January 18, 1983

The action-image is inseparable from the situation, and what is a situation? A situation is a set of powers-qualities actualized in a social, historical, geographic environment, that is, in a space-time which is a particular space-time. So, it is clear, here I had powers-qualities exposed in any space whatsoever, and there I will have power-quality exposed in a well-determined space-time. I would say that action-image is the realm of realism; and realism can imply dreams, can imply disorder, can imply excess, can imply whatever you want; it’s realism only because and insofar as it presents us with qualities and powers whatever they may be. They can be cosmic qualities and powers: a hurricane, an earthquake, anything.

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

Edited

Howard Hawks’ “The Big Sky”

Continuing with another “blackboard session” and developing the table of images and signs, Deleuze starts a precise recap as possible of the five-fold organization table outlined so far. the perception-image as Zeroness; the affection-image as Firstness; the impulse-image as the intermediate passage from 1 to 2; the action-image as Secondness; the mental image as Thirdness, which creates a passage toward something else rather than closing off the aggregate. Then, distinguishing between action-image and impulse-image, Deleuze explores different facets of artistic Naturalism as distinct from Realism, insisting that the impulse is an energy that grasps hold of pieces as in forms of cinema of terror, but also in the literary Naturalism of Zola. After a lengthy development, Deleuze derives for the impulse-image the sign of composition (fetish) and sign of genesis (symptom), and then turns to the signs of the action-image, with its exemplary model in American film prior to World War II, designating the signs of composition (the synsign or englobing, and binomial), but holding off on the sign of genesis until the next session, as well as the action-image’s relation to historical films.

Gilles Deleuze

Seminar on Cinema: Classification of Signs and Time, 1982-1983

Lecture 8, 18 January 1983 (Cinema Course 29)

Transcription: La voix de Deleuze,  Farida Mazar (first part) and Kesraoui Drifa (second part); additional revisions to the transcription and time stamp, Charles J. Stivale

Translation: Charles J. Stivale

 

Part 1

…You’ve stuck me with all these tape recorders. Having said this, I’m making a graph; since everything is based on the graph, and it can only be captured by video, [Laughter] so, either you will make the necessary updates, [Laughter] or you have to go back to the old process of taking notes, or else you simply fall asleep. [Laughter] And then, I really care about this, because the more I think about it, this graph caused me some difficulty, you can’t imagine. Now I’m completely satisfied with it, so I just have to present it, draw it again, and then you’ll just contemplate it, [Laughter] and then there you go.

So here, today, I would really like to continue this, then the moment will come again when, I hope, I say it every time, but when it will really be up to you to talk a bit about whether this is useful for you, for you, if it’s useful in your life, really, or we’ll see. So, today I’m going to complete it fully, right? I guess you see the point we’ve reached; I’ll draw it over again, but fully, and then with question marks at points we haven’t done yet. And in redrawing it completely, it’s not going to change what we saw, but it will greatly… [Deleuze doesn’t finish the sentence] As a result, I brought my chalk. [Pause]

All these [the tape recorders] are useless, you can turn them off. [Pause] Shit… [Deleuze moves to the board] That’s going to bother me. I can continue it … [Laughter] There are too many boards. [Pause] Yes, we’ll put that there apparently… [The noise of chairs moving so that Deleuze can write on the board] Yes, that’s an idea, that, I need that, that’s right, that’s right. We’ll see if you remember. — You can’t see anything? Well then, obviously…

A student: No, but I’m fine.

Deleuze: It’s fine, it’s fine; this can get complicated because I must not get my thingies wrong; I need to have them, let’s see: one, two, [He counts] four, I need them, right? Five? Four? We will see. [The students tell him: Five] Zeroness, Firstness, intermediate, Secondness, Thirdness, it proceeds like that, fine, does that make five, that? So, there you have it, that’s good. [Pause] It’s a lot, it’s a lot prettier than Peirce’s.

Okay, [Pause] so here I have the perception-image: Zeroness. There I have the affection-image: Firstness. There I have the impulse-image, passage 1 to 2, 2 to 1. There, I have the action-image: Secondness. There I have the mental image: Thirdness. That makes five. I’m not revising this. The last time, our acquisitions were: two signs of composition, two signs of composition for the perception-image, one that we called “dicisign” – I’m emphasizing since it’s a borrowed term from Peirce, but I remind you, we need the term while understanding it in another sense — Second sign: the “reume”, sign of composition. Sign of genesis: “engramme”. Here as we have seen it, it’s done. As you wish, you do see, if there were already any urgent problems about this, we could talk about them now, or we could keep that for the end, when everything is finished, your comments, your … or problems, or the… [Pause]

We have also seen the affection-image: a sign of composition, the “icon”. I emphasize this since the term is in Peirce. We understand it in another way since “icon” for us was quality or potency [puissance] as expressed by a face or the equivalent of a face. We had two poles: “icon of contours”, “icon of features”. And then, we had a sign of genesis, much finer than the affections referring to the face, they were the qualities or potencies, that is, the affects exhibited in any-spaces-whatever, and there we used — I had not addressed it the last time, I had forgotten, but it was simple — we are using a term borrowed from Peirce, “qualisign”. But there as well, with our rule that we had allowed ourselves, always, of borrowing terms from Peirce by giving them another sense since for Peirce, a qualisign is a sign such that it is quality which yields a sign, whereas for us, a qualisign is quite another thing, that is, it is a quality or a potency insofar as exhibited, exhibited in an any-space-whatever. There we are! And we reached that point.

To complete what I can consider as established, I can add that this set is the movement-image, said movement-image therefore having two layers: if I consider it here, I consider it in its own consistency insofar as it refers to a plane which is its own and which is the plane of immanence of all the images acting and reacting upon one another. And on the other hand, when I consider the movement-image in its quadruple variety… no, in its … how to say it? fivefold variety, it’s simply because I have connected it to the center of indetermination which is present on the plane of immanence of movement-images. Here, I can do the same thing, but what are we going to put here? [Deleuze indicates the graph on the board] Question mark. Furthermore, I said, in Peirce, everything rests on Thirdness, ensures the closure of the set, and I said that for us probably, Thirdness will not have this role, and moreover that if there is a passage from one to two at this level, if there is no passage from two to three, this is because three is undoubtedly for us not a closure of the set, Thirdness is not a closure of the set, but is itself a passage to something else.

As a result, we find ourselves taken by surprise here, but the graph, the graph, the table, takes us away, and we are going to predict what it is we are going to do, so what we are going to do with that. But there is one thing for certain, which is that Peirce was right from a certain point of view: if Thirdness is a closure, it is indeed a closure of the movement-image. If we discover another slot, that’s how I was talking about a kind of slot within Mendeleev’s table, you know, in chemistry where there are empty slots, and then you have to, oh yes, there has to be, nature has to complete them. Here it’s the same;[1] nature is going to have to fill that in, nature, or cinema, or literature or painting, or whatever. I just know that if I have a slot on that side, it will be beyond the movement-image. So, that this slot, all alone, will have the right to this little thing, I no longer know what it is called in fact, all alone, it will no longer be movement-image, there, on the right, and so, that it might be much more complicated. You can always tell me there will be a sign of composition and a sign of genesis. Fine, but we’ll be outside the movement-image. As a result, even down there, I need for, which corresponded to the movement-image down there that I haven’t yet figured out, I need for it to end there. To make it stop, this is what I’m going to do. There we are. [Deleuze writes on the board, under the Thirdness] We will have to justify the length of this slot, we will have to justify what is located above.

You see what we have left to do, but not that much. After all, what we have left is this, this, this, this that shouldn’t be a problem; so here, this will go smoothly. Here, we have to be precise, and then there, so this will be, there we are. Look closely, we might say, we’re done for today. [Laughter] There you go. There you go. [Deleuze returns to his place] Okay, let’s get started then. We are continuing, but the best, for the next time if we are not finished by today, for the next time you’ll have to keep this graph. I’ll draw it again rapidly, if I … I mustn’t lose it.

I am saying, image-affection, let’s suppose, we are taking it at its extreme point: quality-potency exhibited in any-space-whatever. We have seen what it was, vaguely, that an any-space-whatever with, in fact, its double aspect: it’s a qualisign with two poles of the qualisign, qualisign of disconnection, qualisign of emptiness, the any-space-whatever being either a disconnected space, or an emptied space.

Once again, the action-image, if I have indeed to refer to it since one must in order to have a reference point, that would not create a problem. So, we might say the action-image starts from the moment that qualities and potencies are no longer exhibited in an any-space-whatever, that is, a space of disconnection, a space of emptiness, but are actualized in a determined space-time, that is, in a space-time which presents itself in a particular way or another, which presents itself in the form of a particular geographically and socially determined milieu. And in fact, an action-image, I’m not saying it boils down to that, but it is closely conditioned by a milieu. Why? Because an action is a retort, a response to a situation.

So, the action-image is inseparable from the situation, and what is a situation? A situation is a set of qualities-potencies actualized in a geographical, social, historical milieu, that is, in a space-time which is a particular space-time. So, this is clear here: I had qualities-potencies exhibited in an any-space-whatever [the affection-image], and here I will have: quality-potency exhibited in a well-defined space-time. I would say that the action-image is the domain of realism. And realism can involve dreaming, it can involve excess, it can involve excess, it can involve whatever you want. It is realism only because and insofar as it presents us with whatever might exist as qualities and potencies. It can be cosmic qualities and potencies: a hurricane, an earthquake, anything at all. So, it’s not just realism in the sense of something ordinary; it can be completely extraordinary. It is realism as soon as the qualities-potencies are presented as actualized in a milieu, which is this milieu.

So, what is my intermediary? Okay, well last year, for those that… and here I wouldn’t even want to go back, but I would like to add some things. I said, there is a funny thing which is… for me, that interested me greatly because even for literature, I find to have been a very great moment in the literature the moment of the creation of what’s known as naturalism. And what fascinated me was: what is the difference between naturalism and realism? And last year, I tried to state this, which I am just recalling:[2] naturalism in all areas, whether it’s… So, in all arts, there is naturalism. Well then, this is a very, very curious and very specific thing entirely linked to specific creators of naturalism. If you like, these are authors who consider determined milieus, they are even famous for having a great power of description of milieus.

In this sense, they’re realists, but what, what is the, what happens to make it something other than realist as well? This is what they present to us, but with great art, great skill, they present to us determined milieus, real milieus, as if there is an “as if” of naturalism. Naturalists do not get caught up in an “as if”; it’s an “as if”, “as if” real milieus were derived from something deeper that rumbles in their depths. And this something deeper that rumbles at the depths of real milieus, I am not required to consider it, I am not required to be a naturalist. If I am a naturalist, I believe it is always my purpose to tell you as well: find yourself, if possible, find yourself in something that has not been created. But you will only find yourself in something new that has not been created if you also discover your affinities with what has been created.[3]

Well then, you will feel naturalistic, in your heart, in your soul, if you think like this, if you think in the following way: if the real milieus that you frequent appear to you very strangely like milieus derived from something that rumbles below and that we will call what then? The word is justified, it is what I called last year: “originary worlds”.[4] You grasp derived milieus, but you grasp real milieus, but you grasp them as deriving from an originary world. What is this originary world from which the milieus, from which the real milieus are then supposed to be derived? Can I say, well, this is the animal world, this is the world of pure nature, hence naturalism? Yes and no, yes and no. I’m going to say yes, because from a naturalistic point of view, the rich in a real milieu will be like a beast of prey. The poor man for the naturalist may also be like a kind of beast of prey, but of another kind, this time a hyena. This is not how I think of it; you immediately feel that it is a very dark world. Does this mean that man is understood starting from the animal? Not at all. That means, and this is how naturalists live, follow them carefully: the distinction between man and animal only applies to derived milieus, it only applies to derived milieus… [Deleuze corrects himself] only to real milieus. Really yes, man is not an animal. But if we consider real milieus as deriving from originary worlds, at the level of the originary world, the difference is not that men are animals, it is that the man-animal difference does not occur. And as one might say, this is not a relevant distinction in originary worlds.

And why? Because it’s a formless world, it’s the world of the depth, or it’s the bottomless world. It is a world in which there are no actions, but in which there are something like acts, and acts without form, acts which do not refer to formed subjects. As in the cinema, you imagine a kind of “gimmick”: is it a hand or a claw that seizes? Fine, is it a hand or a claw? No answer. It will have the best shape to obtain the result; what result? To tear off the piece! Well, you will tell me: but these originary worlds, do they exist or do they not? Yes and no! There is only naturalism when you find yourself confronting creators, authors who roughly tell you or who roughly make you understand the two are inseparable; you cannot separate. There is no question of describing the originary world beside or above the derived milieu. It is deep in the real milieu that you find the originary world, and one is as inseparable from the other as the other way around.

Moreover, I would say an author who separates the two — suppose an author who divides a book in two: one part the originary world, another part the derived milieu and which would reveal to us all kinds of echoes between the two — I am saying, it can be fascinating, it can be very beautiful, it is not naturalistic. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter; it is something else. In cinema, there will indeed be that; a very beautiful, violent, very, very violent film by Pasolini called “Pigsty” [1969] is divided into two parts: one part which is the originary anthropophagic world, another part which is the pig milieu, the milieu of pigs, according to Pasolini, which is society’s real milieu.

This is not naturalism; why? Because as a naturalist, I’m not saying it’s worse than naturalism, it’s another process; well finally, it’s a very poetic process peculiar to Pasolini, but hey, it doesn’t matter. The equivalent can be found in literature, but this is not naturalism; a naturalist would never proceed that way. For him, the originary world is never more than at the depth of the real milieu, just as the real milieu is never more than a derivative of the originary world. And that is understandable; why? Because the little I have said allows us to say what the originary world consists of from the point of view of our classification. The originary world is the world of raw impulses.

So, remember, I can’t assign them to humans any more than to animals. They do not refer to formed subjects. These are not actions; that would be the action-image. These are acts; these are dynamisms; these are pure energies; that’s what the impulses are. So, what is the originary world made of? Of impulses and fragments. Impulses and fragments.

In fact, what is the correlate of the impulse? All energy can be called impulse insofar as it takes hold of a fragment. The fragment has no object, or at least, the object of the impulse is the fragment. By fragment, what do I mean? A piece of something torn off. The impulse does not have a something, it can only be defined as the dynamism that takes hold of fragments. So, not only does it not refer to a formed subject, it is a terrible world that a great part of terror cinema is naturalistic — not all, not all, because there is terror cinema at the level of affection-image — but there would be another form of terror cinema at the level of the impulse-image. Only the impulse-image is very, very difficult. It takes genius, it takes genius. And then, there were not many, but I think that in terror cinema, there is, for example, an Italian [Mario] Bava, that is good cinema of the impulse-image.

But finally, impulses-fragments, but then you immediately understand why this is inseparable. If the originary world is the world of impulses and fragments, you immediately see why it is not separable from real milieus. And why isn’t it separable from real milieus? Because if it is true that this naturalistic world is defined by the couple impulses-fragments, the fact remains that fragments, where do you want them to come from, if not objects from a real milieu? The fragments are torn from what in the real milieu presented itself as a complete object, just as impulses are induced from behaviors. They are never grasped directly, or are they?

Well, on the one hand, they are not grasped directly because they are necessarily induced by behaviors. It is as a function of the couple in the real milieu, behavior-object, that I will have this kind of superposition or sub-position, since it is below — or else it can be above, we will see — but finally from a sub-position or superposition of the originary world, which is defined by impulses and objects, impulses extracted from real behaviors, fragments torn from objects of the real. And that creates one of these worlds, that creates one of these worlds.

When Zola says, you know, my process is to darken, so obviously that has a moral sense. Life is not joyful, life is sad, all that; that’s disgusting, okay, fine. But that has a pictorial sense in Zola’s writing. He does not make a secret of it. To darken is to thicken the features. It is a matter of thickening the features of the real world until their lines of convergence are discerned in a beyond or in a depth of the real world, of the real milieu, a depth beyond which is the originary world. And then at that point, if you have understood me, there is no question of saying: the originary world existed; this is not an archaic world, or that’s whatever you want it to be. It’s an archaic world, it’s also a futuristic world, and it’s finally a contemporary world. It never stops accompanying us.

[Joseph] Losey — and last year I didn’t mention it, so that’s good because I wasn’t thinking about it, and I’ll say why I’m bringing it up — and Losey says about his “Don Giovanni” [1979], he puts it under the heading of an expression from Gramsci — how do you pronounce it? Gram-chi? [Deleuze laughs] — a phrase from Gramsci which is very beautiful. And Losey says in “Don Giovanni”, I wanted to show, among other things, not only that, Gramsci’s phrase is, “When you’re between a world that never ceases dying and another world that doesn’t manage to be born, then all kinds of morbid symptoms develop.” And let’s translate it together, without changing Gramsci’s sentence, let’s translate it to place it in our classification: when we are between two milieus, a milieu which does not manage to finish ending, which just doesn’t end, the old milieu which never ends, and the new milieu which still does not manage being born, then the originary world arises. What is the originary world? This is the morbid symptom; what is it? It’s that kind of terrible relation to impulses and their fragments. You see, this is inseparable from real milieus.[5]

So, I can say, here we have what confirms my having left a slot for that: the originary world does not merge either with the any-space-whatever or with the real milieu.[6] It is quite another thing than an any-space-whatever since it is the depth of a real milieu which was not of the all the case for any-spaces-whatever. And it is not a real milieu since this is what real milieus move towards under certain conditions which are the conditions of the impulse and its fragments. It would at least be a strict definition of naturalism in its difference, in its radical difference from realism. As a result, I would say here — then I would need another board; I only have to go over there, it’s perfect, it’s perfect — if we stay with this problem of naturalism, I would say very quickly, I would say naturalism unfolds on four coordinates, right, four coordinates: [Pause; Deleuze writes on the board] impulses-fragments, originary world, behavior-object, derived milieu-real milieu, and it ensures the circulation between impulses and fragments, immediate circulation, since the impulse is the claw that grasps hold of a fragment. Impulse-behavior, immediate communication since the raw impulses are extracted from behavior. Fragment-object, immediate circulation since the fragments are torn from objects. And all of this is a whole circuit which is the naturalist circuit.

Fine, how do we explain that? Here some funny things will occur because what is the relation between the originary world and the derived milieu? Everything takes place in the derived milieu. The originary world has no independence. Why? Once again, because there aren’t ready-made fragments or ready-made impulses. These are not Platonic ideas; these aren’t gimmicks of the eternal. The originary world is important only through the way it works in the derived world, but precisely it will make the derived world regret it. For how does it work in the derived world? I would say it [the originary world] imposes a line on it; last year, I called that the line of the steepest slope. It exhausts it; the originary world exhausts the real derived world. Once the milieu is exhausted, it switches to another milieu. The impulse, the impulse is exhaustive; the impulse is a terrible thing, it crosses through the milieu. Everywhere it rips off fragments, all the fragments it can; and when the milieu is exhausted, it [the impulse] switches to another milieu.[7]

Fine, so this is a world of terror; yes, it’s inhuman; and then it’s the slope. Suddenly, under the pressure of the originary world, the milieu is derived and thrown down a slope along which it will exhaust itself, and afterwards the originary world will have to grasp hold of another milieu. Fine, just what will this be? I will choose an example because precisely last year, it was the one, I said, you understand that, there are two great naturalists in cinema, they are [Eric von] Stroheim and [Luis] Buñuel.[8] And in fact, the originary world, once again, it passed through a milieu; so what can that be? The originary world can be a swamp, but it can also be a palace. The difference between them is irrelevant: it can be a strange palace, it can be a swamp, it can be a virgin forest, but it can be such an artificial virgin forest, a virgin forest in a studio, that can be a living room.

Think of Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” [1962] which is typically a film of the originary world, the derived milieu, and the way in which the originary world will exhaust the derived milieu. Or else there is a lesser-known film, perhaps not for some of you, “Susanna” by Buñuel [1951; “Susana the perverse”] in which a girl will exhaust, the originary girl will exhaust an entire milieu, the entire milieu of a family, namely everyone passes through this, the mother, the father, the son, the maid. She exhausts everything, which, in a certain way and in another context, Pasolini also did with “Theorem” [1968], and he precisely was not about naturalism, because he performed a huge trick. He did something wonderful, in my opinion; everything is wonderful therein, but in what way is it not naturalistic? This is because with Buñuel, the exhaustion of a milieu is really a physical exhaustion. Nothing will grow. Since with his diabolical cleverness, Pasolini wanted to be a mathematician, as a result the milieu’s exhaustion by “the special envoy” is a mathematical exhaustion in the sense in which a mathematician says: my demonstration has exhausted all possible cases. It is a logical-mathematical exhaustion, and not a physical one, which is why he will call this film: “Theorem”. Which Buñuel could never have done. Good.

But after all, you see this whole lovely game. I hadn’t thought of talking about [Joseph] Losey last year.[9] And about Losey, I came across a text, and I thought to myself, it’s obvious. First of all, if you see what Losey does, I find it, the more I think about it, the more I find it sublime. I already found his latest film “The Trout” [1982]; I found that, but it wasn’t successful so, it comes at a bad time; you know, that varies, but he’s fantastic, Losey. This is the third great name in naturalism; there are three very, very big [names] in terms of cinema. In literature, there aren’t many compared to cinema. Losey is the third with Stroheim and Buñuel. I’m selecting what he [Losey] himself says about a very nice Losey film, “The Damned” [1963]. He asks, what interested me in “The Damned”? He says, well there you go, he’s not drawing any consequences; he doesn’t theorize, he just gives the outline in an interview. He said, what interested me, [Deleuze starts to write on the board] is first the cliffs of Portland, the cliffs of Portland which are sublime landscapes with parts of mystery and birds, and helicopters, all that up there. And then it descends, and down below, there is what he himself calls “a pathetic Victorian style of the little holiday resort”, “a pathetic Victorian style of the little holiday resort”. Good.

You absolutely recognize the naturalistic coordinates. For those who have seen “The Damned”, on the cliff, a funny thing is happening, a kind of madman who wants to select and educate radioactive children. That means that the originary world is not an archaic one, it is archaic-futurism. There is some archaism and some futurism, there is some mutation; it is when the old world is not yet dead and the new one is not yet born, there are these mutant children, these radioactive children, they are prisoners, democratically raised however, on the cliff by this kind of madman, who works in conjunction with the military camps; there are helicopters, and the cliff is lined with large birds. Moreover, on the cliff, there’s a woman, because in Losey, salvation always comes through women, it is only the women who are not caught in this play of impulses. Besides, they show it; that’s why salvation comes from them, forces Losey for reasons of his own. [Laughter] Because, otherwise, Losey’s play of impulse is basically the male homosexual play.

So, we have to wait for something to be saved. Buñuel and Stroheim are also waiting for something to be saved.[10] These are authors who ask the question of salvation, naturalists necessarily, since they have made a world so … the least thing is that they answer readers who ask, “are we screwed?”; no, we’re not screwed, we don’t have much chance of escaping from this. The naturalist is someone for whom there is not much chance, but there are chances. So Losey’s answer is not the same as Buñuel’s; it’s not the same as Stroheim’s. It’s on the women’s side.

Well, in fact, on the cliff, but in this case, it will turn out badly, there is the woman as a creator, it is the woman sculptor who adds these sculptures onto the cliff, these very disturbing sculptures of life and death, the bird with the head of pins and gouged wings. That creates one hell of an aggregate; I call this the originary world. Down below is a pathetic Victorian holiday resort, and you will notice that in all of Losey’s films, there’s the Victorian house. And what is important in the Victorian house according to Losey? He says it a thousand times [Deleuze draws]: the staircase, it’s the staircase that constitutes the line of steepest slope. Good. There we are. So, the originary world only lives on raw impulses and fragments, for example, the radioactive children who have been taken from the derived milieu down below. Down below, what is there? Down below, well, there is the real derived milieu, the little resort town and behaviors, namely, the lower level is controlled by a motorcycle gang. Everything is full of echoes. The handlebars of motorcycles refer to the birds up above. The gang leader is a friend of the crazy trainer of the radioactive children … [Interruption of the recording] [46: 39]

… for systems of relays, sometimes words, sometimes concepts, sometimes images. But you understand the impulses, when we say impulses, we tell ourselves, fine, impulses, good, and then I add, the impulses are the relation with fragments, its forms of energy that take hold of fragments. Okay, but finally, we would like to know which fragments, which impulses.

And for the whole theory of impulses, that I find it very interesting to make a list of impulses, a classification of impulses. Well, in a way, no, there is no place; in another way, there is. But you have to expect to find some strange impulses. Because when we ask as usual for a list of originary impulses, what are we asking for? We are asking for something that would be common to humans and animals and that would be simple. So, above all, what we have is hunger, the impulse for self-preservation, and sexuality. Hunger and sexuality.

Notice that this is already going a long way. Not bad. That’s a lot. It’s not bad because that is about the good impulses-fragments relation, hunger and the way it tears the fragments, the way it tears an object. Think that, among the naturalists of cinema, this is Buñuel. The hunger impulse is Buñuel. Tearing fragments by and under the impulse of hunger, the virgin with the haunch of meat, in the whole series of Buñuel’s holy images, the virgin with the haunch of dripping meat, and the kid who approaches to bite into the haunch of raw meat, that’s a strong image, a strong image of impulses.[11]

[As for] sexuality, here, I am not discussing it because that topic, it’s been completely done, sexuality, obviously, impulse-fragment, perfect. What is needed, yeah, what is needed in order to have a fragment? A pair of shoes. Buñuel, Stroheim, the sex impulse, all that, one never asks for everything, right, because that’s really unimportant. Everything, a whole object, a whole being, these aren’t an impulse. We ask for a lock of hair, we ask for a foot, a shoe, a little something, really, [Laughter] that’s the raw impulse. Good… Yes?

A student: At the beginning of “Contempt” [1963], there’s a scene in which Brigitte Bardot asks, “do you love, for example, my breasts, my shoulders?”, etc., and then he says, “yes, yes…” And then at the end, she asks him, “So you love everything?” There are scenes like that everywhere.

Deleuze: Yeh, yes, yes, but in fact, in fact, but “Contempt” has nothing in it, in fact, of a naturalist film. But this, there is love, that’s not characteristic of naturalism. As soon as love’s there, there’s the choice of a fragment.

Georges Comtesse: What tells you… [several unclear words] …, what tells you that in, for example, Bunuel’s “Diary of a Chambermaid” [1964], what tells you that we can say that this is a world of impulses? For example, it’s the character of the father in “Diary of a Chambermaid”. More than a raw, so-called raw impulse, it’s rather an emotion of desires for a fetich object, is it possible? And then, the ice, precisely as it breaks, this is the emotion-desires-fetichism-ice relation, perverse icing over, and not raw impulse.

Deleuze: Yeh.

Comtesse: In most of Bunuel’s films, it’s much less a world of impulses, for example, especially in “Diary of a Chambermaid,” than a world of bells and fantasies, “Belle de Jour” [1967], for example, where are the raw impulses in that?

Deleuze: I wouldn’t cite “Belle de Jour” as part of Bunuel’s naturalist period.

Comtesse: [Several unclear words] … of desire, etc., etc., where are the raw impulses?

Deleuze: Look, I’m afraid you haven’t followed very well; I’m afraid you’re not considering what I’ve said, what I’ve tried to say, about the raw impulses-organized behavior relationship. Once again, for me, raw impulses are never abstract, nor separable from qualified behaviors in real milieus. So, if you take that into account, I don’t know if your remark is valid; I never said — you, you make me say plenty — in these naturalist authors, there would be raw impulses valid for themselves; I never said that.

And when you say “fetish” to me, I was going to come to this because you get ahead of me, but these are things that already go without saying. What do I call a fragment? This is exactly what you are calling a fetish. It goes without saying that a fragment does not exist, it does not exist independently of what it is ripped from or what it is supposed to be a part of. As a result, even as concerns the question of fantasy, here I am not introducing that at all because here I would perhaps be like you, I would say absolutely, fantasy, assuming that this thing exists, that belongs to a completely different type of image, it does not belong to that class. So, if you tell me it is still intervening here, I agree that this has been a rule since our beginning. There are action-images already in perception-images, etc., that…

Another student: I would like to make an intervention because the word “fetish” is absolutely not what is happening. It’s being used in this way as if it went without saying. Behind fetishism, in Freud, there is a whole theory of castration which means that, when one desires a fetish, it is a false desire, it is a negative desire, it is a perverse desire; I am absolutely not sure that to desire, what’s happening in Buñuel, to desire a shoe, that can be understood in the sphere of fetishism, that is, desire that is valid for another desire.

Deleuze: Or else we would agree by saying: we no longer have any reason, here it’s up to you, those for whom this matters, I would see it as you do. When I use it, I prefer to use the word “fetish”, but stripped of any Freudian connotation for the simple reason, and I have every right since it is not Freud who invented the word, which preexists him. Freud’s is a particularly original and interesting interpretation of the fetish, but the notion of fetish has a full meaning quite apart from psychoanalysis. So, it is in this sense that, for my own purposes, I would use it. But those among you who would like to add something psychoanalytic into it, I find that very good, you do it if it suits you, right?

So, I am still saying, understand, yeah, what I mean by — I’m trying to say it better — a raw impulse; I’m returning to my Losey story. Once again, this is obviously not an impulse that would be like a kind of animal impulse, which would be separated from qualified milieus. It is still extracted, but how do you recognize it? It happens that you grab it, so exactly just as you can grab — there are privileged moments – as you grab the originary world that points as if in a mist, between the milieu that never finishes dying and the future milieu which never ceases to arrive. And there, at times, as in a brief moment, you have the impression of a terrible originary world in which you say: this is our future.

Likewise, there are some people who give you the impression of raw impulses. And I don’t mean it’s because they’re animals; they’re very intelligent anyway, it’s an intelligence, it’s an implacable intelligence, necessarily. It keeps choosing its fragments; it’s all anticipation of the fragment that it’s going to get hold of. The impulse explores the derived milieu, it explores the derived milieu by asking itself: what fragment am I going to take? If it’s not this one, it will be that one. The vampire movie, this was a turning point in the vampire movie when the vampire ceased to be in a relationship of affective vocation with the victim, which was the earliest tradition of the vampire film. And when a more modern image of the vampire had emerged, then an image that I would call naturalistic, namely, he arrives in the milieu, of course, he chooses a fragment, by nature the most exquisite, but if this one slips away, it doesn’t matter, if this one slips away, there will be another. If it’s not that woman, particularly desirable for a vampire, well, he’ll take the neighbor. This is the second great period of the vampire film, it’s Terence Fisher. The impulse chooses, but ultimately it doesn’t care. In Stroheim… In any case, the milieu must be exhausted.

In Stroheim, well, it’s about exhausting the impulse, for example, in “Foolish Wives” [1921], she’ll be the woman of the world, alright, alright, but she’s also the maid, the maid has to go through that. And then, it’s the same, it’s the same, it’s not the same, but the impulse has to go all the way. You will find that too, you will find equivalents in Sade, very abundantly. And then in the end, this will be the film’s flow [débit]. You really have to go through all the degrees of the milieu, all the levels of the milieu; it is necessary to make an exploration, it is necessary that the impulse of the originary world explores the environment from top to bottom and leaves it exhausted.

So, I asked, how do you recognize raw impulses? Well, here, I come back to Losey because this impacts me enormously. I don’t recall if I’ve spoken about it this year, the way in which actors… — here I will not have time this year, but last year, I did not have time either – that would have meant really making a classification of the types of actors as a function of all that. For each, there are types of actors, for each slot. But, you understand, in Losey, there is something that strikes me as quite suspicious because, even in Stroheim or Buñuel, this isn’t there. This is what I manage to call, it’s not even internalized violence. The violence of the action-image is very great, but it is always a violence in the process of externalization. Moreover, from the point of view of the actors, the method to produce this violence in the process of externalization is the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio is the great formation of the actor who keeps being externalized by violent reaction. That’s why, in some ways, they’re so annoying when they’re not really great actors. They don’t stop moving; they never stop signaling that it’s going to get nasty, all that, that it’s going to explode, well, we can’t take it anymore, really.[12]

But for the naturalist actor, that’s not it. I would say, it’s not even inner violence; it is…, the only expression I can find is “static violence”. They have a kind of violence in them, and here I believe they cannot acquire it. It belongs to a race, a race of men. Everyone among us is familiar with it. It’s pretty rare that what strikes… What’s in them, like we talk about static electricity, you know. When we talk about static electricity, there are people, women or men, who have static violence within them. As a result, they walk into a room, they sit down, they don’t do anything, and there is a feeling of violence, as if a compression of violence was there. It’s weird. So, these are Losey’s actors, static violence. It’s very, very odd, I can’t say it better than that. So, it’s the opposite of an action-violence.[13]

I only see two equivalents in the arts of what Losey was able to do there, thanks … and it’s in this way that there was a kind of affinity between the actors. For those who know, an actor like Stanley Baker, [Deleuze writes on the board] is the type, in fact, he is the type of Losey actor, and that if you see, for those who see the face demeanor and the attitude and the way this guy behaves, he’s a compression of static violence. He doesn’t have to act violently; he is there, he is there, he comes in, we feel, we do not feel uncomfortable, they are charming, these are extremely charming men, but are they scary? In the end, we are not reassured, not reassured. I said one of the merits of [Alain] Delon, it’s not by chance that when Delon is employed by a great director, when Losey directed his acting, he acquired, it seems to me, that Delon also acquired some of that. When he doesn’t indulge himself in his films… when he’s employed by a great director, for example, when he’s acting for Losey, there it’s indeed a compression of static violence. Fine, but finally, I mean, what is it, so this is very different violence from action-violence.

But then, I come to my story of impulses. I am saying sexual impulses, food alimentary impulses, good all that, it’s good, it’s very useful, it’s all true, with all you want about the complications of the sex impulse, so your choice, understood in a Freudian or non-Freudian way, but what more is there? What interests me about these guys and their relationship to philosophy is that they uncover impulses for us which are good, which are very good, since once again, it is outside the human-animal duality. I am choosing the case, what is there… In Buñuel, there are lots of impulses, but there is one that is a personal matter for him. I mean, he diagnoses it. I am saying these naturalists are doctors; I am thinking of Nietzsche’s expression word, “the philosopher must be a doctor of civilization”. Well, it is the naturalist who is the doctor of civilization. Naturalists are the great doctors of civilization. So, they will diagnose impulses through and in real milieus. And if I choose Buñuel, there is, I am not saying that he is the only one nor the last one, there is an impulse that fascinates him. He sees the world like that, he sees real milieus like that. It’s worse; for him, it’s worse than violent people, there is something worse than violence, there is something worse than evil, what is it? It’s parasitism.[14]

The world is really… the originary world which not only has impulses of hunger and sexual impulses, but it only affirms them through an impulse of the impulses which, according to Buñuel, would be the impulse of the parasitism. More than a beast of prey, what the original world calls me to be is a parasite, and we are both at the same time. For Buñuel, we are basically both at the same time, a beast of prey and parasite. So, this is a very peculiar world. Why? Because that’s his way of saying, you know, between well-to-do men and poor men, not only between the rich and the poor, in the derived milieu, between the rich and the poor, of course, there are great differences, and then between the well-to-do men, this was again more Stroheim, rich-poor, it is a category shared by Buñuel and Stroheim.

To this, Buñuel adds another category, there is not only rich-poor; there is a well-to-do man, an evil man, the holy man and the demonic man. Well then, it’s all the same, parasites; all parasites. In what sense? They remain stuck to their fragments, each to his fragments, the devil’s fragments or holy fragments, namely relics. Bad fragments or good fragments, they stick to their fragments. They are parasites. And the good man, see “Nazarin” [1959]: an evil voice said to the holy man Nazarin, “you are as useless as I, you the holy man and me the devil”. In us, we are parasites, we hang small fragments, that’s it, it’s impulse-parasitism, that’s what leads us. Will there be salvation? And the poor are as much parasites as the rich. Obviously, this is not a very cheerful sight. Everyone takes the fragments they can and exhausts the milieu. Now, this vision is strange. Once again, I am reducing this a lot because salvation, we ask ourselves, really, but how to get out of this?

And finally, sexuality and hunger will be just two cases of parasitism. To eat is to be the parasite of someone or something. The cow is the parasite of the grass, the lion is the parasite of the antelope, the poor man is the parasite of the milieu, of the piece of raw meat that he has just found somewhere or that he has just stolen from somewhere; the rich man is the parasite of the chocolate he is choosing from a box etc., all of that, okay. There you have it, there you have a beautiful impulse, and that does not mean that it is natural since, you understand, it is originary in the sense that I have just stated.

So, if you want to feel and appreciate the kind of difference between two authors, Losey has his idea, and that is how he owes nothing to anyone, and that well, yes, he is still not far from Buñuel’s idea, and that’s quite another thing, and it’s a whole different style. And he says it formally, but it goes for all his work, he says it formally when he was giving interviews on “The Servant” [1963],[15] where there too you have fully the naturalistic outline, the originary world of impulses, the derived milieu which is still the Victorian house, the staircase, etc., and then the great circulation, and that it has obviously led into a male homosexual game with women as victims, well, anyway…

Losey has a very odd idea, it’s that the deep impulse, even deeper than hunger and sexuality, what is it? As the other [Buñuel] would say, he had parasitism, the impulse of parasitism. For Losey, it’s something else, it’s the impulse of servility. It is the impulse of servility. He explains it very well, saying: if we did not understand “The Servant”, it’s because we believed that it was concerning a servant and a master, and that it was the fascination that the servant exercises over the master. He says, in my mind, that’s not it, it’s not that. In my mind, what it is all about is showing that the servant is only an opportunity; it’s not because he’s a servant, because what he diagnoses, what Losey claims to diagnose in all milieus, is an impulse of servility. And he says, well of course, the servant is servile to the master. But there is a strange servility of the master, servility in relation to the servant.

And in fact, if you think about the way — it will be a good theme also for Buñuel — if you think about the way in which the bourgeois behave with their servants, there is an astonishing servility of the master in relation to the servant, that is stupendous. Okay, so that’s it. And then the servility of the lover to the loved one, and then the servility of the loved one, and then servility, servility, servility of the boss, servility, finally servility everywhere. Impulses of servility which bring along all milieus. And he says what I call servility, it’s not a situation, it’s the spirit of a milieu, and he says today, well, it’s the world of servility. It is his concern as the great physician of civilization; there was Buñuel who diagnosed its impulse for parasitism. For Losey, it’s not at all that, it’s not the same, it’s another world: he diagnoses its drive for servility.

So, I find, that becomes very interesting at this level because, in fact, we indeed see that at this level, it’s to create. Me, I call creation, and through this, it is too obvious that in cinema, there are so many creations. I see the equivalent in the static violence I was talking about earlier; I am saying I see equivalents in the other arts. Well, in literature, to account for static violence, a violence in actions, I seem to be saying, is easy; a violence in action, as you will find it in the action-image, is not easy either, but it is something else. In my opinion, a static violence is the great moments of success, especially since it doesn’t have to last long. In fact, it must arise between, it must be seen as… to the point that we tell ourselves: “Did I really see it?” I see one case in painting, but there are several, it’s [Francis] Bacon; in Bacon, the Bacon characters are seated, they are still, nothing occurs, nothing happens, they are compressions of static violence… [Interruption of recording] [1:11:43]

Part 2

… Oh, that’s just to say: a very special art is required. And once again, it’s not simply by thinking, hey, I’m going to do static violence, that you achieve any that day. It doesn’t work, it never works. It’s always a surplus, it’s by doing what you want to do, and you don’t know precisely what, that you get that kind of effect. And then, in literature, I see [Jean] Genet, Genet’s characters; there are pages in Genet, lyrical descriptions of a violence that is not the violence of action. It’s odd because there are similarities between the three, there, between Losey, Bacon and Genet.

I am thinking of a page, for example, at the beginning of Genet’s The Thief’s Journal where he describes for one of his little pals, a hand — in my recollection, I’m not sure it has all the fingers, perhaps he’s missing a finger, which helps a lot, [Laughter] but anyway –, the little guy, his hand was resting on the table and doing nothing, the immobile hand, just like the Bacon’s characters are motionless, just as Stanley Baker entering a room stands motionless, and Genet’s page is sublime. In just a few sentences, it’s not long, he describes, he describes the hand and violence, and the violence that emanates from that motionless hand, a much greater violence than if the guy was punching, hitting. Well, there you go, I would say, these are successes of this world.[16] There are people who see in a naturalistic way, I believe, but that does not mean that they apply a formula. Once again, they either create their coordinates or they recreate them completely. In Buñuel’s world and Losey’s world, there aren’t many, there aren’t many… So, if I had the opportunity, something that I dream about, to do some work on literature, I would get back into all of Zola, because I like Zola a lot. From that point, it is also evident that he worked with an extraordinary and extremely strong static violence.

Okay, so there you go, all that, this whole development, what was it all about? Well then, as we just saw, what is the impulse-image made of? On one hand, it’s about recognizing the impulses by its fragments; about impulses, I consider that I have justified the category of impulse-image as not being confused with either the affection-image or the action-image, and so I am just saying, henceforth, the impulse will be recognized by the fragments and the types of fragments that it tears in the derived milieu. [Pause] The fragments, types of fragments that the impulse tears into the derived milieu, we call them: fetishes. [Deleuze writes on the board] And we say, but this is anecdotal, there are, at your choice, there are several kinds of fetishes, the fetish is bipolar, the fetish of the rich, fetish of the poor, or better: fetish of the good and fetish of evil. But in the end, the two come together, it’s one and same denomination. The fetish of good is: relic; the fetish of evil, I looked for a name, but now you told me the name, but it’s, we’re not sure yet, so you have to verify it, right? I was telling myself, for the fetish of evil, we need a term no longer drawn from the Holy Relics this time, but from witchcraft. And wizards, what do they use? Just as there are pious and holy relics, there are clippings of nails, bits of hair, right? When you make the doll, right, that you’re going to riddle with pins, then you put into it a bit of the person you want to act against, right? A piece of fingernail, all that, or the little doll itself is an evil fetish, then with your blowpipe there, you project the pins where you want the person to be hit. You’ve all done that. [Laughter]

We were looking for the term for that, and there would be, there would be one, but it’s not sure, right, there would be a word that seems strange, that wizards use, no, I’m telling you that, because it’s delicate, can I even write it down… because… you’re not supposed to write it down? [Laughter] Which would be the word “vult”. All these bits and pieces, all these fetishes used by wizards would be vults. It’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful word. So, I would have a “fetish” with the two relic and vult poles. Hey, Peirce didn’t think about that. [Laughter] And what would a vult be? According to the dictionary, there is a vultus in Latin, but vultus means face; it can’t be that. Vult seemed to have come, if it is indeed a wizard’s word, if it is indeed a wizard’s word, in fact, it would come from “vault” or from the same root as vault, which works better with wizards, but I see why it ends up referring to witchcraft fetishes. So, the little statues were statues — vaulted, bewitched — so they would be necessary objects for bewitchments, right?

In the end, I offer that for your reflections, especially as there are among you who must know more already than me, so, but anyway, if something happens to me during the week, [Laughter] I probably have spoken a word I shouldn’t have. There you go, so I’m erasing it because it must not remain here because normally it must be an innocent person who dies from having seen the word, yeah. [Deleuze laughs; laughter among the students] [Pause] Fine, but I’m getting a funny feeling from this all of a sudden. [Laughter] I shouldn’t have said that. Can’t that be erased from …? There you go.

The sign of composition of the impulse-image, the bipolar sign of composition, is the “fetish.” So, add to it as much psychoanalysis as you want, I don’t care. That does not interest me. But the sign of genesis, you diagnose, you diagnose the impulses from the slope that brings forth the real derived milieu or milieus. In other words, the sign of genesis is the “symptom”, the symptom.[17] What happens in the real milieu will be a symptom of the originary world, a symptom of an impulse. As a result, you have your “fetish” sign of composition, your “symptom” sign of genesis, I am indeed emphasizing this; really, I’m afraid to emphasize this since it has no corresponding points in Peirce. Phew, good.

What time is it? [Pause] Should we take a five-minute break?

A student: We had better air out the room a bit.

Deleuze: Yes, let’s air the room out a bit, don’t go off too far, and then we’ll take a five-minute break… If you’d like to open up because… [Interruption of the recording; sounds of students] [1: 21: 22]

We’re moving forward. But I assure you that I’m feeling uneasy ever since I said that word. [Laughter; Deleuze is still referring to the word “vult”]

A student: [Inaudible comments]

Deleuze: What?…

The student: [Inaudible comments]

Deleuze: In [H.P.] Lovecraft, he’s much cleverer, it’s always about something that one must not name. [Pause] I should have said… yes. [Pause; laughter] Fine, right? Let’s forget all that.

So, now we are necessarily approaching more peaceful shores. The action-image, you understand, when we have left behind the impulse-image, I insist, once again, because here, I don’t at all to develop anything, but what’s getting interesting is, in a world like the naturalist world, where can salvation come from? Ultimately, these are secular theologians, they are completely secular — not always secular anyway — but still they can be perfectly secular. There is salvation in their works since there’s such loss, there’s such drastic loss, how do you… where can it come from?

Well yes, but this fascinates me greatly, that in Losey, there is a type of woman who resists that. The business of these women, I am not saying all, the business of these women, it is completely elsewhere. So, this world slides completely over them, and the way Losey incorporates them in his films, it’s very curious. There is something, that’s what I liked so much about “La Truite” [1982], it was even, he went further than in the others, already in “Eva” [1962], right? For those who remember “Eva”, the woman who is played by Jeanne Moreau, she is not at all part of the game of…, she is free in relation to this world. It is like an exit path from the world of impulses. In her case, for her own business, she uses impulses, the men’s impulses, but she is not part of this game, she is not in this game. So, there’s a little breeze flowing thanks to that. The woman sculptor in “The Damned” [1963] … Anyway, let’s go to the next category which is so much more peaceful.

In fact, there isn’t much of a problem at first glance, although it is not always easy, all that. This time, what do I have? Well, it seems almost shameful after the detours we’ve had, but here at last are qualities-potencies that are actualized in real milieus. The milieu must be real. So, there we tell ourselves, well, this is not complicated: that’s it, qualities-potencies actualized in real milieus! This is the frame of the action-image.

A real milieu necessarily actualizes several qualities-potencies. Obviously it gets a bit complicated because if I try to say what the aggregate of the action-image is — we saw it last year, so here I’m not even summarizing; I’m re-quoting — I believe that there is, and it was confirmed by our analysis of Bergson, real space-time normally has a curvature since it tends towards a center, center of action, it curves around it. The real milieu is like a big crater, or else, I said last year, an “encompasser” [englobant], using here a philosophical concept which is very dear to [Karl] Jaspers who constantly spoke of the encompasser, rather than talk about a horizon or a being in the world. He created an entirely interesting theory of the encompasser.[18]

I would say the real milieu is like an encompasser, and an encompasser that has caesuras, sections, as you might imagine it in space, I was saying it’s more of a spiral, the real milieu, and this spiral has turns, there are space-time caesuras. An example: there is the earth, and then there is the sky, and there is the caesura of the earth and the sky, and then there is the earth, and then there is the water, and there is the caesura of earth and water. And in fact, this is how any milieu unites several qualities-potencies. And that is the milieu, it’s the geographic encompasser. The geographic encompasser itself encompasses a historical geographical-social milieu, a space-time, a particular space-time or another at a particular moment; this milieu in itself encompasses a situation, the milieu… [Deleuze writes on the board] not the encompasser, the large encompasser, the milieu, the situation, all these with caesuras, spatial and temporal caesuras, spatial ones in simultaneity, temporal ones in succession, according to the evolution of the milieu and the situation. If I start from the encompasser, encompasser, milieu, situation, what do I reach? I reach the center of action.

In fact, the situation is relative and tends towards a center which experiences it as a situation. This is the situation of this center; that’s why the encompasser is curved. And what is this center? Both at the same time. It is a group, a group determined in space and in time; at the limit, it can be a people, or a fraction of a people, a group, and it can be even more precisely the hero, the character. And the character acts, and what we call action is his “reaction” to the situation and to the milieu, and this action or this reaction, this reaction which is an action properly speaking, since you remember the Bergsonian diagram, it is no longer linked with the influence received, it improvises, it brings something new, this something new consisting in what? Well, to modify the situation, through the intermediary of the modified situation, to modify or restore the milieu which had been disturbed, etc. As a result, this entire aggregate, last year I called it, because it seemed convenient to me, “the organic representation”, the organic representation, or I could have said, but this is complicated, “organico-active”.[19]

And I said, if you’re looking for the formula for this action-image — I’m not going back over that, this has been acquired, even for those who weren’t here last year; it does not matter, you only need to keep the graph – that formula is S-A-S ‘, [Deleuze writes on the board] and S-A-S’ is the formula of this action-image, namely: situation exposed at length, action by the character, and this action modifies the situation, that is, gives rise to a new situation. Okay, so I obviously don’t need — I specifying this, but all that, we’ve looked at it thoroughly, well, in more detail last year — between S and A and between A and S’, all kinds of things happen, and that’s what establishes the famous action movie.

And I believe that despite many exceptions, American cinema has triumphed universally by bringing the action-image to perfection. You will notice that the other images, in fact, are not its strong suit. When you ask yourself, “where would American cinema be?”, it’s obvious that, once again, don’t tell me there is this guy, there is that guy, that goes without saying. They’ve had a few naturalists, but understand, and it’s not hard to see why Americans care about this so much, they’re so devoted to the action-image. Generally speaking, I’d ask, who was the affection-image? The great tradition is Expressionism, this is what I called lyrical abstraction last year, these are the two poles of the affection-image. The impulse-image is the naturalists, as we have seen; Hollywood never could stand them.

I think Losey’s break with Hollywood, in particular, is not just due to [Joseph] McCarthy; there is a deeper disagreement in the conception of cinema. Already, McCarthy wasn’t bad [as a reason]. The mental image, we can guess in advance, is not the business of American cinema either, but rather the action-image! To such an extent that it has often been done, the action-image, it has been brought to perfection by non-American authors. But as luck would have it, it was their passports to go to America. When they pulled off a great action-image film, they would find themselves in Hollywood right away, and that’s no small thing, an action-image film. I don’t mean to say that it’s lousy compared to the rest; I am saying, there’s a lot going on between S and A and between A and S’. It doesn’t matter, I won’t go back over that.

Henceforth, here this is going relatively quickly because if you follow me, apply that, for example, to a formula of, not of all of them, but of the [John] Ford Western, the Ford Western, right, or the great American psycho-social film.[20] Or else, in the American psycho-social film, there is an action situation, a modified situation, with variations, when the hero cannot change the situation. Fine, this is already a rather dark film, but not naturalist; it’s S-A-S, nothing has improved, it will continue as before, you have American realism turning dark… [Interruption of the recording] [1: 33: 20]

… realism has never excluded the dream. Moreover, that does not exclude excess, excess. The Western, everything by King Vidor, is full of excess, excess, dreams, all that.

But what is this? It’s the American dream. And what is the American dream? Here I am leaving cinema because it also affects literature, but that’s just what we need. The American dream is not difficult; it’s based on two propositions. First proposition: it means there will be an encompasser; it’s there, and there will be a great encompasser which will allow the most diverse fusion. That is, all the sections, all the caesuras come together in the encompasser. What is this? You recognized it, it’s the American nation; it is the melting pot of all minorities: we are a nation of a new type. We are the melting pot of minorities. We are the crucible, the encompasser which will bring about melting, which will bring together all the segments, while keeping their specificities. So that’s the first aspect of the American dream.

It was not until the postwar period that the American dream collapsed, and that involved serious changes of form in American cinema which gave up, in fact, but the action-image triumphed by and large until the war. This is the first aspect. And the second aspect… In other words, the first aspect is always the birth of a nation, of a new type of nation, but in the end, American cinema has only filmed, re-filmed variations of the birth of a nation, with great examples of originality.

The second aspect of the American dream, what is it? It’s this: a man of this nation who will always find the right answers to the difficulties of the situation. Otherwise, he won’t be a real American. There you are. The American dream is united to the action-image; it’s normal that the action-image is a dream. [Pause] As a result, you see, there is something very odd: when it goes wrong, when there is S-A-second S, that is, when there is an American-style degradation, I was saying last year, an American-style degradation is not the same thing as expressionist degradation or naturalist degradation. Naturalist degradation is the slope of the impulse. So, there they go, they necessarily encounter the American-style degradation of the action-image because this all-encompassing nation and its well-conditioned men have produced so many, so many alcoholics and gangsters, that they could nothing other than encounter the problem of degradation.[21]

And for me, what interests me greatly is the way they view American-style degradation which is no longer naturalist degradation of all, nor expressionist degradation. Think of the degradation in [F.W.] Murnau’s style, the “The Last Laugh” [1924], the degradation in Stroheim or Buñuel; well, no, that’s not it, and for them, it’s not that at all. Degradation is when there is both a pathological milieu opposing the first pole of the dream, it is no longer an encompasser; it is a pathological or pathogenic milieu. And on the other hand, men who in this milieu — we do not know who is the first of the pathogenic milieu or these men — no longer know how to invent appropriate behavior. [98: 00] That is, their behavior is flawed, their behavior leaks like a sieve in every direction.

So here we are, this gets very curious because, you see, Americans have a peculiar conception. I would almost say, you have to compare that, we’ll see why, with Soviet cinema. Because they at least have something in common: it’s the idea of an end to history. Among Soviets, it is obvious that the end of history is the triumph of the proletariat. They’ve all been there; that’s what it is in Eisenstein. I’m not saying that’s the only difference; on the contrary, it’s a resemblance to the Americans. In the end, there is a bond, Eisenstein and American cinema, which interests me greatly. I mean, he really admired what Americans were doing, and I think Eisenstein had some very strong reasons.

For Americans, the finality of history is obviously America, just as for others, it was the proletariat. Why is this comparable? Because for them, the finality of history is the formation of this nation of a new type, of this nation based on emigrants, which claims to be a melting pot of emigrants, to merge them into one and the same nation and produce men who know how to respond to situations, whatever they might be. So, what I’m saying is dated, because America after the war, its dream, you think, it shattered into a thousand pieces, its dream, along with the evolution of minorities with… and then many other reasons. The postwar period was the big blow, the big blow against the American dream. But until the end of the war, I believe you can understand American cinema poorly in its sometimes most distressing aspects for us if you don’t consider the action-image and the American dream as strictly one. If you take the great King Vidor films, of the American romances type, for example, American romance is typically the exposition of the American dream through water, fire, steel, wheat etc., etc., and that is an enormous S-A-S’ structure, you have that entirely. So, it’s very, this is explained in the end, it’s explained. At the extreme, I would say that, for them, everything is historical.

That’s why I don’t despise it at all; I want to talk about it a little bit — I didn’t talk about it at all last year — I want to talk about the Hollywood historical film. It’s been said that there are many historians who are interested in cinema; I am still astonished that there is not to my knowledge, even the best in my opinion, even Marc Ferro is not interested in the question, as if it were a little stupid question.[22] I don’t know, I don’t find the question stupid. Finally, in historical films, what is the conception of history? Just as I can ask myself about [Jules] Michelet, what conception of history there is in Michelet, and which is not the same in Marx, which is not the same in Augustin Thierry? I ask myself, I would like to get to ask: what is the conception of history in Hollywood films?

In my opinion, this is not a weak conception of history at all; it’s not a stupid conception of history at all, right, where they tell “stories”. They have a very strong conception of history: with Cecil B. De Mille, we must not exaggerate, right? It’s truly well-done work with a conception of history in which he knows very well where he is going as much as a Marxist. He does not mean the same thing as a Marxist, but he is very firm in his conception of history. And that depends on what? It’s because with them, everything is historical, everything is historical by nature. In France, this is not true; for example, an adventure film in France may be [unclear words], but with them, everything is historical. The adventure film finds its perfect expression in the Western. And the Western is literally a period in their history, it is the conquest of the West.

The film noir, the criminal film, for us, [it’s] not so historical, right? It can be traced anecdotally to criminals who have existed, but this is incidental, whereas for them, gangsterism and the evolution of gangsterism linked to Prohibition was fundamentally a historical period. And so how can they… In the end, all their cinema is historical. And how can they ensure this historicity of the action-image in their cinema? Well, it’s because just as the summary Marxists ultimately judge all periods of history in relation to the finality “triumph of the proletariat”, Americans will judge all the periods of universal history in relation to the finality “birth of an American-style nation”.

And after all, it gives extremely interesting results — we will see –, and that is why they invent the film containing periods, the film of universal history, with interspersed periods. Who invents it? It’s [D.W.] Griffith, when he films “Intolerance” [1916], with four intertwined historical periods, which will obviously found a truly fantastic mode of cinematographic editing, because he does not create one part, another part, another one, since according to some very complex laws of montage and rhythmicity, there, brilliant ones, he will interweave the periods, Babylon, Jesus, the Saint-Barthélemy massacre, America, modern America. And it will be repeated all the time. Cecil B. De Mille will do that again; he had less talent in montage. Moreover, the brilliant Buster Keaton will do it in a comedic manner with his version of the “four ages”, with the prehistoric age in which he has enormous shoes.[23]

Okay, fine, but you see, what allows them to do that? Ultimately, their way of judging universal history is: maintain surveillance over each symptom, and I am saying “symptom” like not just any, each sign of the emergence of a nation-civilization that would ultimately be like what? Which is defined by its proximity or its distance from the American dream. So, and conversely, the American dream, that is, the American nation as seen until the war, is going to be a recapitulation of universal history.

If you take the Ford film, “Young Mister Lincoln” [1939] is the famous biblical aspect of American cinema; it is biblical from one end to the other, obviously it is biblical. So Young Mr. Lincoln is presented as what? He is presented as the man of judgment and judging as firmly and as wisely as Solomon himself, Solomon with him, and then he is presented as the Moses of the American nation, that is, the one who passes from nomadic law to written law, the one who brandishes the Book. The American nation has been in a position to recapitulate and bring to perfection the determinant passage of universal history, from unwritten law to written law. It was the transition from Western law to industrial law, and Lincoln brandished the Book of the Law just as Moses brandished the Book of the Law. Moreover, a small addition so that people understand fully: he enters the city on his little donkey, right? He enters the city on his little donkey, saluting like that; he is not only Solomon and Moses, he is Christ.

Fine, but it was rather that the Hebrews in their flight into the desert were in search of a nation-civilization and were going to create with Moses their first nation-civilization, and then the Christians, the sign of the cross, Cecil B. De Mille, were going to create against the nation — it is always against a decadent nation that the American nation is created — so, an American nation was going to be created for the first time by the Hebrews, and then a second American nation-civilization was going to be created a second time by Christians, and then a third time by Protestants, by the Reformation, and then a fourth time, the best, by America itself. And it is this whole conception of universal history that is typically embodied in the action-image.

So obviously, here I can say, if I am searching for signs, it goes by itself at least for the beginning. I would say: I indeed have two signs — here I am not forcing matters — I have two signs of the composition of the action-image, they’ve been given to me, they’ve been given to me. I would say all that is the encompasser and its sections, the encompasser, the milieu and the situation, what is it? They are “some” qualities-potencies insofar as actualized in a determined space-time. “Some”, there are necessarily several. Once again, you see a Ford image, the vastness of the sky, or else the beginning, however he’s not part of that, but [Howard] Hawks in “The Big Sky” [1952], which is, in French, it must be “The Captive (with clear eyes)” [La Captive aux yeux clairs] or whatever. In “The Big Sky”, there is the famous expression: this country is large, “the Land”, it is the earth, it is the earth country, it is the earth of the nation, “The Land, this country is big, and only the sky is bigger”. Ah fine, that’s a Ford image, the sky, three-quarters of the screen or two-thirds; it had to have been calculated. There must be a rule. That’s what Eisenstein loves in it; he sees proof there of his story of the golden section, the golden ratio. The image is going to be composed, the action-image is composed with caesuras etc., which mark the different potencies that will confront each other in the milieu.[24]

So, what are we going to call this? It has a sign of the encompasser; the sign of the encompasser, we call it [Deleuze writes on the board] “synsign”. The first sign of the composition of the action-image is the synsign. Anecdotally, I am pointing this out, I am emphasizing it since I borrow it from Peirce who also spoke of the “sinsign”; only, here we are, I’m only borrowing half of it, though that doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that I am borrowing it since what Peirce calls a “sinsign” is exactly: quality or potency actualized in a real state of things.

So, I can’t say I’m even changing the sense; I’m giving it a development which is what I just did, and I’m keeping the same sense. But Peirce himself, he writes that “sinsigne”, S-I-N. You’ll ask me, what difference does that make? But it does, it does, I’ll tell you why very quickly. So, it’s not that hard to understand; it’s not the same prefix at all. The Peirce prefix “sin” is the same for singular or simple. He therefore insists on “the individuation of the state of things”, it is such a particular space-time, it is an individuated space-time. So, he will say sinsign, “sin”, to emphasize individuation. So, I tell myself: for me, I can’t do so. I can’t because okay, the state of things in the action-image is individuated. With that, he is completely right, Peirce, but I cannot use “sin”, I cannot use “sin”, because really needing this, I kept for myself the idea that, above individualities, there were singularities; for example, that affections were not individual but consisted of singularities. If you remember, I developed this topic a lot, even this year. So, it puts me in a jam; I cannot use “s-i-n”-sign. On the other hand, if I keep another characteristic of Peirce’s sign, the state of things always actualizes several qualities and potencies, I can use the prefix “syn”, because the prefix “syn” is in Greek what “cum” is in Latin, that is, meaning “with”, being together. So, I will say a “synsign”, this is a sign that always embodies and always actualizes several qualities and potencies. In this sense, I could therefore keep the term “synsign” which is a convenient and fortunate term.

But this is the first sign of composition of the action-image. We have seen that there is a second sign of composition of the action-image, namely, what is happening in A? Since the action-image, there, goes from the situation to the action, and action will bring about the changed situation, you have, literally, it’s a shape of an egg cup or an hourglass, a spiral with coils that narrow at A and then those coils widen again at B of this type, you see: [Deleuze writes on the board] here S, here A, here S ‘, it is exactly an egg cup or an hourglass. And time in the action-image is from S to S’ through the intermediary of A. That’s clear, right?

But what does A consist of? We have seen it, and there it will affect a lot of things even about the conception of history. S, the synsign, links to the first pole of the American dream: we are the nation of the encompasser, we bring together all minorities by respecting their caesuras. The second pole of the American dream: the men of our nation will be well-conditioned men, masters of behavior, that is, they will know how to respond to the difficulties in all situations: that is a true American. What does “to respond” mean? What is it? What does that pass through? We had seen it last year: A — and that justified so much the idea of ​​Secondness in Peirce – it is always, in the action-image, it is always a duel. It’s the character’s duel with the milieu, the character’s duel with the situation, the character’s duel with another character. And it is this decisive duel that will lead to the transformation of S into the human spirit. It is at the outcome of the duel that the situation will be restored or modified or, and its difficulty resolved: it will be necessary to pass through a duel, and the citizen of the American nation is the one who knows how to undertake the duel with the elements, with others, with the traitor since there are always traitors who drag civilization into softening, with, with, etc.

And you find the duel everywhere, everywhere in American action cinema, and you find its purest expression in the Western, where there the duel appears at the pure level, and if not in all the other films, there is also the duel, fine, sometimes therefore a duel with the women, the duel with whatever you want. So, the forms of duels are always formulas of decisive action, but they vary widely. The sign of the duel, the sign of action, just like the sign of the encompasser, in the action-image I called it synsign, we need a name to designate, once it’s said that the duels are very, very varied, what do they have in common? As Peirce would say, these are exemplary forms of Secondness, of duos. What is the perfect duel? It is when two forces clash, it’s a confrontation, it is the confrontation of two forces such that the state of one refers to the exercise of the other. There you have it if you want the formula of the duel in general, the relationship of two forces such that the state of one refers to the exercise of the other and vice versa; this is a duel.

More particularly, I would say a duel is the state of two forces, [Deleuze writes on the board] yes, there, that would work well, it is the state of — because American psychology spends its time to talking to us about this — it is the state of two forces such that one only operates and unfolds by involving a representation of what the other is going to do. [Pause] When two forces are in such a situation that at least one of them can only be exerted by encompassing a hypothesis about what the other is going to do, you will say that one of these forces at least is voluntary. Otherwise, according to the first definition, there could be duels between two elemental powers, for example, between wind and stone, but the duel in the human sense therefore involves something other than my first definition. It implies that at least one of the two forces exerts itself only by making an assumption about what the other is going to do, by encompassing within itself the representation of what the other force is supposed to do.

Obviously, I… a voluntary force which presupposes what the other force is going to do, for example, in which direction the wind will blow, I use it to make a “parry”. As a result, in the sign of the duel, I would have all kinds of subdivisions, “feints”, “dodges or parries”, “lures”… The feints: I make the other force believe that I am going to do this, and clever as anything, I do that, I’ve made a feint. The feint is a natural dimension of the balance of power in the duel. The parry, conversely, I guessed what the other was going to do, and I parry it; the exercise of my force is inseparable from my assumption of what the other force is going to do. The lure as well, good, all that, feint, parry, that will create sub-signs for us, but anyway we must not overcomplicate, that is, that in the classification, I am just asking for a formula to indicate all the signs of voluntary or involuntary duels. So, I searched well; there is only one that I like because it’s good, it’s good: I’ll call it binomials, binomials, right? Just as the binomial being a common expression in mathematics, they are binomials, duels are binomials. I can’t say duels because “duels” is not a sign by itself. But the binomial is a sign of a duel; I would say a feint is a binomial. [25]

I would say, the cowboy goes out into the street, right? You see, he goes out, he walks into the street. Once again, you don’t confuse him with the other times he’d went out, walked into the street like that. His looks, his eyes, his demeanor, the very way he opened the saloon door, makes you say: he’s a binomial. [Laughter] Even his way of walking is a binomial, that is, he is going to a duel. Okay, well there you go, very good. So, my two signs of composition of the action-image, it’s the synsign that refers to S, and it is the binomial that refers to A. [Pause]

So, at the point I’ve reached, what I would like to do, because last year I did not do it at all, is to return to this story, there at the point we’ve reached, so we are exactly there. [Deleuze writes on the board] What would be the sign of the genesis of action? We’ll keep that. I am saying the point I’ve reached to be able to take it there immediately the next time, namely, what would interest me would be to return to this story of the cinema historical film, in American cinema, to confirm the synsigns and binomials.

And here, I told myself, I know two great texts on conceptions of history. For those who are interested in this, as it’s my wish that we do philosophy completely through all this, the two great texts on the various conceptions of possible history, obviously they weren’t thinking about cinema, it is a text by Hegel that you find in The Introduction to the Philosophy of History. In the preface to this book, you will see that he distinguishes three types of history, which he calls original history, reflected or reflective history, and philosophical history.

If you look closely at the text, those who will want to read it, I hope there will be some, you will see, I am just giving you this guideline here, it is not complicated; as always with Hegel, he comes back to the distinction of the three faculties: sensibility, understanding, reason. And the so-called original history is the history of sensibility, that is, the history as it is made by a historian who tells what he has before his eyes, and Hegel has the audacity to put Herodotus and Thucydides there. What makes us laugh anyway, the story that Thucydides is reduced to that, well, that’s his business, it’s his business, we must not, we must not criticize. He said it, if he said it, then he believed it, unless he didn’t. No, anyhow, I’m being harsh, because this book is of int… in fact, it’s a course, it’s a course; it must have been for beginners at the time. He must have told himself, this is quite sufficient, because the Germans have a sense of the hierarchy of knowledge. So, fine, reflective history is the history of understanding, it is philosophical history, it is history from the point of view of reason with the great Hegelian expression: “all that is real is reasonable and anything that is reasonable is real”. An expression that is very, very profound and which obviously does not mean what has been, what people have made him say or what he was made to say. That doesn’t mean what’s happening is always justified, not at all, no.

And then there is the other text, there is a brilliant text, Hegel’s is great too, it is a brilliant text that you will find in Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations. The Untimely Meditations have four divisions, four chapters, one of which is entitled: “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life”,[26] where Nietzsche makes a great attack on the history of the 19th century, the history that he knows, history as it is made in the 19th century. And in turn, he distinguishes three conceptions of history. But they have nothing to do with Hegel’s obviously. He got along very poorly with Hegel or with Hegel’s memory, so he’s not likely to repeat the same thing. And for his part, he distinguishes with words that give us pause for reflection, he says that there are three conceptions of history: there is monumental history, there is monumental history; there is ancient history; and there is critical or ethical history. And he says, the 19th century is divided between these three great conceptions: monumental history, ancient history, and critical or ethical history.

So, as I would like to start with the historical film in its relations with the action-image the next time, if you have read at least Nietzsche’s text, I would be greatly interested in that. There we are. So, we’ve reached this point, right, and there, we have all that to complete. [End of the recording] [2 :07 :51]

 

Notes

[1] Deleuze is addressing what might follow Thirdness.

[2] On this comparison, see especially Cinema seminar 1, session 13, March 16, 1982.

[3] On naturalism, see the first section of chapter 8 of The Mouvement-Image.

[4] See especially Cinema seminar 1, sessions 13 and 14, March 16 and 23, 1982; also, see The Movement-Image, chapter 8, part 1.

[5] On this Gramsci quote, see The Movement-Image, p. 139 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 194-195).

[6] This slot is located between the affection-image and the action-image.

[7] On these points, see Cinema seminar 1, sessions 14 and 15, March 23 and April 20, 1982; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 130-132 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 183-186).

[8] See especially Cinema seminar 1, sessions 13 and 14, March 16 and 23, 1982; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 125-133 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 176-186).

[9] On Losey, see The Movement-Image, pp. 136-140 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 190-195).

[10] On the salvation of the three filmmakers, see The Movement-Image, pp. 134-135 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 194).

[11] This reference is to Buñuel’s “Los Olvidados” [1950]; see The Time-Image, p.59 (L’Image-Temps, p. 81).

[12] On the Actors Studio, see The Movement-Image, pp. 155-159 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 214-218).

[13] Deleuze discusses this kind of violence and the actors associated with it during session 5 of the current seminar, December 14, 1982; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 136-138 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 190-191).

[14] On naturalists as doctors of civilization, see The Movement-Image, pp. 124-126 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 175-176).

[15] Deleuze quotes one of these interviews in The Movement-Image, p. 236, note 14 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 192, note 14).

[16] Deleuze gives references to the works of Bacon and Genet in The Movement-Image, p. 235, note 13 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 191, note 13).

[17] Deleuze suggests these terms in The Movement-Image, pp. 129-130 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 182-183), and in The Time-Image, pp. 32-33 (L’Image-Temps, p. 49).

[18] On the “encompasser”, see The Movement-Image, pp. 141-142, 145-155 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 196, 202-213).

[19] On the spiral and organic representation, see session 3 of Cinema seminar I, November 24, 1981; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 151-153 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 209-211).

[20] On Ford, see session 14 of Cinema seminar I, March 27, 1982; on the psycho-social film, see session 15, April 20, 1982; on the action-image in general, see chapters 8, 9 and 10 of The Movement-Image.

[21] On these forms of degradation, see especially session 15 of the Cinema seminar 1, April 20, 1982.

[22] See Cinéma et histoire (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1976).

[23] Actually, the film is titled “The Three Age” [1923], as a parody of “Intolerance”, with prehistoric times, Ancient Rome, and the Roaring Twenties America.

[24] On Eisenstein’s golden section, see session 3 of Cinema seminar 1, November 24, 1981; see also The Movement-Image, pp. 13-14, 33-34, 180-181 (L’Image-Mouvement, pp. 25, 51-52, 246).

[25] On the sub-signs and main signs, see The Movement-Image, p. 142 (L’Image-Mouvement, p. 198).

[26] Deleuze renders the chapter title as “De l’utilité et des inconvénients des études historiques”, On the usefulness and the disadvantages of historical studies.

Notes

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 revisions occurred in February 2024. [NB: The transcript time stamp is in synch with the WebDeleuze recording link provided here.]

Lectures in this Seminar

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