is intermediary between the action-image and not only the action-image, but the set of movement-images and another type of image. So, when I say transitions are needed between one type of image and another, this statement can only make sense between the affection-image and the action-image. So, it was proper for me to reserve one more column here. This is the first point; this is the first remark.
A second, completely different remark: we are making a kind of grouping which will lead us — an error, you’ll correct all that, I am speaking for convenience, since it is not a question of error, obviously not — what one might regret about Peirce is that he starts from the image or from Appearing [l’apparaître], what he calls — you may remember — the “phaneron”, that is, the Appearing, the appearance, the image. But he doesn’t do any analysis, and probably if he doesn’t, that’s because, for him, he doesn’t need it. He does not provide any analysis of the image as such. What he will analyze is the tripartition of the image. It immediately divides the “phaneron”, the Appearing is immediately divided into three kinds: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness. This all occurs as if the “phaneron”, the Appearing, the image was for him an abstract term that needs no explanation.
For us, however, we have spent a very long time saying that the movement-image will no doubt be divided into types of images, but that does not prevent it from having its consistency, that the movement-image has its consistency perfectly in itself. And we found this consistency in the identity of the movement-image with matter and with light, and we gave it a status with this consistency: it is universal variation, calling “universal variation” the system in which all the images vary at once as a function of the others on all their facets and in all their parts. Henceforth, you must grant me that the movement-image considered in itself has many characteristics of its own but has no sign of its own.
In the state of universal variation, images are their own signs; that goes without saying. So, at this level, there are none of the conditions that allow the birth of a special image that we would call signs and types of images, since there are no types of images; there are no signs either. On the other hand, it was necessary — unlike Peirce — from the moment we gave consistency to the movement-image for itself, to the Appearing for itself, to light for itself, we had to show that we could not offer ourselves a tripartition, a division of the movement-image. We had to show why and how it is divided. So, we had to give, we had to follow the path of the division. We could no longer be in the situation that Peirce sets for himself in noting the kinds of logical facts, namely that there are facts of Firstness, facts of Secondness, facts of Thirdness, and then there you go, and then if you’re not happy, that’s just how it is.
For us, starting from the movement-image, we had to show by what process it gets divided. And you remember, we had insisted a lot on this, the movement-image gets divided from the moment when, instead of the images referring and varying in relation to one another on all their facets and in all their parts, they vary in relation to a special and privileged image. This is the constitution of a center in the world of the movement-image. Movement-images start to vary not just in relation to one another, but they vary in relation to a special image which we will call “center”. Yet this center for the moment contains nothing that goes beyond the domain of the movement-image.
And I was saying, there – it’s in this way that Bergson was so useful to us — I was saying in agreement with Bergson, when the movement-images are referred to a center with relation to which they vary — you see, they no longer vary in relation to one another, they vary in relation to a center – well then, I have a perception-image. [Pause] The center in relation to which the movement-images vary or are expected to vary will be a center of perception. And then I jump, so I can add “center” here, this center is not otherwise determined. Hence Bergson’s expression which, in a way, is very useful to me since it confirms the hypothesis of Zeroness, “center of indetermination”; it is any center whatsoever. Its only property is to produce this curvature of images, such that images will vary in relation to it. Otherwise, it has no internal property; it has a situational property, we might say, a positional property, not an intrinsic property. It has the function of center.
But why? What gives it this function of center? As we saw, you remember, and why is it a center of indetermination? This time, for the image of center, something else has already been substituted, this is very coherent. It’s that this center, in fact, is also something other than a center: it is an interval. It is a “center-interval”. What is at center is an interval. Fine, and it’s still not the same idea, an interval between what and what? Because it was not visible before within the movement-image, an interval between a received movement and an executed movement. As soon as there is a center, there is an interval. As soon as there is an interval, there is a center; the two notions are correlative, center of indetermination-interval.
So where do I place the interval? We do not have a choice. I can only put it in Secondness; this is the action-image. This is the action-image, why? All this is abstract; I mean it’s abstract, I want it to have the same effect on you; this seems to me both completely abstract and completely concrete. That is, these are moments that I like a lot, that is, you have no choice. If we say where I’m going to place the interval, where do you want to place it? By definition, it’s even a form of duel. It’s even the matrix of the duel. There is duality between a received movement and an executed movement. That’s what the interval means. In fact, the executed movement no longer prolongs the received movement, there is an interval between the two. So, this is typically Secondness. When the movement-image is related to a center, I would say it becomes perception-image, and when the movement-image is related to the interval, it becomes action-image. And we have seen that the center is naturally an interval, and the interval is naturally a center. Fine, but it’s not in the same aspect.
So already, I have the justification for distinguishing between perception-images, a type of image, and action-images. Let’s go on. If there is an interval, there is something that comes to occupy the interval. What is in between the two, when there are two? There has to be something in between them. What occupies the interval, [Pause; Deleuze writes on the board] be careful: what occupies the interval, but leaving it as interval, here words fail us. At the extreme, it was necessary to say, if we could manage to express a concrete idea about this, what occupies it, but does not fill it, that leaves the interval, that is, that leaves the interval completely between the action received and the action executed, between the movement received and the movement executed, completely, it simply occupies the interval, as they say, it takes up the time. We could say, I occupy time, but I do not fill it. Affection-image is what comes to occupy this in-between of the interval, but what does not fill it. We’ve seen it, then, I mean, all of our more concrete analyses of the affection-image, well, they have their place here, that which occupies the interval without filling it.
And in the end, we have no choice here either, even if we still don’t know what that means. Here, what is it? I insisted, the relation is the act of the mind.[3] You will tell me: but there is already mind; in action, there is mind; in affection, there is mind; in an impulse, there is mind. Obviously, there is mind. But it is not grasped or considered for itself. It is considered, for example, in the action-image, insofar as the mind is considered as it assembles some means [moyens], that is, insofar as it ensures the originality of the action executed in relation to the received movement. So, it intervenes fully, but not insofar as mind. It intervenes under the auspices of Secondness. The same in all other cases.
Whereas there, [Deleuze indicates on the board, Thirdness or the mental image] with the relation, this is the fundamental act of the mind. Only the mind takes action, so this concerns it. So, does that mean there is a mind? I do not know; I mean, the mind is called the agency of comparison. I’m not taking any position. And what are relation, the mental, mind? Let’s assume that it is not satisfied — and it would be very Bergsonian to say that — it is not satisfied with occupying the interval without filling it. It comes to insert itself into the interval, it comes to fill the interval. In what form will Bergson say it? In a famous thesis according to which, for example, memories, which are for him a spiritual reality, come to fill the sensorimotor interval. They come to insert themselves into the sensorimotor interval, that is, into the interval between a received movement and an executed movement. On the other hand, affection did not come to fill, it occupied the interval. So, let us suppose, suppose it works, that you grant me all this again, but you have no reason to grant it to me unless, in the end, we land on our feet.
I can say, well, there you have it, what was lacking in Peirce was a real genesis, already starting from which the types of images are generated as a function of the movement-image. And if he did not reserve a category for the perception-image, it’s because he did not see the need for this genesis, because he would not have seen that. Is it possible that he didn’t see that? Fine, but if we situate ourselves within the point of view of a generation of types of images starting from the movement-image, I am saying that the perception-image is the movement-image related to an image functioning as a center. So, there you have it, henceforth, all the images vary in relation to this center.
Second: the affection-image is… — no, the logical order is not the same as the earlier one — second point, the action-image is movement-images related to an “interval” implied by the special image, by the center-image. The affection-image is the movement-image related to what fills the interval of the center-image — no, sorry — to what comes to occupy the interval, occupying the interval. The mental image is the movement-image related to what fills the interval. There we are, we are making a bit of progress.
A student: [He indicates he wants to ask a question]
Deleuze: If it’s absolutely necessary… You can ask me afterwards because here, I feel that I am flapping about so much, that I’m slogging so much, that if there are questions as well, I’ll lose it.
So, there is only one thing that is difficult to understand, it is ultimately this story of the perception-image and Zeroness. This is what will be decisive. If it is true that the perception-image continues, it will have a fundamental role. But why? So, it’s because the perception-image, you remember, is the movement-image related to a special image working as such. Okay, but I mean, if we understand that, we understand why all signs from then on will necessarily be, on one hand, of bipolar composition, and on the other hand, of genesis-extinction. It is at the level of the perception-image that this will be decided, the nature of signs. And why? Because the system of perception is therefore a system in which the images have finished varying in relation to each other on all their facets and only vary in relation to a center, a center of indetermination. But that doesn’t stop the two systems from getting caught up in each other.
The two systems of variation — the universal variation of images in themselves and the relative variation of images in relation to a special image — keep getting caught up in each other. Why? Because first, the more the center sets itself in motion, the more it will tend to restore the system of universal variation. And on the other hand, the system of universal variation was already a system of perception, and we have seen it. In fact, in the universal variation, there was a perception as exhaustive, equal to everything, I mean a perception in which one could not distinguish the perceived object and the perceiving subject since there was no center. But the movement-image, for example an atom, perceived everything and was said to perceive everything about the movements that it received, about the movements by which it was influenced, and about the movements that it exerted over other atoms. So, each atom was already perception, and its perception went as far as the influences it received and the influences it caused. As we have seen, this was a “universal perception” system.
As a result, what I can say is that this system of perception is bipolar. The system of perception is bipolar, in what form? It will have an objective pole and a subjective pole. Let’s explain ourselves. We will call — for the moment, we will see that this will vary — from the point of view we’ve reached at the moment, we will call the system of universal variation an objective system; this is the system of matter, an objective system of perception. All the images vary for each other on all their facets and in all their parts. It’s here, it’s really here, the universal lapping, this is matter. Matter is perception. Here we have the first pole of the system of perception.
And a second pole of the system of perception normally called “subjective” occurs when, it is the aspect under which images, in addition or at the same time, vary in relation to a privileged image which is said to be the center or the subject. So, this is the subjective pole. So, the idea of a bipolar composition is formed, is imposed on us by perception [Pause] just as the notion of genesis is also imposed on us by perception. Why? Genesis is the very formation of the center of indetermination on the plane of movement-images, with the correlate that this center is no longer eternal; it will fade away. By virtue of the communication of the two systems, it will fade away, it will return to universal variation, while other centers may be formed on the plane of matter. This comes down to saying that we are all mortal. I am obligated; there is a necessity of death just as of birth.
As a result, what we then found to be the nature of the sign, namely, to be necessarily a sign of bipolar composition or necessarily to be a sign of genesis-extinction, was imposed by the perception-image which will continue over all other types of images. As a result, always, you will always find the double aspect of the sign: bipolar composition, genesis-extinction. This is the hardest part, because now there is nothing left to do but the concrete aspect. What will the concrete be? If you understood all that, it means we have to fill in our “thingies” [machins], our slots. There you have it. So, we start like this. Sometimes this will be so obvious that we will need three or four sentences; sometimes it will be much more of a problem.
I ask myself, what will the sign of perception be? A sign of perception, from what point of view? What will the “sign of composition” of perception be? From what we just said, the sign of composition of perception has to be bipolar, but in what way? When do I perceive? What must I perceive? What … I mean, all perception is ultimately twofold. All perception is twofold, but only it is twofold in many ways.
To perceive, to come back to a text by Bergson which intrigued me a lot here, which I’ve read to you several times,[4] in the first chapter of Matter and Memory, he says, to pass from the movement-image to perception, to pass from matter to the perception of matter, what is needed? Obviously — that is, to go from the system of universal variation to the system of centered variation — what is needed? First, he says, a region of the movement-image must be isolated. And he uses the word “picture” [tableau], like a picture, fine. Interesting, because it wouldn’t take much for him to say: as in or through a frame. What he isolates is not the picture; it’s the picture encompassed as a frame. So, there has to be a division [découpage], a framing. This framing is like — I wouldn’t say it exists on its own — but it’s an element of perception. No framing, no perception.
Okay, so according to philosophies, we could name this in a thousand ways, but if I say it, for example in the manner of phenomenologists, that all perception implies a horizon, a horizon, fine, very good, why not? The frame will be a horizon, I don’t mind, maybe it’s not good, maybe it’s not that, a frame. For the cinema image, it is obvious that the frame is not a horizon; it’s something else. There is indeed a horizon; there is perhaps no horizon in the cinema image, I don’t know. In any case, the frame is not the horizon. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, you can fill it in however you want.
I am saying the first element of perception is a frame, a frame that will isolate a region of images in such a way that this group of isolated images can vary in relation to a center. In order for movement-images to vary only in relation to a center, at the limit, they have to be in some way separated from the universal variation. They need to be “framed”. The frame is like the condition of “relative perception”. I am calling “relative perception” the perception which is defined by the relation of movement-images to a center. So, there we have the first element: I have a frame. There are all kinds of frames. No doubt, here I am talking about a frame which preexists the perceiving subject and which will make it possible. If there is no frame, there cannot be the formation of a center. A region of images must be detached, must create the connection with the others.
Then, when the subject is born within the frame, it [the subject] will have its own frames, depending on where it looks at them, on what it looks at, on how carefully it looks, all of that. But here I am talking about a frame that exists before the subjective frames. This is really a question of a frame of frames here. And once I have the frame, then, in fact, it is normal that the center arises by itself, such that the framed images — and nothing other than them — the framed images will vary in relation to the center’s position. What is this type of image? I am saying this is a double image.
If I make the connection with what I was doing last year, that is, I could create that with, for example, by taking literary or painting examples or…, but if I again consider this, that is, if I choose cinema examples, it’s cinema that we’ll use as a reference. Well then, it’s well known in cinema: it’s what, if you remember when I tried to comment on Beckett’s “Film”,[5] what Beckett called the double perception, in saying – this is embarrassing because I might be making a big deal out of it, because I’m not a film technician — but he said, for me this is very delicate, I don’t quite see how to get out of it, and he felt that, in fact, all the people in cinema would feel, but he had to, this came down to saying: in the image — you notice, I am not talking about perception, we are not there, it is the perception-image — in the perception-image, perception is necessarily double. Why?
There is, for example, and simultaneously or successively, the perception of the room and of a character in the room. This is what Beckett called the “Oe” perception, eye or camera. The camera captures the bedroom and someone in the room. But it also captures someone insofar as he sees the room and what he sees in the room. If we call the character who is in the room “O”, in accordance with Beckett’s sign, we will say: there is necessarily coexistence of a perception “Oe” and a perception “O “. The “Oe” perception is defined by the frame; the “O” perception is defined by what is happening in the frame. The two must indeed coexist. All perception at this level is bipolar. What coexists is the “Oe” perception and the “O” perception.[6]
And Beckett said: how do we account for this coexistence? So, he asked, am I going create superimpositions? — hey, he provided a technical process; the superimposition could account for this double coexistence — one would superimpose the perception “O” onto the perception “Oe”. He said no, that’s not going to work. You might well tell me, a pole can always be accentuated, a privilege given to a pole; okay, it can, but that does not remove the problem. What interests me is the coexistence of the two poles. What can we do to unite, in the same perception, the “Oe” perception, that is, the perception of the room, and the character in the room, and the “O” perception, that is, the perception of the room by the character? You will tell me: the cinema image never stops; this is even one of its bases, I imagine. At least, that’s one of the bases of perception-image in cinema. At the same time, we see the room, and we see what the character sees in the room, at the same time, back and forth. Yes, in what relation? The filmmakers – here, I’m offering examples — those who have the greatest [interest] or those who are most interested in this problem, there are so many problems only if you do not care; they are well known, they are obviously …. [Interruption of the recording] [1: 02: 25]
Part 2
… pure “Oe” perception, this empty frame is waiting, which can be prolonged, which is not without causing affections in us if I take all this into account: “Oe” frame, “Oe” perception.
And then a character comes in, comes into the frame – so usually, you have a fixed shot there — the character comes in, he comes into the frame, and if only through the direction of gazes, what he perceives is given to you, either by the simple direction of glances, or by the movements he makes, or again by the movements of the camera which can follow the character, in the end, a thousand, a thousand possible varieties. So, you have – I am thinking, for example… — and then, the character goes out, and the frame remains empty again. I’m not saying it’s in the same way at all; if I look for examples, you constantly find this situation with filmmakers like [Michelangelo] Antonioni and like [Yasujiro] Ozu in a very, very different way, good. You have a coexistence of the perception “Oe” and the perception “O”.
What relationship should they be in? In what relationship should the camera-image and the character-image be? In what relations must be — for it to work well, for it to create beautiful images from the point of view of cinema — in what relation must the frame image be, that is, the perception of the room by the camera and the character’s perception of the room? Yes, that’s it for the moment, my double composition. My double composition of perception is the simultaneity of camera perception and character perception, the room seen by the camera and the room seen by the character. In what relationship should they be? Surely in a certain relationship of harmony, which does not exclude conflict, which does not exclude dissonance, which does not exclude a thousand ways.
But the one who thought about this question the most, at least theoretically, was [Pier Paolo] Pasolini. And Pasolini told us, rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter, there has to be some communication between the “Oe” perception — he didn’t speak like that, but I am keeping this more convenient language — between the “Oe” perception and the “O” perception. There must be some kind of sympathy, that is, there must be a certain resonance between the perception of the room by the camera and the perception of the room by the character, the beginning of a certain resonance. And at the same time, there has to be a transformation from one to the other, yes, since the perception of the room by the camera will raise it to a certain poetic level, among others; in Antonioni’s work, this is obvious. In Ozu’s work, this is obvious.
And this is where Pasolini forged his idea that if perception in this way has a double for composition, well, there is in language — without prejudging cinema-language relations — there is something in language which is able to make us understand that. And the form of language which, according to him, was capable of making us understand this, I analyzed it last year, it’s what is called “free indirect discourse” which is a very particular stylistic expression: when you make someone speak without saying it. This is neither direct nor indirect speech, that is why it is called a “free indirect discourse”.[7]
Example: she gathers all her strength; she gathers all her strength, she would brave death rather than surrender; she gathers all her strength – I’m the one speaking, I speak; I see someone, and I say, “oh, oh, she’s gathering all her strength,” she’d rather succumb than surrender. She’s the one talking. This is a strange form because it must be said that there is free indirect discourse when you have a subject of enunciation, the one which gathers all her force, but this subject of enunciation is caught in a statement which depends on another enunciation, my own.
It’s complicated. I presented it poorly; “she gathers all her strength” is a bit… “She turned pale”, that’s better; “She turned quite pale”, she would rather die than surrender, “she became quite pale”, this is a “Oe” perception or enunciation; I see her turn pale: “Oe” enunciation. She would rather die than surrender, that’s an “O” enunciation; she’s the one talking; she’s the one who said, “I’d rather die than surrender.” The “O” enunciation caught a statement which depends on another “Oe” enunciation.
Hence Pasolini’s importance when he discerned the idea of a free indirect image. So you see, by comparison with the structure of free indirect speech, he said: well yes, in the cinema, all the time you have free indirect images, namely we will call free indirect image the coexistence, by whatever means possible, obtained from an “Oe” perception and an “O” perception.
But then I am very happy. Why am I so happy? Because this is my first bipolar sign. Here it is fundamentally bipolar: “Oe” perception – “O” perception. And here, after all, I remain Pasolinian; let’s call this: free indirect image, yes, but it is already a “sign”, it is a sign of composition. What sign is that? Let’s use Peirce; since we obtained it with reference to the proposition of free indirect discourse, we will call it a term used by Peirce, [Deleuze writes on the board] a “dicisign” — but the word is good since it reminds us of the reference to free indirect discourse — “dicisign”.[8]
But to be precise, while I am indeed taking the word from Peirce, we will give it another meaning because, for Peirce, the dicisign was the “proposition”, it was the proposition in general. For us, the “dicisign” is the equivalent of an exclusively free indirect proposition. It is by nature a bipolar sign, the dicisign, “Oe” perception – “O” perception; that would bring into play a whole theory of the frame, and this is the sign of bipolar composition of what? This is the bipolar sign of composition of “solid perception.” In fact, the first pole of this sign, the first pole of the dicisign constituted the “frame”, and the frame performed a solidification of the movement-images, if only because it isolated a region of images of the universal variation. It is therefore the sign of “things”, since we are in the category of the thing, of the thing insofar as a solid. [Pause]
So, fine, we just have to let go, but however strong the isolation may be, we have seen that perception is bipolar in yet another sense. Because although by the frame, by framing, you have obtained an almost perfect isolation, that does not prevent the other images, all the movement-images from counting around the frame; they go beneath it. Moreover, the more the subject within the frame is itself in motion, the more it will join the regime of universal variation under the frame.
In other words, perception is bipolar in a second way, because while it reflects the variation of a group of images in relation to a center, the first pole, it continues to be worked on by another pole, that is, the pole of universal variation where all the images vary with respect to each other. Fine. I need a word for this new bipolar image. All I can say already is that, well, — we let ourselves go on our own, and for those who were here last year, this may remind you of something — this new image is no longer a sign of the solid. [Deleuze writes on the board] This time, it’s going to be something liquid, it’ll be the liquid thing. Why the liquid thing? Because the liquid is precisely the thing’s tendency, or it expresses the thing’s tendency to join the universal variation. [Pause]
In the liquid, the parts vary with respect to each other, [Pause] and if it is true that all human perception is solid, it is a solid perception, okay, but which is worked by “the dream” of joining a liquid perception that would be fairer, more equitable, more truthful because we know well that the solid only exists at our scale. [Pause] As a result, the second sign of composition of the perception-image will be the liquid sign, namely “the flow”, the flow of the river or the rhythm of the sea. And we saw — if I am still looking for an example of confirmation — to the extent to which in the French pre-war school of cinema, it seems to me, everyone experienced this bipolarity of perception which is no longer that of the frame and of what happens in the frame, but which is that of a liquid state and a solid state of perception, and that it was a haunting theme in the cinema of [Jean] Grémillon, in the cinema of [Jean] Vigo, and all the more so in the cinema of [Jean] Renoir, but in his work, in a way in which he’s going to use it for other purposes.[9]
But in Grémillon and Vigo, the idea of a double system constantly appears which engages perception, and which also engages action, etc., since this is prolonged, perception on land and perception on water and in water. And the perception on water and in water is endowed with a power of “truth” of which the perception on earth is stripped. And on land, there are the “ties”, that is, the limited variations, that is, there is always the center, a privileged center that tends to be immobile or immobilized. Whereas water is the place where the center becomes mobile, ultimately is canceled out, comes undone and remakes itself elsewhere, etc., etc., where the ties break. Good. You find that constantly. For Grémillon, as a Communist, he lived only one sentence of Marx, namely that the proletariat is fundamentally separated from the land. For him, for Grémillon, every profession plunges into the sea — this is very odd — every profession plunges into the sea, even when it is not maritime, because it’s the status of the proletariat, it’s the status of the proletariat to be off the land. Which does not mean in the sky for him, and that is why the proletarian’s work participates in a justice which is not that of the land which is fundamentally unjust. The land is basically the thing of the ruling classes, etc., but the prol’s business is water. Even on land, work reconstitutes… for Grémillon, it is very striking, work fundamentally reconstitutes an aquatic element on land.
And in Vigo, that appears even more, true perception, precise perception, because on water, you are always close to your center of gravity. It is the idea that there is an aquatic movement which opposes the terrestrial movement: on land, we are constantly in imbalance because we are always far from our center of gravity: it’s the newsvendor, it is the artifices, it is the newsvendor of “L’Atalante” [1934], etc. But, on the water, it may not be graceful; when it’s the barge, you walk like a crab, but you are always close to your center of gravity: it’s justice, it’s the truth. And whatever their differences, in Vigo, Grémillon, Renoir, there is this idea of a superior justice of the waters, and French cinema, this French cinema stood out above all not because it framed well – it frames very well, but that matters little — but because it always knows how to ensure that water is crossing through the frame. So, this is a very different bipolarity.
So, [for] the sign, here, a word is needed; well, yes, it pours in, it is no longer the solid. A sign is needed which immediately refers to this liquid pole of perception; let’s call it… I need a word; so, I searched, and then this one, I find it perfect because it’s so ambiguous. I can’t say “rheume” because you see, I would have used a “rheume” because according to the Greek, according to the Greek etymology, the “rheume” is exactly what is flowing, this is the flow, really. But in the end, usage has stripped down the word. But fortunately, “rhume”, in Greek, derives from the ordinary verb which means to flow, rheo, and which gave the word from which “rheume” derives, “rheuma”. So, fine, let’s call this second sign of composition a “reume”.[10]
I would say, well yes, there are “reumes”. For example, if I still choose my references from cinema, it’s not just when you see water flowing. Of course, when you see water flowing, it’s a “reume” obviously, but there are all kinds of other “reumes”. An example: when you see a sailor walking on land, for example, the unforgettable gait of Michel Simon in “L’Atalante”, when he walks on land and he seems to walk absolutely like a crab, that’s a “reume”. The superimposition — these are very simple things — the superimposition of the head of the beloved woman in the water, a process that you find in [Jean] Epstein, that you find in Vigo, etc. all this is stuff that haunts the French school. It’s curious because it’s not that much marine. Their cinema is a cinema that is deeply fluvial, maritime, and for unrelated reasons, for reasons related to their leftist consciousness, their proletarian consciousness, very, very strange! Even the profession of a woman, when Grémillon speaks of the profession of a woman, as if by chance she is a woman doctor and whose doctor? The fishermen’s doctor. There must always be a horizon, that is the origin of the work. Ultimately, one might almost think that [Paul] Virilio and Grémillon understand each other quite well, I don’t know if … When Virilio, Virilio has some very good pages in Speed and Politics in which he explains that the origin of proletariat is marine, that it is in the sea industry, in the maritime industry, and in the warships that the first organization of the proletariat took place…[11] What?
Anne Querrien: It’s in England… [Inaudible comments]
Deleuze: Yes, the proletariat, the first proletariat, is a people of the sea. They are slaves of the sea. [Querrien continues to speak] Yes, yes, that’s it, yes. Well, then, I have the feeling that in his own way, if you will, Grémillon finds this again.
We call them reumes. Immediately this is a way, you see, you might remember, if you’ve memorized your Peirce classification correctly, that Peirce speaks at one point, he has a sign he calls the “rheme “, but, but, I insist that there be no confusion, the “rheme” has nothing to do with a reume, absolutely nothing.[12] Because “rheme”, I am saying that because Pasolini creates a confusion which seems to me very, very odd. Pasolini says — unless it is in the translation, you will have to look; I will have to look at that, in the Italian text — in the translation, if it is because the translator, there is an astonishing misinterpretation, because Pasolini, who knows Peirce well, titles one of his chapters of Heretical Empiricism, “the rheme,” as Peirce writes it. And the translator gives the correct definition of Peirce’s “rheme” — so far that’s okay — and adds that the etymology is “flow”. In fact, this is a very unfortunate misunderstanding because it has absolutely nothing to do with it. “Rheme” derives from an irregular Greek verb meaning “to say”. And rhema is “the word”, and Peirce takes it exactly like that. “Reume” derives from a completely different verb which has no link, and which means to flow, and the reuma is flowing, so there is absolutely no link.
And in the French text of Pasolini, there is a moment when he says: “the shot in cinema necessarily gives the illusion of flowing, that is why I call it a rhême”, see, my comment has no importance, if — so we’ll have to … do you have Heretical Empiricism in Italian? Look, right, this is the penultimate chapter, I think, look because … either he made an error on purpose; it is not impossible that Pasolini … or else he did it involuntarily because he was writing quickly, then that would be very unfortunate, but I have to know this. So, or else the Italian text is different, and this is a misinterpretation by the translator. — In any case therefore, this is not at all a “rheme” in the sense of “a word”; it is therefore a sign of flow which can very well appear on an absolutely solid background like, once again, Simon’s gait on land in “L’Atalante”. This is a “reume”. Therefore, the two signs link to some solid-liquid thing, and both are bipolar, since it goes without saying that the “reume”, the liquid sign, is only valid in its complementarity with the solid that it escapes. So, there is as much bipolarity in the “reume” as there was in the “dicisign”. So here are my first two signs, “dicisign” and “reume”.
And in the end, you see that it is the perception-image which imposes on us through its analysis the idea that all signs will be bipolar since, as follows, to the extent that it is continued — all signs of composition will be bipolar – to the extent that it is continued under the other images, a bipolarity must indeed be located. So suddenly, a sign of genesis, since we have shown it sufficiently, a sign of composition is not enough for us, we need a sign of genesis. Genesis of what? Well, the genesis of the perception-image in its double composition. A sign must show us, must give us the genesis of the perception-image as it is subject to the rules of previous signs of composition, bipolar signs of composition. Therefore, a sign of genesis is required that is deeper than the sign of composition.
Here I’m sure of having at least a third sign; what is it? The “genetic” sign of the perception-image, and what is it going to be called? We will call it: a genetic sign of the perception-image, what condition should it meet? It seems to me the following condition: it would be artificially immobilized, but why? Not by any immobility whatsoever, by an immobility that one could call at the limit “a differential immobility”, that is, by an immobility understood as an infinitely small movement or rather immobility understood as a variable of all possible movements. Immobility understood as a variable of all possible movements, what would that mean? That would mean equally movements of universal variation and movements of limited variation. In other words, this sign would be, it would be a genetic sign, it would be a differential of movement.
So, it would be as a function of this that movement could vary, that is, move from one of its poles to the other. First type of variation: to move from the universal variation pole to the limited variation pole and vice versa; second type of variation: picking up speed or reducing speed, accelerating, slowing down. — [Pause] Earlier, I had the idea of a third variation, but no matter, you can only add as much as you have; it has slipped away from me. Fine. — What is that? Such a differential of movement, that is, a matrix of movement, makes it possible to understand the variation of movements, the qualitative variation of movements, universal variation or unlimited variation, just as their quantitative variation, acceleration, retardation, etc., we call it “a gramme” or “an engramme”, “a gramme” or “an engramme”.[13] [Pause] Okay, fine, and in fact, the application to cinema is immediate. If I am still making, or if I am still taking cinema as a reference system, this is what we will call in cinema — which is not the same as a photo — it is what we will call a photogramme. The photogramme is the cinematic gramme or engramme.
And in fact, what is a photogramme? It is indeed a differential from which the movement can take on a particular nature and particular speed, and the apprehension of the photogramme as such, will not occur through the photo, but through what will it occur? Through a famous method in experimental cinema: we call it “flickering”.[14] And flickering will give us the difference, the differential of movement. And the famous flickering montage of experimental cinema, you sometimes find it used by others, for example, by [Hans-Jürgen] Syberberg or by [Jean-Luc] Godard, but in the end, I believe that it was constituted and particularly developed in experimental cinema. Finally, this flickering montage, this flickering, this flickering photogramme is “the engramme” or the “gramme”, that is, it is the sign of the genesis of the perception-image, and I could say: the perception-image is not composed, it is not composed of photogrammes; it is “generated” by the flickering photogramme. [Pause]
And so obviously, here we are very close: genesis or extinction? Will there be any particular sign of extinction? Maybe, I don’t know about this, so I don’t know. Maybe, what is this? The gramme, the photogramme, etc., as we saw last year, would be what we should call, a state … the genesis of perception. What would that be? It would be the gaseous state. It’s the thing insofar as being gas this time around. And all, well a part of experimental cinema fundamentally has a gaseous model.[15]
How does this link to the movement-image? Consider what you learned when you were younger. Kinetic theory of gases, kinetic theory of gases since the gaseous state will be defined by the path of a molecule between two shocks. We are fully within the movement-image, only it is precisely gaseous perception that has generated the perception that we enjoy. And we could go back down the climb we’ve made, that is, from gas to liquid, from liquid to solid.
Is there a sign of extinction? If I stick with experimental cinema: burn a photogramme, you will have a sign of extinction, but is it an original sign by itself? Many experimental films have us witness this kind of supreme sacrifice, the burning of the photogramme. [Ingmar] Bergman took it up again in a famous scene, the photogramme that burns, but perhaps there is no need to look for a particular sign of extinction, given that genesis has reached a differential level such that its disappearance or its appearance merges, right? And in flickering, it seems to me that there is an identity of appearing and disappearing.[16] In that case, I would have three signs. I would say that the signs of perception that refer to Zeroness — now I believe I’ve justified everything regarding the sign of perception — include the dicisign, the reume, the gramme or the engramme.
Can you still manage a bit more? I’m still doing the next one because the next one works by itself, given that you know part of it, since I had tried, it seems to me, before the holidays … Here, this will be much easier. I’m no longer justifying the passage; once again, I have already explained everything about it.
In the affection-image, I am no longer in the domain of the thing, I am in the domain of quality or potency, and there, well, well, quality-potency, fine, but what will be the sign of the affection-image? That is, how do I grasp pure quality or pure potency? Understand the problem: since there is affection-image when the quality or potency is not yet considered actualized in a state of things. In fact, as soon as quality or potency is considered as actualized in a state of things, I am in the domain of the action-image, that is, I am in a real milieu, in a determined space-time, in which characters act and react. So, I can speak of pure quality-potency only if I consider them independently of their actualization in determined milieus or in states of things. But then where am I going to find this? We saw it, we saw it. We must say I find it when I confront a quality-potency expressed by a face and which I only consider as expressed by a face.
In fact, why a face? I tried to explain it last year: it’s because that’s exactly what the face is; the sense of face is that it converts movements of translation into movements of expression. So, by that very fact, it becomes an expression of a quality-potency regardless of whether that quality-potency is realized in a state of things. This is where the face can be a lie, otherwise there is no possible lie. You only lie through your head, really; there would be no possible lies if it weren’t for this capacity of the face to express qualities-potencies in a pure state.
So, I am saying: quality-potency expressed by a face, or what comes to the same thing, a face equivalent, anything can serve as a face. When I wave my fist, I make my fist a face. When I hit someone, I don’t make my fist a face, but when I wave my fist and say, “Hey! Ha! Hey”, I’m making a face with my fist. Or else a proposition, one could say that any proposition in the sense of Peirce’s “dicisign”, this time not of another, any proposition whatsoever, is a face, an equivalent of a face, not in all respects, in relation to what it expresses, not in relation to what it means or not in relation to what it designates, but in relation to what it expresses, it is a face if it expresses something. Okay, in any case, there you go.
I am saying, a quality-potency as expressed by a face or a face equivalent or a proposition, what is it? Let’s call it: “icon”. The sign is icon, the affection-image sign is an [un] icon [masculine] — an [une] icon [feminine]? I don’t know anymore. Une ? Une ? Une icon, eh? Is an icon. [Some students say: Un] I don’t know, I check the dictionary every time, in the Larousse, and I’m wrong every time, because I forget. Are you sure? [A student near Deleuze says: An [une] icon is religious.] And otherwise, is it an [un] icon? Come on, un or une? You will check. So, it’s: icon, eh? It is [une] icon.
You notice that this is a term that you find in Peirce’s classification. You also notice that we use it in a completely different sense, because for Peirce, “icon” is a sign which is caught in a relation of resemblance to its object; it is a sign which therefore has a qualitative relation with its object. For us, we absolutely do not say that; we define “icon”, it seems to me, in a more precise way — not better, but much more precise — for the needs of the cause, namely, we exclusively call “icon” a quality-potency insofar as apprehended in the pure state, that is, insofar as expressed by a face or an equivalent of the face since that seems to me to be the only manifestation of the quality-potency in the pure state.[17]
Oh well, so how is this bipolar? There are in fact two poles of the icon: either the expressive face is captured as a “reflecting contour” — I will not come back to this — and we will speak of the “icon of contour”, or else the face is grasped, the expressive face is grasped as a set of features which follow one another, as a set of features which are as though carried away from the contour, carried away by the affect, by the affection that they express, carried away, torn from the contours.
Notice that this is a bit like saying, that pretty much links to the distinction I made earlier between dicisign and reume. The reume was the liquid state that carried the thing through the frame. Here now, I have icons of features that carry the facial features out of the contour, and then I have, on the contrary, icons of contours — the most tender perhaps, but not necessarily, there are forms of wickedness, then there are cold forms of wickedness, terrible forms of wickedness, which are terrible, terrible forms of wickedness of contours, terrible, terrible … wickedness of reflection. Fine. – So, I have icons of contour and icons of features.
Well, there, if we were looking for reference examples, well yes, we dealt with this last year, it’s the close-up in cinema, the face-close-up, and the face-close-up clearly shows this duality of poles, and in particular, the difference and the way in which a same great filmmaker passes from one to the other, but at the same time, always has his privilege, his preference. It’s obvious that [D.W.] Griffith has a strong preference for the contour. The face with him is reflective, even when it goes through the most fundamental emotions. These are always in the women, in Griffith’s unhappy women; there is always an air of: but why all this happening, why? For what reasons? A kind of astonishment, why, why me? Why is all of this happening? This is what makes their charm when they are beaten, martyred, etc.
I am saying that because I just saw “Le Lys brisé” [1919; “Broken Blossoms”] not long ago, “Broken Blossoms”, in which there’s, you know, the famous girl who couldn’t smile, so when her dad beats her up, her alcoholic dad, obviously [Laughter], rains blows on her, and at the same time orders her to smile: “Mouse, you tart, bitch, etc.”, and she can’t smile since she’s never had a chance to smile, so she can’t smile. She is, her face is pure reflective contour, “but why, why does he do this to me, my father whom I love”, and then with her clumsy fingers, she forms a smile, and wonder of wonders, it remains, because … [Laughter] Either someone applied some kind of potion on her, or else she learned it, she learned it, but then she draws herself a smile which is a kind of reflective mortuary smile. In the end, I… every well-adjusted person cries at that point. [Laughter]
On the other hand, [Sergei] Eisenstein’s close-ups are famous for stringing together, as he himself says, sorrow rises, sorrow rises and turns into revolt. Then there are successive facial features, none of which belongs to a contour. These are successive, different faces, in which each feature in general links with a feature and rises along a scale of intensity. There you typically have, with Eisenstein, icons of features. But all of this we saw last year.[18]
But, but here we are, so I have my bipolarity here too. I have both: icon of feature, icon of contour, and that vaguely corresponds to my distinction here, so it’s okay. But, a genetic sign of the affection-image, we need a genetic sign. A genetic sign of the affection-image, well here too I’m going faster because we also saw that last year. There is a lot that we saw in this, but I am doing this reorganizing because it is very necessary for me; it’s to convince myself that this works.
Once again, you understand I tried to restate it here, before the holidays. The face is still a big process, it’s big. It’s very big, a face; it’s not fine, it’s not molecular, a face. Even the features, the features, are finer than the contour. The contour does not go very far, all that. This is enormous emotion, that is, it’s emotion that you have to spot immediately as soon as it is a little ambiguous. The face leaves you unsatisfied; you do not know. What’s wrong with this guy? What does he want to tell me? Besides enormous anger, enormous kindness, these are some big units. The face is a huge unit of expression. It is not a molecular unit of expression, so it is not a genetic unit … [Interruption of the recording][19] [1 :49 :08]
[Fragment of session 6, minutes 44-45, which ends session 7] … there are a lot of problems because all the concrete signs that I could analyze, don’t they have several aspects? There is one aspect through which the green light is a “qualisign”. This is not surprising, since ultimately any sign is a Thirdness. And also in the green light, the green does not just have value for its quality; the green has value insofar as realized in a state of things, the hole in a pole with another light which will be red. Finally, this is a legisign. With a given sign, you may always ask yourself, what is it in the first place? But also, in what other types of signs do they participate?… [End of the recording] [1 :50 :10]
Notes
[1] The phrase in question, from Plutarch, means one dines better at home than anywhere else.
[2] This is undoubtedly about Thirdness, that is, about the relation or the mental image.
[3] This is about Thirdness, the mental image.
[4] Deleuze refers to this first chapter in Matter and Memory in sessions 1 through 4 of the current seminar.
[5] See sessions 1, 2, and 3 of the current seminar.
[6] See the diagrams of these relations and angles in The Movement-Image, p. 228 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 99-100).
[7] On the topic of free indirect discourse, see sessions 6 and 7 of the Cinema seminar I, January 12 and 19, 1982. On this term in Pasolini, see The Movement-Image, pp. 71-76 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 104-110).
[8] On the derivation of “dicisign”, see The Movement-Image, p. 76 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 110-111).
[9] See session 7 of the Cinema seminar I, January 19, 1982; on the liquid versus the solid, see The Movement-Image, pp. 76-80 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 111-115).
[10] On these first signs and the derivation of “reume”, see The Movement-Image, p. 80 and note 13 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 116 and note 13); see also The Time-Image, p. 32 (L’Image-Temps, p. 48).
[11] Speed and Politics, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York: Semiotext(e), 1986; 2006); Vitesse et politique (Paris: Galilée, 1977).
[12] For Peirce’s nine signs, see The Time-Image, p. 287, note 10 (L’Image-Temps, p. 46, note 10).
[13] Deleuze introduces these terms in The Time-Image, p. 84 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 121).
[14] On the flickering-photogramme see sessions 7 and 8 of the Cinema seminar I seminar, January 19 and 26, 1982; see also The Time-Image, pp. 214-215 (L’Image-Temps, p. 280).
[15] On the gaseous state, see The Movement-Image, p. 58, 83-85 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 86, 121-123).
[16] For the example of burning the photogram, see The Movement-Image, pp. 86, 100 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 124, 142).
[17] On “icon” and “qualisign”, see The Movement-Image, pp. 109-110 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 155-156).
[18] On the face and the close-up in Griffith and Eisenstein, see Cinema seminar I, session 8 (January 26, 1982), 9 (February 2, 1982) and 10 (February 23, 1982), as well as The Movement-Image, chapters 5 and 6.
[19] This cut before the formal end of the session indicates the possible loss of a cassette and therefore of the development of this typology of signs, although Deleuze here seems to be ending the session. However, this ending is followed by another minute of text in both the recording and the transcriptions of Paris 8 and WebDeleuze. This text is actually a short repetition from the session 6 recording, between minutes 44-45, a repetition which gives no indication about what is missing at the end of the current session. I leave this fragment in the translation as it nevertheless corresponds to the session timestamp. In any case, the summary of these signs can be found in the glossary of The Movement-Image, pp. 217-218 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 291-293), and in The Time-Image, p. 335 (L’Image-Temps, pp. 48-49).
For archival purposes, the augmented and new time stamped version of the transcription was completed in March 2021. Additional revisions were made in December 2021. The translation was completed in December 2021. Additional updates occurred in February 2024. [NB: The transcript time stamp is in synch with the WedDeleuze recording link provided here.]