March 9, 1982

Finally if I summarize in one word our analysis, in a few words, … of the affection-image, that amounts to saying: well, the affection-image is either the power-quality expressed by a face or a close-up, or the power-quality exhibited or exhibited in any space whatsoever. As a result, it’s a taut pole, eh? And, the third type of movement-image, while we are only starting today, [is] … namely the action-image. For affects, or if you prefer, power-qualities, isn’t there yet another level either to be exposed in any space whatsoever or to be expressed in a close-up? … Moreover, the third level is even the shortest level; it’s even the most ordinary level. … But what are power-qualities, their normal state? They are actualized in a state of things. … What is a state of things? Well, it’s an aggregate of real connections between objects and people, object-subject.

Seminar Introduction

In the first year of Deleuze’s consideration of cinema and philosophy, he develops an alternative to the psychoanalytic and semiological approaches to film studies by drawing from Bergson’s theses on perception and C.S. Peirce’s classification of images and signs. While he devotes this first year predominantly to what he considers to be the primary characteristic of cinema of the first half of the 20th century, the movement-image, he finishes the year by emphasizing the importance of the post-World War II shift toward the domination of the time-image in cinema.

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

Jean-Luc Godard, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, 1967

Following a brief q&a, Deleuze approaches the action-image by explaining how philosophers’ work intersects with the real and, to illustrate this, he takes what he calls a detour through the 19th century philosopher Maine de Biran, particularly his consideration of the primitive faact of the self and consciousness of self. This serves as an explicit extension of the study of the affection-image, and he then proceeds directly to the feeling of reality located in the action-image. Deleuze introduces Peirce’s categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, suggesting how these categories intersect with reflections by Eisenstein and Godard, and even how Whitehead’s terminology might provide insight on facets of the movement-image. Based on the Peircian terminology and an illustrative graph (the full version of which will appear in the appendix of The Movement-Image), Deleuze introduces a range of “signs”, as a basis for starting to examine the action-image at the next lecture. Parts of this session are based on material from different chapters of The Movement-Image, notably 6 & 7, but the discussion is located nonetheless on the cusp of the discussion of the affection-image and the action-image, hence chapter 8.

Gilles Deleuze

Seminar on Cinema: The Movement-Image

Lecture 12, 09 March 1982

Transcribed by Charles J. Stivale (Part 1, 66:20) and Nicholas Lehnebach (Part 2, 76:46); additional revisions to the transcription by Charles J. Stivale

Translation: Graeme Thomson and Silvia Maglioni

 

Part 1

But I would like to know… indeed it is my most profound wish to know if there are some of you who have anything to add or even to rework from last time. You remember… But I feel I’m missing out all kinds of things that would lead to my making some readjustments… When you said last time that… Oh, yes?

A student: [barely audible intervention referring to Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible, in relation to the three types of any-space-whatever that Deleuze presented in the previous session and to the filmmaker’s cinematic interplay between several types of windows, including those of a cathedral].

Deleuze: Ah… there would be the three? I don’t remember…

The student: There is a text by Eisenstein that has been completely forgotten, which I think would be interesting, where he differentiates between the darkness of the cathedral and the cathedral in darkness.

Deleuze: Oh yes, that’s interesting… Yes, yes.

The student: Eisenstein elaborates a whole passage on this difference between the darkness of the cathedral and the cathedral in darkness… [Indistinct remarks]

Deleuze: Ah, he says this regarding Ivan the Terrible? Ah, that would work for me… that would work for me perfectly.

The student: It’s all the more interesting because at the end of Ivan the Terrible, [inaudible]… and immediately afterwards there’s the murder in the cathedral where it switches back to black and white [1] and it’s regarding the relationship between these two sequences, the continuation of the color in black and white, that he differentiates between the darkened cathedral and… [inaudible]

Deleuze: That’s very interesting. And what you have written about Straub’s spaces… it wouldn’t be possible to make someone who hasn’t seen his films, such as myself, feel that. It goes too much with actually seeing the films.

The student: [Short answer, inaudible]

Deleuze: But among the films that are regularly shown, there are some where these hollowed out… these emptied spaces, appear.

The student: Yes, like in Moses and Aaron...[2]

Deleuze: So, in Moses and Aaron you have this?  For those who like horror films, I just want to inform you that there’s a classic… The Devil’s Mask,[3] showing at midnight in… I don’t know which cinema. It’s a film by Bava, a very fine film, very fine… Yes, Pascal Auger, you were saying when I was talking about Snow’s Wavelength last time, you said that after all The Central Region is constructed in the same way.

Pascal Auger: [Inaudible response referring to the movement of the camera in The Central Region in relation to the constitution of any-space-whatever]

Deleuze: I saw that they were going to screen The Central Region at Beaubourg… next week, I think. Well, if no one has anything else to add… so, we must continue. Now you see that we have made some progress because… Yes? Sorry, I can’t hear very well.

Georges Comtesse: [Hardly audible question about what Deleuze said during the previous session about Wim Wenders’ cinema, about empty and emptied out spaces, and his cinema as a cinema of fear. Remarks about the coldness and indifference of some of Wenders’ characters, a kind of anesthetic effect in the regime of their affects as well as a dimension of aphasia in their speech]  

Deleuze: Yes, yes, quite, I would almost say that this regime of affect that you describe in such an intriguing way, this regime of affect implies that these are no longer affection-images and that we have passed into another regime of affect. This notion of anaesthesia seems a very accurate description in this case. I’d like to go back to the question you asked before, at the level of another type of image, because indeed, another type of image can include elements of affect, but when what you call anaesthesia occurs, these are elements that must be related to a different type of image, which is no longer the affection-image. But I’ll keep it in mind because I’m sure it’ll come back in some way.

So you see, the perception-image was something we covered as best we could, always with the possibility of adding all kinds of things. It’s really like a drawer. We’ve also covered the affection-image as far as we were able, and with the affection-image we limited ourselves to drawing out the notion of affect – since last time I tried to explain what this equivalence consisted of – or of power-quality. And finally, if I sum up in a few words… our analysis of the affection-image, it amounts to saying: well, the affection-image is either the power-quality expressed by a face or a close-up, or the power-quality exposed or revealed in an any-space-whatever. So that it would be like an outstretched pole, right?

Now, the third type of movement-image, which we’re only just making a start with today, though perhaps we won’t really be able to get started on it – and you’ll soon see why – namely the action-image. For affects, or if you prefer, power-qualities… don’t they possess yet another level, don’t they possess a further level than… than either being exposed in any-space-whatever, or being expressed in a close-up? If they have… They obviously do have, right away one would say they have a third level. The third level is actually the shortest level, you could even say the most ordinary level. It’s very rare that power-qualities reveal themselves in an any-space-whatever. Just as it’s very rare, or quite rare in any case, that they are expressed in a close-up or in a face. But what is the normal state of these power-qualities? What is their normal state? They are actualized in a state of things. They are actualized in a state of things.

What is a state of things? Well, it’s a set of real connections between objects and persons, between objects, subjects… When I say, “this table is white,” I take the quality “white” as something actualized in a state of things. So, let’s look for an example that suits us. I’ll go back to a case I’ve mentioned before. When Ivens[4] calls one of his films Rain[5], it is rain filmed from all points of view, in any-space-whatever, rain that is not even here and now. It really is an any-space-whatever. Yet it is not the concept of rain; it is a singular rain. More than this, it’s the conjunction – it’s not a general idea of rain – it is, to use the terminology I employed last time, the virtual conjunction of all the different kinds of rain… the virtual conjunction of all singular “rains”. And it’s not a concept.

Okay… let’s jump now to another image: a rainy day in northern Italy, and a character’s wanderings in this Italian rain. We all know these celebrated images by Antonioni. This rain… we have the impression that it has never begun and that it will never end.[6] But this doesn’t mean it isn’t completely different from Ivens’ image. In this case, the rain-affect is not related to an any-space-whatever. It is related to a perfectly determined space, an extremely determined space, a determined state of things. That day, it’s raining. And I can extend that day… again it’s a kind of rain… I have the impression this rain will never end. That doesn’t mean that the affect, the power-quality, the raininess isn’t actualized this time in a state of things. Well, that’s not complicated… it’s really quite simple.

But I would say this that should interest us because it is here that the action-image begins… this is where the action-image begins, that is, when power-qualities can be considered as actualized in such and such a determined space… in an individual… individuated state of things. So, you see how last time, in terms of terminology, just so as not to get confused, I felt it was important to distinguish the singularity of an affect from the individuation of a state of affairs. The singularity of an affect is this white, this yellow, while the individuation of a state of things is… this table in which this particular white is actualized. It’s not at all the same thing. So, at least, it’s like we’re… it’s… because each time I’d like you to sense when we have a need to pass on… it’s like we’re forced to pass on now. Examining the action-image is a question of whether the action-image has begun, from the moment when the power-qualities – and this would be the first, though I’m not saying it’s the final definition of the action-image – but the first definition of the action-image, the one we start from, is when power-qualities are actualized in an individuated state of things within a given determined space.

If this passage occurs, it doesn’t prevent us from… What can we draw from this? Well, on the one hand, it seems to me that we’re a little bit behind because we still have this question of power-qualities or pure affect to deal with, and we have a vague presentiment perhaps that… We can see what region it fits into. Yet for my part, I’m still not fully satisfied, since we haven’t yet given it an adequately precise status. And on the other hand, we’re already rushing towards the action-image. We’ve seen where it begins, but we still lack guidelines.

So, I was thinking how I’m a bit wary of applying philosophy to cinema. Which is why we’ll do the opposite. To get out of this transition, the transition towards the action-image, I would like to begin today with an interlude that will require all your patience, and that consists in seeing whether… So, at this point, are there no philosophers who might have something to tell us about… about what? I’ll say right away that what I’m expecting, what I’m expecting in a way is the possibility of classifying the poles better, the possible poles of the action-image. So, this is like an interlude because what I want to do… what I want to start with today is like an interim state between the affection-image and the action-image. And these two philosophers seem to me very, very interesting. One good thing they have in common is the fact that they are not much read, the first because no-one reads him anymore and he is considered a bit passé, and the second because he is not well known in France. At the same time, they are small marvels because they discover things.

They’re so good at finding… When you find something in philosophy, all philosophers agree on what it means to invent something in philosophy, the way in which a philosopher really contributes something new. They all say – and this isn’t linked to a doctrine – they all say, you understand, the first act of invention when you do philosophy is when you manage to make new cuts. That’s how they define their invention. I mean, from Plato to Bergson it’s like that. They say, well yes, you’re doing philosophy, that is to say, you’re in the process and you’ve already partly invented a concept when, for whatever reasons you’re able to state, you group things that we usually separate and you separate things that we usually group. That is, you discover new articulations.

Plato, in a famous text from Phaedrus, explains that the philosopher can only be compared to a cook: he discovers the articulations of reality. And the first discovery of the articulations of reality is that the matter is never clear. There are animals whose articulations are obvious, visible; there are others whose articulations are secret. Anyone who has cut up an animal knows this. For example, the chicken is a ridiculous animal because its joints are visible and common. The duck is a superior beast because its joints are secret, so deeply buried, so paradoxically distributed, that finding the joint of the bone becomes a kind of inventive art, and there are surely beasts even better than the duck. But in the end…

Now, this is what philosophers do: they cut up the real. And the first act of cutting up the real will lead them to say, no, you thought that such and such a thing seemed to be this other thing, but it’s not the case. That’s no the way it goes. And they redistribute. And you will find this metaphor of the taken up many centuries later by Bergson who says, well yes, to do philosophy is to cut up reality, to discover, and we can only cut up reality if we have discovered its articulations. And the articulations of reality are never given. What goes with what? What goes with what? I mean the lines of articulation, to trace the lines… well.

So the two philosophers I want to talk to you about for reasons… and again this is why I’ll need your patience, because the reason I’m speaking about these philosophers will only emerge as we proceed. One is called Maine de Biran, and he lived – I’ve taken the dates from the Larousse to give you an idea – he lived from 1766 to 1824.[7] And this is an author who took up a lot of space in philosophy textbooks in France for a very, very long time before he fell into a kind of oblivion, so he’s not read much anymore. It’s very difficult to find his books now, yet at the same time, he’s someone quite prodigious, formidable, amazing even.[8]

And then, the other one I would like to speak to you about is from the Anglophone world… I think he is quite well known in England, although in France not may have heard of him… a man called Peirce. Spelt P.E.I.R.C.E.[9] Peirce published very little during his lifetime – he lived from 1839-1914 – and he is important because he is the founder and creator of a discipline that was to develop and have enormous consequences for the whole of contemporary thought, namely he invented what he called semiotics. He invented semiotics, and he wrote a lot, but published very little, it was only after his death that an edition of his works was published, in England, an edition in about seven or eight volumes. In France, there isn’t much available, except for one excellent collection, Peirce. Ecrits sur le signe, by someone for whom it was clearly his life’s work, Gérard Deledalle, published by Seuil. It’s a sort of selected essays, but it’s very well done, a very intelligent selection of pieces. Good. So let’s proceed.

Well, Maine de Biran – and this is why he’s famous, and why he was so present in all the textbooks… He was famous for an apparently very simple operation which consisted in having said that Descartes’ “I think”, his cogito, must in fact be understood as an “I want”. Ah yes, well, the “I think” is an “I want”. Therefore, it’s a kind of philosophy of the will that he was trying to substitute for so-called classical philosophy, which was above all a philosophy of understanding. But what does this mean? It is, in other words, through the experience of the will that the self is constituted and that consciousness is discovered. So, you see how this represents a shift from an “I think” to an “I want”.

But what does Maine de Biran intend by this “I want”? The “I want” is obviously – and de Biran is a very fascinating character, he’s probably the first philosopher, though we don’t know for sure, to have kept a kind of diary of his own states of being. It is certain that he suffered from a malady,  Maine de Biran’s malady was at the same time a radical absence of will and an extreme hypochondria. And so this philosopher who was a timid man, who had difficulty in wanting anything, said: the primitive fact of thought is an “I want” and not an “I think”, the primitive fact of consciousness, rather.

And indeed, what did he call this “I want”? Because, if you know a little bit of philosophy, you’ll see there are other philosophers who have forged a philosophy of the will, but not one like Maine de Biran’s. What does he call “I want”? What he calls “I want” is already, it seems to me, something very interesting: it’s a relation. It is not a term. And in fact he will say that Descartes’ error is to have conceived of his “I think” as a substance: “I am a thinking thing”. He conceived the “I think” as a substance, whereas “I think” should have been conceived as a relation, and in particular a relation that implies the “I want”.

But what kind of relation does this “I want” imply? The relation of a force to a resistance. The relation of a force to a resistance… In other words, the “I want” is felt in the experience or feeling of effort. Effort is the correlation of a force and a resistance. What does he mean here? Does he mean I want this particular thing and it is reality that necessarily resists me? No, that’s not what he means. He doesn’t mean resistance in the sense of, for example… [Deleuze knocks on the table] the table resists me. He’s not interested in speaking about the resistance of things. Why not? Because the resistance of things is secondary. A thing resists me only insofar as I give myself a goal. And what goal? So I can say, well the world is against me. But Maine de Biran, with his “I want”, has considered, and claims to extract, a sort of phenomenon of want that is completely independent of a particular goal. What he seeks is a kind of pure “I want”. And if the pure “I want” is the relation of a force to a resistance, it cannot be the resistance of something to my will, because something resists my will only insofar as my will already proposes… my will already proposes a particular goal. So that’s not what he means.

And in fact, what he draws out as the primitive fact of consciousness… well what does it relate to? Effort, or force… resistance of what? A resistance that is purely muscular. This is where we find the bottomless pit of hypochondria. I want to raise my arm. You see how this is a pure, abstract example, independent of any goal. We imagine Maine de Biran thinking, I want to raise my arm, and he feels that this is a task, and what is more a task that is infinite. Oh, how exhausting it is. The relation that he is unveiling is a “force” that he will call the hyperorganic force, muscular resistance or inertia. And it is this relation that constitutes the voluntary effort, that is, for him, the new form of the “I think”. You see that the effort, the feeling of effort – which is to say this new form of “I think” – is constituted by two terms in reciprocal presupposition, and he insists enormously on this point, two terms in reciprocal presupposition, namely: the hyperorganic force exerted on the muscle and the muscle that resists, that opposes its inertia.

Just accept this for now… don’t tell me if you agree or not; let yourself drift, let yourself drift, because all this is nonetheless very interesting. First of all, it’s a very new way of thinking. Once again, what is already very significant from the point of view of logic is that he is telling us that the primitive fact is a relation. Don’t look for the primitive fact in a term, since this upturns, it upturns much of the philosophy of the 17th century. The philosophy of the 17th century still clung to the notion of substance. It’s not that they’re wrong. I’m not trying to establish who’s right or wrong. I’m trying to draw out certain meanings. Maine de Biran was, to the best of my knowledge, the first to say, no, if you’re looking for a primitive fact à la Descartes, you will not find it in a substance, you will only find it in a relation. Good.

So, what else is new? There is a lot that is new if you understand this experience of effort, hyperorganic force, muscular inertia. So there are two terms in reciprocal presupposition, and this, according to Maine de Biran, will be the fact of consciousness, what he will call the primitive fact. The primitive fact is a relation.

You see what this changes, and perhaps if you reflect upon it, those who are interested, you won’t be surprised that Maine de Biran is known through a kind of revival, one which is fairly recent but through what intermediary? Through the intermediary of French phenomenology. In particular, Merleau-Ponty, towards the end of his life, made a curious return to Maine de Biran and gave some very interesting lectures on his work. What could be of interest to a phenomenologist in this matter of Maine de Biran? It’s that the cogito, the “I think”, was directly related to the body, and this is very important with regard to 17th century philosophy… and that here there was fundamentally a relation of the will with the body and of force with resistance that in fact prefigured what would be the demands of a concrete phenomenology. Okay.

For the moment I retain just this, you see how in this primitive fact, this primitive fact of the self or of consciousness, Maine de Biran never ceases telling us that in the primitive fact, there is not, as Descartes believed, one substance; there are in fact two terms in relation; there are two, there are two

So, what do we call this? Let’s look for a word. Perhaps we could say that it’s the domain of secondness. This is the domain of secondness. Okay. And indeed, this rather strange term, secondness, is a term created by Peirce, who was a great enthusiast of new words. But to designate what? To designate a special category, which he claims to be the domain of Maine de Biran. Secondness is the category of all sets, of all beings, of all things, of all phenomena in which two terms can and must be distinguished, two terms in relation with one another. And Peirce will say much later, ah yes, Maine de Biran discovered something very profound, namely that the real, or the experience of the real implied this secondness, that is, this relation between force and resistance. And indeed, it’s curious that… the English rarely read the French. One wonders how Peirce chanced upon Maine de Biran’s writings. Anyway…

Let’s get back to Maine de Biran. Fine, you see that what we have here is this two-term relation that marks the emergence of the self or of self-consciousness. But what was there before? What was there before? It doesn’t begin just like that. Self-consciousness, the self or self-consciousness, is already a very evolved state of the world. And so, yes, before there was something. And in a book with a rather splendid title, Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée (Essay on the Decomposition of Thought) – alas, here decomposition doesn’t refer to physical decomposition, it means logical decomposition, but the title is beautiful in any case… In Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée, Maine de Biran will explain what there is before, before his primitive fact, before the relation of two terms, before the experience of effort, that is to say, before the discovery of the self in the form of two terms in reciprocal presupposition, resistance-force, force-resistance.

What is there before? Well, he says, before, there is sensation or affection. Before, there is sensation or affection. And this is no longer the domain of the will, it’s no longer… And his question is: what does sensation or affection consist in? And he says, well, you know, sensation or affection has two aspects. Any affection, any sensation, always has these two aspects, which are more or less in variable proportions, a passive aspect and a motor aspect. Motor. We should be wary of this term. We are before the primitive fact with its two terms.  So this is not a matter of voluntary motor functions. What he obviously means is that every sensation, every affection has two aspects, one passive, the other involuntary motor, in the sense of an involuntary motor function, and he will attempt to demonstrate this for every sense organ.

So, take touch, well yes, touch, there are passive affections of touch, something is hard. But, at the same time, the hand or the paw, the paw is animated by movements. So here it’s clear that in tactile sensations, one can distinguish, I mean in tactile affections one can distinguish between involuntary motor functions and passive affections.  It’s the same thing for the eye: a passive affection of the eye, would be, for example, a light… a light. You see that it is not a question of perception. It’s actually a luminous affection. It’s not a matter of perception. You can guess why: because perception is something that comes from and depends on the primitive fact of consciousness. Here, what we have are pure sensations, luminous sensations. Well, there is an involuntary motor function of the eye too: the eye moves, it turns, if you turn the light on suddenly, the eye looks towards the light, or follows the light, in short, you have a whole involuntary motor function of the eye’s movement.

And then he considers sensations pertaining to the sense of smell. At first glance, the sense of smell seems more complicated. The sense of smell seems more complicated because we can clearly see how there are passive sensations and passive affections but there is not much mobility. The nose doesn’t move that much, it’s not like the eye. Also it has… yes, I mean, there are some beasts,  are some animals whose nose moves, but not much. And in any case, he has no need of this because he has an excellent idea, which forms part of a new distribution of things, and its author is Maine de Biran. He says that involuntary mobility which corresponds to an organ of the senses is something we are not necessarily led to find in the organ itself because what is the true involuntary motor function corresponding to the sense of smell? It’s breathing.  I don’t know why this idea makes me so happy, that is, I have the impression… it’s like when you read… I have the impression that he’s grasped something. It’s like when you read a novel and you say, ah yes, there he really got it! And so breathing would be… and in fact when I experience an affection of smell, I feel it like that. And then I go back to… [Deleuze breathes very hard]. It’s with the whole of my breathing that I try to isolate it… Good.

One last effort, Maine de Biran: the ear. Taste is a fairly simple matter. You can locate taste, but the ear. Again, the ear doesn’t move much, even less so. And here too, he has a great idea. He asks what would be the involuntary motor function that corresponds to the passive affections of the ear. It’s the cries that I utter. It is the cries that – not me, because there is no me – but it’s the cry that the animal itself utters. It is the cries that the animal itself utters, which are the true involuntary motor functions to which the passive affections of hearing correspond. The cries that I utter are like auto-affections. So in each case of affection, he will show both the passive aspect and the involuntary motor aspect. And this allows him to solve a problem – I’m trying to speed this up because I’m… because I really enjoy telling you this… you have to take it as a story, a nice little story.

This is why… it’s that it allows him to solve a very important problem: which is: how can the primitive fact, the experience of effort, that is, self-consciousness, arise? The primitive fact is indeed voluntary effort, the “I want” with its two terms, hyperorganic force and organic resistance.  But how will this be able to emerge in the world of nature? Well, it’s that the voluntary effort will be grafted onto a certain kind or number of involuntary movements. It will never merge with them, however. Why is this? It is because involuntary movements move from the periphery to the center while the experience of voluntary effort moves from the center to the periphery. Involuntary motor function moves from periphery to center, whereas voluntary motor function moves from center to periphery, according to him. But it is precisely the involuntary movements in affection that will allow the will to take over: I want to breathe [Deleuze takes a deep breath] ah, yes… And it is on this point that the graft will occur – you see? – it is on this point that the grafting of the domain of voluntary effort onto animal life will take place. Clearly, this isn’t an easy process, and he himself, in his writings, says that there lies a mystery. But what allows the passage from one to the other are these involuntary movements that will be taken up by the will.

Hi! [Interruption; voice of a student who enters. It’s Alain, from the previous week]

Hi, Alain! You’re late! It’s no simple matter… it’s not easy to sit close to me, you know? It’s not easy! [Laughter, noise of moving chairs] What? What’s the matter? [Deleuze speaks to someone near him] Come to me, come to me… No, you can pass that way… and go out that way…

Alain: [He makes an announcement regarding an event that will take place at the La Borde clinic, mentioning the participation of Félix Guattari]

Deleuze: You’re done, eh? There… there you go! [Alain starts talking again briefly; we hear Deleuze laughing] No, you reassure her; you just tell her: no, no, not now. You tell her there’s no hurry. [Pause] Well, you see, that’s how it is… [Everyone continues to chat and laugh]

So, this is the involuntary motor function on which the will grafts itself, taking it up and reversing its sense… since, once again, it will no longer move from periphery to center but from center to periphery. This leads us to the side of the primitive fact, that is, the relation between the two terms.

But if I take affection in itself, affection for itself, what is it exactly? It will either be a purely passive affection – this smell, this light, what Maine de Biran calls a simple affection – or it will be a purely involuntary movement within the body, and this is what de Biran will call an impersonal affection.

Now the status of these affections is very interesting, these pure affections whether simple or impersonal, because first of all they have no relation to a self. They have no relation to a self. The experience of the self and the arising of the self only occur in the two-term relation with voluntary effort. So, on their own, the affections have no relation to a self. Then what type are they? Not at all “I feel”. The “I feel” is still in relation to a self. They necessarily belong to a completely different category. They are of the type: “there is”.  There is yellow, there is light, there is this or that of a quality, thus without attributable relations to a self.

And the second and more profound characteristic would be that there is no attributable relation to a space or to a time. They are not in space or in time. Why? Because the construction of space and time itself derives from voluntary effort, and in Maine de Biran, as I recall, there is a very beautiful passage where he makes a reproach – I mention this for those who know a little about this stuff – where he makes a very interesting, very curious reproach to Kant. He says that what Kant missed is that he has always spoken to us about sensation and the sensible already caught up in the forms of space and time, already seized by the forms of space and time, whereas simple affection – Maine de Biran says – is outside of any relation to space and time; it cannot be located as such.

So you see: no relation to a self, no relation to space and time, no relation to perception since perception too implies an “I myself”. So what is it? In which cases is it found? Ultimately it’s an abstraction in relation to our life because, in fact, when you give yourself a self, when you already have a well-constituted self or even a barely constituted one, well, you perceive qualities, affections, you perceive them. They are grasped… you can locate them in space and time. So, for him, reaching simple or impersonal affection constitutes a kind of abstraction. And yet there are states that come strangely close to it.

And these states that he will list and which will be an important part of his diary, where he makes some descriptions that are very unusual for the time, highly meticulous descriptions, first of all there is sleep. In sleep, yes, there you have experiences, types of affection that are pure, impersonal and that cannot be located. Even in optics, in optics you have glows, but glows that aren’t localized, for example, this could be with colors, not in sleep, but in other cases, you can experiences colors that are not localized. What does that mean?  There is yellow, a kind of atmospheric yellow, which you can’t place. It is neither here nor there. It is not like the yellow of an object, it is not a yellow object.

Let’s look at a later text, but it doesn’t matter, a declaration of feelings of unreality. This is a child, a child during break time. All of a sudden, “it seemed to me that I no longer recognized the school.” She recognized the school earlier. It was part of… a consequence of the “I want”, of voluntary effort. You will see why. She experienced a lack of perception which stemmed from the strength-resistance correlation. And you understand that Maine de Biran will build the whole feeling of reality from this force-resistance correlation. So, when the little girl perceives the school, everything is fine, she is in that two-pole world of force-resistance from which the sense of reality stems. Then, all of a sudden, “it seemed to me that I no longer recognized the school. It had become as large as a barracks” – which in effect means that it has become impossible to locate – and “the singing children” – it seemed – “were prisoners compelled to sing. It was as though the school and the children’s song were set apart from the rest of the world. At the same time my eye encountered a field of wheat whose limits I could not see. And this dazzling yellow immensity, bound to the song of the children imprisoned in the smooth stone school-barracks, filled me with such anxiety that I broke into sobs.” This sort of yellow space which would suddenly only exist outside of all space-time… Then, “I ran home to our garden and began to play to make things seem as they usually were.” [10] We see very clearly, how she throws herself into action – action being the domain of force-resistance – she throws herself into action to bring back the real. So, with this small action, she begins to run, she begins to run to get back to reality. Why? To return to the world of effort-resistance.

So, in the experience the little girl recounts, at first, she recognizes the school. It’s the world of perception that derives from the self. Everything is fine. But then it collapses. And what is she thrown into? Into the world of pure affection, the world of simple affection. There is some yellow. there is some yellow, but where, when? We don’t know, it can’t be located, it is unrelated to space and time; a feeling of anguish and then she returns to the world of effort-resistance to reconstitute the real. Thanks to a little run. Good.

Here’s another example that Maine de Biran talks about that interested him greatly: he said that in cases of hemiplegia – you see how he was seeking out a whole frontier of pathological cases, he mentions many pathological cases in his explanations of pure affections… He explores a number of cases of hemiplegia, you know, when you have a paralysis on one side of the body. If you squeeze – here we have some examples from doctors, some quite odd texts from doctors, if we can call them that, from his own time – he squeezes the hand of a hemiplegic, and he squeezes it very, very hard, and the hemiplegic feels the pressure in the paralyzed limb; he feels it, he even feels pain. But it’s a pain – and the hemiplegic’s formulations are very eloquent on this point, almost as good as those of the little girl in the schoolyard – it’s a pain that can’t be located. And the difference… the sensation of pressure on a working limb, even there it’s not perfectly localized, it’s, ah yes, you’re pressing on my right hand. But, for a hemiplegic, if you press very hard on his paralyzed hand, he will have a sensation, but this time it won’t be in the form of a perception that can be located, it will be in the form of simple affection, in the form of simple affection outside of any relation to space-time and outside of any relation to a self. Again, this is the world of “there is” – there is some red, there is pressure, there is, there is… And as opposed to the experience of effort, which you remember and I repeat, is constituted by a correlation, by a reciprocal presupposition of two terms: effort-resistance, what about pure affection, what will that be?  It is not a relation; it will be what Maine de Biran will refer to as an absolute existence, the absolute existence of the “there is”.

[Sound of a student getting up. It’s Alain]

Deleuze: You’re leaving?

Alain: Yes, I’m going.

Deleuze: If you don’t get into the German course… I think it’s very useful, especially if you’ve taken anything, it would be very useful for you to walk… to walk. So here… Yes, yes… No, that’s not why. It’s that you have to… it’s walking that’ll make you feel better. [Alain says something] Yes, a long time ago, yes, it’s wonderful, Mediterranée…[11] It’s beautiful, have you seen it? Go on, go for a walk, you can have a little run in the corridors. [Alain seems to invite him to his place for dinner] Oh, I never go out at night. [Laughs; Alain continues to talk] We’ll have a party! And Félix… Okay, but call him first. [Pause; Alain continues] Yes, yes, but have a walk anyway. Walk. There you go… He was right. [Alain says “Ciao” and apologizes for having interrupted the class] Goodbye, you’ll be okay. Goodbye…

Listen, these are all adventures.

Yes… absolute feeling of existence. You see how it’s as if he had cut into the experience – this is what interests me – it’s as if he had cut into the experience and separated out two domains… reproaching others for mixing them up. He separated the domain of simple affections, which he will define as absolute feelings of existence. No relation to a self or a personality; no relation to space and time; outside of spatio-temporal coordinates. And on the other hand, we have – what should we call it? The feeling of relation as it appears in voluntary effort, the relation or correlation of two terms that do not exist independently of one another, force and resistance, that is, the category of the relative to which the self belongs and from which derive: space and time, the categories of knowledge, and the forms of perception.

In other words, if I defined as “secondness” that sphere of relation from which derive the sense of reality, action, perception, self-consciousness and so on, the first sphere of pure, impersonal affection could be called “firstness”. And indeed, Peirce, again taking inspiration from Maine de Biran and quoting him, gives the name “firstness” to the realm of simple or pure affections. Good.

You will say to me, how does this help us? But here I can add another element to the end of our affection-images. I would say that the whole matter of the affection-image, as we defined it, that is affects exposed in any-space-whatever or expressed by a face – you remember what we discovered about the close-up, that it has nothing at all to do with a partial object… a close-up simply extracts what it presents from all spatio-temporal coordinates – I could say, if you like, with all due conceptual rigour, well yes, the affection-image is firstness.  It’s this domain of the “there is”, of the absolute feeling of existence and so on. So what will the action-image be? You can guess: the action-image will be secondness[Interruption of the recording]

Part 2

… as it appears in the privileged example: “force-resistance”, or “effort-resistance”, these two terms. And two things must be said about secondness, namely that it is called secondness because it comes after firstness, but also because it in itself consists of two terms… Where there is an action-image, or where, I would also say, you have a feeling of reality, there are “two”. You might tell me we haven’t made much progress. But let’s go on searching for what could help us.

Peirce, for his part, will construct a whole system. Let’s suppose – we’re done with Maine de Biran, I didn’t say much about Maine de Biran, just what was needed – Let’s suppose that now we make… that now we consider Peirce’s system. Peirce will distribute the whole of what appears, the whole set of phenomena into three categories. And Peirce’s three main categories, which are very unusual at first glance, though we’re now a little better equipped to understand them, are: firstness, secondness and thirdness.

He says everything that appears, and he calls this “phenomenological categories”, or as he employs more and more complex terms – and he really adores creating words, which is his right after all – “phaneroscopic categories”, but phaneron in Greek is the same thing as phenomenon so… let’s call them phenomenological categories. And everything that appears will therefore be either a phenomenon of firstness or a phenomenon of secondness or a phenomenon of thirdness.

Well then, let’s have a dig. What, but why should we care about all this? Why should we care? I’m not just trying to make the time pass, that would be a terrible idea. So why recount all this? It’s as if by chance… we can’t suspect Eisenstein of having read Maine de Biran, although he read a lot.

In an interesting text from a book by Eisenstein, Nonindifferent Nature[12], which we’ll have to speak more about later… Nonindifferent Nature, Eisenstein tells us more or less the following…  he tells us more or less the following. He says, there are some very strange states that one goes through. They are pure affections, and these states of pure affection, it’s as if we can only grasp them to the extent – it can be something very simple – but it’s as if they place us outside of ourselves, as if there is a rupture with the relation to the self. And he says:  this is what I call… he finds a concept of his own, which I hope will be interesting for us… he says: this is what I call ecstasy or the very depths of pathos.[13]

Ecstasy is not at all of the type, “I see this”, but rather “there is”.  Ecstasy is never, and he goes so far as to quote both medical and mystical texts, all of which works for us. Maine de Biran also alluded to mystical texts. The mystic does not begin by saying, “I see God,” which would be a proposition his pride, or rather his humility, would find unbearable. He does not say “I see God” or “I see Christ,” he says “There is the deity,” that is, he sees nothing at all, he experiences an affect, he experiences a pure affect without relation to the self and without relation to space and time. And here Eisenstein tells us: this is what I call pathos, once it’s been established that, and it can even be the extreme of pathos, once it’s been established that pathos is indeed the movement of being outside of oneself.

And he tells us, if there is one thing in the world that is supra-historical, it is that. That is what is supra-historical, and you can see that this world of pathos will cover many things since he ends his text by giving hunger as an example. He says: there aren’t a number of ways of being hungry according to the epoch. Hunger is exactly what Maine de Biran would call an impersonal affection, a feeling of hunger that can no longer even be considered in the form of “I am hungry”, but simply that “there is hunger”. Pure impersonal affect that can no longer even be localized in space and time, and which indeed…

And Eisenstein – and this interests me because it’s very odd – Eisenstein constructs his categories and proposes a set of categories where on the one hand we have the sphere of pathos, made up of simple affections in the mode of “there is”, absolute feelings, absolute feelings of entity – here one would find all the various entities I was trying to speak about last time – that are supra-historical, outside of space and time and which he will distinguish from the historical world or the world of action, which, for its part, is a world with spatio-temporal coordinates and individuals who are specific to a given epoch or determined by a given epoch and so on. But here you see these two spheres which correspond exactly to firstness and secondness. And then, well… it would be interesting to look more closely at this text.

So Eisenstein says… he makes a violent attack on religion because he says…look, this is the fault of religion. Mysticism is nothing, because mystics are very precise. They say, there is something divine, we could call it the presence of a power-quality. Well, yes, that’s very good, says Eisenstein. But the operation of the church, in Eisenstein’s view, is precisely to relate these states of simple affection to spatio-temporal coordinates, to a whole mechanism of causes, to various “selves”, and to say that this is the proof of the existence of God and so on. So he says, here we have an operation that completely disfigures pathos. You see, there’s a big correspondence there, I mean, it’s the same story I’m telling without… it’s not that I’m trying to establish an arbitrary connection between texts but it seems to me quite amazing that there is this correspondence.

And if I were to look for another correspondence… I find myself thinking, well, it’s odd, this is a theme that has always obsessed Godard. And Godard is just like Eisenstein in that he’s someone who reads a lot, a lot, he’s read a lot, but I would be surprised, I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I would be surprised if he had read Peirce. Now, many of you know with what persistence, through all his different phases, Godard has used and reworked a theme that could be summarized…  a theme that closely relates to his conception of cinema images and that can be brought down to the formula: 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3. And I say through his different phases because in each phase it has taken on a quite different meaning, though, to the best of my knowledge, it has always returned in Godard’s thinking as an obsessive theme, a kind of key to understanding the cinema image.

And the theme of 1, 2, 3… I think one of the first times it appears, quite explicitly is in connection with Two or Three Things I Know About Her…  is that the title?  Two or Three Things I Know About Her.[14] Yes, that’s it… But then, during his Vertov period,[15] the 1, 2, 3 resurfaces and takes on a different meaning. And later, in Here and Elsewhere[16], it takes on what seems to me yet another meaning. In the TV programmes, the 1, 2, 3 will come back in full force taking on a further meaning still.[17] And obviously it’s not because he says 1, 2, 3 that he’s a Hegelian or a Marxist, no. I mean, Hegelians too say 1, 2, 3 but it would be offensive to Hegel and his followers to think that this is sufficient to define a Hegelian. There are people who say 1, 2, 3 who are not at all Hegelian, it all depends on how you conceive the 1, 2, 3… So, when Godard says 1, 2, 3, he believes he’s conveying a really profound message about the nature of cinema images. And I’m thinking to myself, we’re going to get to this story in the end, but for now we’re just at the beginning.

So there would be images of firstness, images of secondness, and, Peirce tells us, images of thirdness. We’re now beginning to able to deal with the first two types of images: those of firstness and secondness. But we’re still not managing very well. So let’s now consider Peirce. What I’d like is for you to sense how much we’re going to need Peirce. Here’s how he defines firstness, secondness, and so on.  None of this is particularly difficult, right? It may be boring but it’s not difficult.

A student: It’s not boring at all!

Deleuze: “Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject’s being… such as it is.” He weighs his words, he’s one of those thinkers who always weigh each word… “Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject’s being positively such as it is regardless of aught else.”[18] Now, we understand why it’s called firstness… it’s what is “one”. But what is “one” exactly? Well, “one” is what is positively such as it is and without reference to anything else. I’m sure you want an example, so let’s think of one right away. I say: red. Red, everyone understands me. Well, I say “red”. This word refers to something that is as it is, “red”, positively and without reference to anything else.

“Secondness is the mode of being…”

Student: But when you say red, it’s… [Inaudible]

Deleuze: When we say “the red” because there it is a word, and a word is obviously a thirdness, but what the word designates… Try it by abstracting it and you’ll tell me… oh, that poses a series of problems, but you’ll see what he’s getting at, eh, you’ll see what he’s getting at. Yes, that, uh, your remark is quite correct, it goes without saying that if you take into account the word “red”… but I can do without it, I could do without it. You follow my finger, but my finger introduces a relation, but that’s because I’m trying to speak, to speak to you, so this is secondness at least. But, if I’m in red, say I have, I have a red flash in my eye when I fall asleep, it happens sometimes, a red flash, red, I don’t tell anyone that there is, there is red. There is red in my eye, but I don’t say it, I don’t say anything, there is red. Well, it’s a quality such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else. You’ll say to me, “But yes, it’s in reference to your eye”. No, it’s not in reference to my eye. It will be if I introduce where this red comes from, if I pose the question of its cause. But here, not at all, I’m just like a cow with, ah… ah… [Laughter] a cow that says to itself, “Ah! There’s some green”. The cow doesn’t say, “There’s grass”. “There’s grass”, that would already be secondness. “There’s some green “… and this is a cow that wouldn’t eat, since eating would be an action. Okay.

Secondness is “a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is.” You’ll say it’s self-evident, but it’s not at all self-evident. “Secondness is a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is” but without consideration of a third, whatever it may be. You feel how everything that is real, everything that you experience as real, is secondness. Force-resistance, action-reaction. Secondness refers to all forms of duel/dual. Wherever there is a duel/dual, there is secondness. And all the phenomena that derive from any duel/dual… action-reaction, force-resistance, and many others… refer to this category of secondness.

Thirdness, then, that as far as I know has no equivalent in Maine de Biran… “Thirdness is the mode of being which consists in its subject’s being such as it is in placing a second and a third in reciprocal relation”. That is, there is thirdness every time we have mediation, every time there is mediation, to use another word, each time there is law or possibility of law. Each time there is law or possibility of law… haven’t I said too much because in a duel/dual, uh, in secondness… [Tape interrupted]

… boiling water, I want to boil some water so I put it on the stove. I boil it. I wait. Now, I’m using this example to distribute the three categories in the way Peirce does. Suppose it has boiled, and then I dip my finger in it while it is boiling. I scream, the pain is so great that it’s no longer a local pain, it’s really a case of “there is a boiling”, pure affection. I don’t know where I am anymore, I’ve been sprayed out of space and time, under the pain, this pure affection. Oh no… it’s not even me that hurts anymore, it’s the world that hurts, so I’d say this is what firstness is.

There is indeed a law according to which water boils; this law, you realise, is a mediation. It’s a mediation between water and heat such that the heat must reach 100 degrees for the water to boil. Here 100 degrees is the legal mediation. I would say, this is the number of thirdness. You have three terms. A first term, a second term, a mediation that relates one to two. What he says is quite simple yet it seems to me very… it’s…  English philosophers always proceed in this manner. They’re dealing with perfectly simple things that they cut up in such a twisted way, in a way that’s so bizarre you have the impression they’re speaking to you from another planet, and this is how they build their concepts. It’s very, very odd; only the English know how to pull these stunts… well, that’s thirdness.

But when I want to boil some water, what am I doing? Well, it’s a force-resistance relation. You’ll tell me there’s a law. Of course, there is a law, but the law has nothing to do with the fact that I want to boil water. What is the law? It is the statement of the possibility of bringing, and I mean the possibility, of bringing water to the boil. A law is always, as they say in learned terms, hypothetical-deductive. It’s hypothetical, and is expressed in the form: if you bring water to 100 degrees, it will boil. Okay, so if I bring the water to 100 degrees, it will boil, this is the domain of thirdness.

So when I want to boil water, it’s not in the name of the law, it’s in the name of what? It’s in the name of a phenomenon of secondness, namely: me, the goal I set for myself, and this is done in a world of secondness, meaning my effort: I have to fill the pot, I have to carry it, I have to put it on the stove… and, resistance. What is the resistance to my effort in this case? As Bergson said on another occasion, you have to wait for sugar to melt, you have to wait for water to boil. It is the form of inertia and resistance that opposes my effort. When you want to boil water, you are in the world of secondness, although the law in the name of which the water boils is part of thirdness. Do you understand?

This has to be very concrete, it has to radically change the way you understand things. The ideal is that you will never boil water in the same way again, [Laughter] now that things are distributed in a different manner. This is Peirce’s world. It’s a very odd world, very intriguing, very…

Well, of course actions and reactions respond to laws. Yes, they respond to laws, but not as actual, not in their realities. They respond to laws in what makes them possible, and what makes them possible is the phenomena of thirdness. But in themselves what we have is pure… it’s pure secondness… actuality itself is pure secondness. Okay?

So, regarding this, if you have a vague understanding of this first difference between firstness, secondness and thirdness, [Peirce] will, in certain texts – because, we will realise that, in fact, things are much more complicated than this – in certain texts, he will say, well, generally speaking, to firstness, secondness, and thirdness correspond three types of sign. And for my part I would say –and the difference, it seems to me, is very minimal – they correspond to three types of image. There are images of firstness, and what shall we call these images of firstness? To keep it simple – I mean, this isn’t the final form of Peirce’s thought, though he passes through it – we shall call them icons.  They are icons.

And what is an icon, in fact? It is a sign that signals according to what it is. Only in terms of what it is. It is a sign of firstness. It is a sign that signals according to what it is. We call this an icon. Okay.

A sign of secondness… is a sign that signals in function of something else that exists, something else that is actual. It’s an actual sign that signals in function of something else that is actual. There has to be two. We shall call such a sign an index. For example: no smoke without fire. Smoke signals in relation to something else that is actual, even if it’s not given… there must be fire, I see smoke, there’s no smoke without fire, well… smoke is the index of a fire. The index will be the sign of secondness. Action-reaction…  I’d say a barometer – actually, come to think of it we could do the Highway Code like this, we could, you’ll see… but let’s not complicate things. So, there are signs of secondness, signs of firstness, and there are signs of thirdness.

A sign of thirdness is what [Peirce] will call a symbol. A symbol is a sign that unites two things by means of a mediation. This is the world of signification because, according to Peirce, there is no mediation that unites two things independently of a signification. It’s the signification that is the mediation itself… Well, it doesn’t matter for now, all this would be rather complicated…

Now I would say this can help us clarify our terminology a little. I would say that affection-images are icons, that’s fine, everything we saw regarding the close-up and so on, and the implication is that he gives us something much more than words, which will help us progress. And the signs of the action-image are indices. So I say 1, 2. And when I say 1, 2, it will mean that I place an icon here and an index there, because I remind you that 2 is not only what comes after 1. 2 is in itself and by itself 2, and if 2 comes after 1, it’s because 1 is in itself 1, firstness and 2 is in itself 2, secondness. So I say… I say 1 and then I say 2, and then if I dare I say 3 but am I mistaken or am I not mistaken when I say 3. Is there is something in the cinema that would be thirdness?

This is no small matter. What does Godard mean when he says 1, 2 and then 3? Without knowing it, without meaning to be, perhaps he is Peirce’s purest disciple. But we haven’t got there yet, for the moment we just have to keep in mind: image of firstness or icon… or affection-image. Action-image equals index or image of secondness.

So, can we elaborate this a little here… or should I just finish with Peirce. Yes, yes… because next time we won’t be able to. So let’s go back to this, we mustn’t give up as long as there’s still something obscure.

Firstness, as Peirce defines it, is actually very, very complicated. It’s so complicated for the mind to that you have to… you have to try to sense what he means. I have the impression that at times he too cannot express himself. There is indeed – and it’s not surprising – something ineffable about firstness. As soon as you use words, we’re already in thirdness. At the very least, with thirdness we can sense what secondness is, but it’s not easy to get to pure firstness.

But he tries, so he creates a language for himself. He tries, and one of his most satisfying formulas is: “Firstness is what there is of immediate and instantaneous consciousness in consciousness as a whole”. But be careful, no consciousness is immediate and instantaneous. There is no immediate and instantaneous consciousness that is actually given as fact, for a simple reason. The fact is the domain of secondness. There is no fact except in terms of a relation between two things.

So, the formula he uses becomes something quite bizarre. Which is why you either have to stick to the letter of it or else forget it completely: “What there is of immediate and instantaneous consciousness in all consciousness, even if no consciousness is immediate and instantaneous”. Okay, this is not contradictory; no consciousness is immediate and instantaneous, yet there is an immediate and instantaneous consciousness at work in all consciousness. You just have to scratch hard to get it out. So what is this immediate and instantaneous consciousness that is present in all consciousness?

Let’s take an example that he takes himself, “red”. This is the example he takes, “red” as pure affection. For the little girl at school we saw earlier, it was “yellow”. It could be hunger, it could be hunger, because I begin with one of the most beautiful of Peirce’s texts, when he’s trying to give us a vague understanding of what firstness is, he gives a list of dream examples … where is it? If I can’t find it will be catastrophic! Obviously I’ve lost the page… Ah, here it is!

“Among…” – this will give you an example of his style – “Among phanerons” – which is to say, among phenomena – “Among phanerons there are certain qualities of feeling, such as the color of magenta, the odor of attar, the sound of a railway whistle, the taste of quinine, the quality of the emotion upon contemplating a fine mathematical demonstration, the quality of feeling of love, etc.”[19] He tells us that these are all qualities, and that qualities equate to firstness. You see that this is already something huge. It cannot be actual, since actuality is always the relation between an action and a reaction, it’s always the relation between force and resistance. So firstness, according to Peirce, will be pure qualities or pure powers. He himself employs the word potentiality. These are qualities or potentialities…

Well, they are qualities or potentialities, which suits us well. What were we dreaming, what better dream could we have? A philosopher who discovered everything regarding the nature of the affection-image, such as we were seeking. And this can be the whistle of locomotives, it can be quinine, it can be love, it can be hunger, thirst… It covers more or less all of Maine de Biran’s pure affections and impersonal affections.

But then you might say, in what way is it not actual? What does this mean? Let’s go back to the example of “red”. You can perceive red, it’s a mode of consciousness, the perception of red. Here it is actual, we are in secondness. When you perceive a red object, you are fully in secondness, perceiving subject-perceived object, action-reaction, effort-resistance, as you prefer, you are in secondness, you are in relation. Thirdness is mediation, secondness is relation.

Okay. When you can remember red – “Ah, I remember, he was wearing his nice red suit!” – or when I say, “Ah yes, yesterday, she had on her nice red skirt…” You see I’m making my examples more and more tempting, that way you’ll follow me better. “Ah, yes! She had her red skirt on…” Or I can imagine red… “There I think I see red…” I say, “Ah yes, I’m making… I’m making a picture, yes, I see red… I think I see red…” Well… I can do all of that.

But firstness is not in any of its modes of consciousness. It is neither red as perceived, nor red as imagined, nor red as remembered. So what is it? It’s what is immediate and instantaneous in all these modes of consciousness. So what would that be? What is immediate and instantaneous in all these modes of consciousness? In perception, imagination and memory, which are not, themselves, immediate and instantaneous. Yet it’s a great idea. I think here Peirce proposes a status of the sensible that is quite fantastic. He says, well yes, it’s not difficult to understand. He says – here he assumes a tone that is more… this is a great, delirious philosophy, and the further he goes, the more he takes up familiar examples. He says there are some very strange people who think that when an object is in the dark… that when a red object is in the dark, it stops being red. He says it’s an odd idea they have, he says, well if that’s the way they live then they’re not much good for my categories. Because, of course, when an object is in the dark, it stops being actually red. Fine. In fact, there is no more secondness in the dark, there is no more secondness. But the red doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop at all. Why?

Suppose I say, “She’s not wearing red” or “She’s not in red”… My consciousness of red as immediate and instantaneous consciousness is no less positive in the phrase “She’s not in red” than in the formula “Oh, she’s put on her beautiful red dress”. The red that is not actual, that is not actualized, is no less red than the red that is caught up in an actuality, that is, in a secondness. And insofar as red is a firstness, it has nothing to do with the question: Is it or is it not actualized?

Alain: [Inaudible remarks]

Deleuze: Oh well, that’s very good, you are… Well, very well then? You see, everything is okay, everything is fine… [Alain continues] Okay… All right, fine, everything’s fine… Just like you said… [Alain leaves] Goodbye!

Yes, you see this business of… do you feel any of this? You have to try to feel something, yes. I say it’s not red. Well, this “It’s not red” is an immediate presentation of red equal to that of the proposition “It’s red”. From then on, it’s clear that red as a pure quality is either a potentiality or a power-quality.

And there’s another English philosopher that fascinates me, who I wanted to talk about earlier, but I gave up on it because I’m already behind on everything, but I’ve alluded to him several times, who is Whitehead.[20] Whitehead got along very badly with Peirce, they despised each other… the English are very… that’s just the way it is, that’s life, but Peirce thought that Russel and Whitehead didn’t amount to much, and yet Russel and Whitehead gave him a lot… but that’s okay.

It’s nonetheless amazing. Whitehead, who for me is as great a philosopher as Peirce, develops a whole thesis on what he calls “eternal objects”.[21] And he makes a distinction between eternal objects and prehensions. And he says that the eternal object, the eternal object is a pure virtuality, a potentiality. And when does it become actual? It become actual when it is realized in a prehension – that is, in an act of perception, if you will, in an act of appropriation, or let’s just say of perception. And then he asks, what is the eternal object in itself? There are all kinds, as there are in Peirce, but one type of eternal object is qualities, pure qualities, “red”, and I remember a very eloquent page of Whitehead where he considers blue as an eternal object.[22]

So secondness is when potentiality is actualized in a state of things. You can see that we’re beginning to sketch out our action-image. The affection-image is the power-quality in itself, that is to say, in the words of this marvelous formula – I can’t imagine a more beautiful formula – once again: “What there is of immediate and instantaneous consciousness… in all consciousness which is not immediate and instantaneous.” That’s my affection-images, the icons.

So I was asking, what else is there besides the two types of icons?  Because I would distinguish two types of icons, icons of expression and icons… this is what it would be… I would say, there are icons of expression and icons of exposition, in accordance with my two types of affection-image.  And what else can happen to a power-quality other than its exposition or expression? Firstness. Exposition or expression is firstness. Well, there’s only one thing that can happen to an icon: to become actual. The power-quality is actualized in a determined state of things, in a determined space-time, in an individuated state of things. At that point the icon is no longer an icon, at that point the icon has become an index. An index of what? An index of the state of things. You have an action-image. Already you have an action-image. Okay.

Thirdness, for the moment, I will leave thirdness aside. Are there any images of thirdness? For the moment, we’ve seen how thirdness is what brings the future into play. Here If I do this, I will obtain that through the intermediary of a mediation or a law – mediation, law or signification. Well then, let’s finish with Peirce.

So there you have your three things: firstness, secondness, thirdness. Where it gets complicated – because it can’t stay like that, we’ve got off to too good a start, it’s much too good a start – so what’s going to complicate all this? Here I’m going fast because I really want to get this done today. So… No, I’m not going to try to explain why this problem will arise.

But what arises here is the notion of the sign, since there are indeed signs of firstness, signs of secondness, signs of thirdness. And Peirce will realize that what we call a sign has three aspects. Not only are there signs of firstness – which are icons – signs of secondness – which are indices –and signs of thirdness – which are symbols – but any sign whatsoever has itself three aspects.

First aspect, let’s say – I’m oversimplifying – but let’s say, the sign in itself. The sign in itself. He calls it by a rather barbaric name: the representamen. It doesn’t matter. It’s the sign in itself.

Second aspect: the sign in relation to an object for which it stands. In fact, a sign is something that stands for something else. “To stand for” is the vague expression we use to describe the way a sign operates. So, there is the sign in itself, and secondly, there is the sign in relation to the object it stands for.

Thirdly, there is the sign in relation to what he calls the interpretant. And this too is a very complex notion. What is the object? The object is not necessarily a real object. You can have a sign for an object that does not exist. What’s more, you can have a sign designating an object that cannot exist. So, it’s not necessarily the real object. And the interpretant is clearly not the one who interprets the sign. What Peirce calls the interpretant would be other signs that together with the first sign form a series, according to which the meaning of the sign will be completed, developed or determined. The interpreter, I repeat, is a set of signs or a series of signs connected to the first sign in such a way that they develop, complete or determine its signification, the signification of the first sign.

To give you a simple example, I say the word grenade[23] and Peirce will say, using a very abstract, an extremely obscure formula that in the end, the interpretant is habit. There isn’t a single English philosopher who doesn’t bring in the notion of habit at some point. For them, it’s a substitute for… it’s the best concept they come up with. But the conception of habit they develop is literally incredible, it’s extremely odd and really quite beautiful. I think it should be translated more as… for those of you who have studied Latin, I think it’s much closer to what the Latins called habitus, that is, the mode of being, mode of being.

So I say the word grenade, I say the word grenadeGrenade, well, it’s a sign. It’s a sign. But what is it a sign of? First series of interpretants: a city in Spain. I would say: city and Spain are the interpretants of Granada from that point of view. Right? But if I say: pull out the pin, explode, boom, then that’s another thing, it’s another series of interpretants. In this case grenade is no longer a sign for the Spanish city but a sign for a weapon of war. There would be a third series: pomegranate, tree, plant… Is it a tree or a plant? I think it’s a tree, with fruit and so on. Well, you can always make up series of interpretants like that. So that’s the third aspect of the sign.

So, to finish… because I have the feeling you’re exhausted… we’re going to look at a very, very strange chart. We’re going to see a chart. I don’t have time right now to go to the blackboard, so you have to try to visualize it. If I had a sheet of paper, in the horizontal, there, I would put – you see, you can follow my finger – I would divide into three columns, but I would leave some space on the left, and I would make three columns, beginning from the middle of the page. First column: Firstness. Second column: Secondness. Third column: Thirdness. And then, vertically, in the margin, I would put my three aspects of the sign: sign in itself, sign in relation to its object, sign in relation to its interpretant. Let’s do a quick calculation… that will give me how many signs? How many basic signs? Nine. And I want to give you the list because it’s so charming, you can use it for everything, understand, and then we’ll be able to combine all this, but we’ll stop there.

First aspect of the sign: the sign itself. So, in the firstness column, we will have the qualisigns, q-u-a-l-i-s-i-g-n-s. Qualisign… what does this mean?  It’s a quality that signals. It’s a quality that signals.

Sign of secondness, this is what he calls a sinsign, s-i-n plus sign. A sinsign. Why does he call it that? The sinsign is a sign that functions in a state of things, in a singular state of things. It’s the prefix of singular that he has taken. He says singular whereas I would prefer to say individuated since I used singularity in the case of firstness, but it doesn’t matter. That is to say, in this case the sinsign is indeed a sign, but this time it’s an existence that is the sign. It’s no longer a quality or potentiality; it’s an existence that is the sign.

Sign of thirdness, what he calls a legisign. Legisign. This time, it’s a law that is the sign.

In relation to the object: sign of firstness: icon. Indeed, an icon will be defined as follows: It is a sign that refers to the object through the qualities that are proper to it as sign. It is a sign that refers to the object through qualities that are its own. For example: resemblance. An icon is something that resembles, and its resemblance is a quality that is proper to it.

Regarding secondness: index, which, to be more precise, Peirce will define as follows: It is a sign that refers to the object insofar as it is affected by that object.

Sign of thirdness: symbol. This time it is a sign that refers to the object by virtue of a law or habit.

Lastly, in relation to the interpretant: sign of firstness: what he calls the rheme. R-h-e-m-e. It’s a sign which, he says, is for its interpretant a sign of possibility, and it’s the equivalent in formal logic of what we call a term.

Sign of secondness: this is what he calls the dicisign. D-i-c-i-sign. The dicisign that responds to what in formal logic is called a proposition. This time, it’s a sign that for its interpretant is a sign of real existence.

Sign of thirdness: what he calls an argument. Argument. And… and this is… and this time it’s a sign of law, and it corresponds, to what in formal logic we call a reasoning.

Okay. If it amuses you, this is a practical exercise. You see that you can combine these nine types of signs. You’ll have understood everything about Peirce when you no longer have to refer to his own charts – he made charts all his life, continually reworking them, adding more and more to the point of becoming completely crazy. But, already with your nine signs, you have permissible combinations and impermissible combinations.

To give you an example: can I speak of an indexical qualisign? And that opens up a very odd kind of formal logic, it opens up a formal logic of a very new type that will constitute a whole aspect of what he refers to as a semiotic. Can we speak of a rhematic symbol? Can you speak of a rhematic symbol? You sense how, in the combinations, there are incompossibilities, there are incompatibilities and there are compatibilities. … Yes?

Student: [Inaudible question]

Deleuze: A qualisign? A qualisign… well, it’s a sign that signals. No, sorry! [Laughter] It’s a quality that signals. Red, you take red as a sign. When a particular quality is taken as a sign, I would almost say it’s an aspect of a red traffic light. When I was talking about the Highway Code, it would be very interesting to take the different signs of the Highway Code and see in which of Peirce’s categories they belong. Red-green. Here, we have pure qualities that signal. They’re not just qualisigns because, in reality, they’re also indices and so on. But if you say:  of these red and green traffic lights, I retain only this aspect, separate from the others, then red is a sign and green is a sign, and there you have a qualisign…

Student: [Inaudible question]

Deleuze: What? A scream. I’d prefer a scream, a scream. A scream is an index, first of all. An onomatopoeia, in my view… yes, you’re right, an onomatopoeia is an icon. It’s not a qualisign; it’s an icon because an onomatopoeia refers to the second aspect of the sign, the rapport it has with an object? Because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to tell an onomatopoeia from a simple noise. But if you’re speaking about a noise that signals, yes that’s a qualisign…

Student: [Inaudible question]

Deleuze: A sign by definition is something that refers to something else and that has interpretants that develop in other signs. Every sign unites these three aspects, but it’s a legitimate abstraction to say: I will start by considering the sign in itself insofar as it is itself something, and then I will consider it insofar as it refers to something else, and then I will consider it insofar as it has interpretants. Needless to say, every sign… So that there are no qualisigns that are only qualisigns, or perhaps there are, but these would be extraordinary cases. For example, I imagine a qualisign that is only a qualisign, there I would say it’s an effect. I fall asleep, and I see what are called entoptic phenomena.

Notice that if I have a red glow in my eye, and I say to myself, oh no, I have an artery that just burst, then it’s no longer a qualisign, it’s not a qualisign at all, but an entoptic glow, though it’s close to being qualisign. You’ll never find a pure example; you’ll simply have a prevalence of this or that.

So. I’m almost done. What should we retain in all of this? Why did I… why did I tell you all this? Well, you understand, because now that gets us off the blocks. I think we needed a boost and I think that philosophy gives us that kind of boost, you know? And why? Because once again I’m concerned with isolating the exact moment when we can abstractly get started with the action-image. That is to say, the third type of image. I know where it starts, but I also know that we’re going to have some serious problems.

I would say that the action-image itself isn’t difficult, once again it begins from the moment – and here I weigh my words – when we pass from qualisigns to sinsigns. For – and here for the sake of convenience I go back to my terminology – I will call sinsign… I myself will call sinsigns power-qualities as performed in an individuated state of things, that is to say, as performed in a determined space-time. And what do we have at that point? We have: actual world or – for the moment we can treat all this as equivalent, though we’ll see that this is perhaps not the case – or milieu, or situation. How is the actual world, milieu or situation defined? Well, it’s the effectuation of power-qualities in states of things.

And what about the action-image?  What is its movement?  It goes from situation to action; it goes from milieu to behaviour. Am I saying too much? Why not the other way around? I don’t know. It operates sweeping up the whole domain of secondness. But that means this is going to be a vast domain. Don’t you realize how vast it is going to be?

Student: [Inaudible question]

Deleuze: The sinsign? Oh dear, it’s, it’s… it’s a state of things or a space-time determined by the fact that it actualizes power-qualities. That’s what it is, isn’t it?

So, this is going to be a huge program, that’s why the action-image… yet maybe not more than… the action-image you understand? We’re going to have to, what are we up against? What will be its milieus, its worlds? And then, how will actions derive from the situations of these milieus and worlds?

We could almost take up a first formula. What is it? First formula of the action-image in cinema. S (situation) – A (action) – S prime (new situation): S-A-S’… [Tape interrupted]

… actualized in a given state of things. What is action? Let’s look, let’s look quickly here, while Peirce is giving us a push. I would say that action is the duel. Action is always the relation of action-reaction, force-resistance. It’s the duel. Right, so I have a situation, which is a sinsign, an action which is a duel, and a reaction upon the situation which is modified by the duel. This is interesting, but why is it interesting? I suppose, but we’ll talk about it later, it’s for… before I collapse, it’s…

There is a law, there is a law that had been identified, it should be called Bazin’s law in homage to André Bazin. What is Bazin’s law? It’s in the articles that had a lot of impact whose focus was on the subject of “forbidden montage.” There are cases where editing is prohibited. And next time we’ll look at Bazin’s texts on this question. [24] Well, it doesn’t seem difficult to me to understand the cases where editing is prohibited and the cases where editing is allowed or even recommended. Editing is absolutely necessary in any presentation of world, milieu and situation in cinema where we have an action-image. Editing is strictly forbidden and must be prohibited when the action that derives from the situation is narrowed down to a duel. Because here, you must have a single shot that unites the two terms of the action.

But, the duel-action reacts upon the S-A-S’ situation. Why not the other way around? Why don’t we have an inverse type of action-image, which would do the opposite? A-S-A’, Action- Situation-Other Action? Are these the same type of action-images? Would it be the same directors, the same cinematic geniuses who have been particularly successful in the S- A-S’ path who have also succeeded in the A-S- A’ path? Is it that the different genres are related to one of these two paths? I mean, does the Western belong to such and such a side? And what about burlesque comedy, American burlesque comedy?  These will be huge problems for us.

So, for the moment let’s just keep this in mind: the action-image will be the image that in all possible ways, captures the situations and duels in a given set, that is, the situation being the effectuation of a power-quality in a state of things, with the duel being the path by means of which the situation develops.

Good. So, we can get started on the action-image next week. [End of recording] [2:13:11]

—————-                Firstness                     Secondness                 Thirdness

Sign in itself                    Qualisign                    Sinsign                        Legisign

Sign vis-à-vis object            Icon                        Index                           Symbol

Sign vis-à-vis interpretant    Rheme                Dicisign                      Argument

 

Notes

[1] The student is referring to the second part of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible – Part I, which was released in 1944. Part II, though it was completed in 1946, was only released 12 years later in 1958, as it had been banned by Stalin who was not happy with the way Ivan was depicted. This part contained a number of sequences in colour. Eisenstein had planned to shoot a third part to complete the story but filming was halted with the banning of Part II. Following Eisenstein’s death in 1948, a large part of what had been shot for the final film was destroyed.

[2] Moses and Aron (Orig. Moses und Aron, 1975) is a film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet based on Arnold Schoenberg’s unfinished opera of the same name. The film, which was shot in Italy and Egypt with the singers’ parts recorded in direct sound, retains the opera’s unfinished structure, with the third act consisting of a sequence shot without music in which Moses delivers a monologue drawn from Schoenberg’s own notes.

[3] Deleuze mistakes the French title of Bava’s film, which is in fact Le Masque du Demon (Orig. La maschera del demonio, Eng. Black Sunday, 1960).

[4] Joris Ivens (1898-1989) is considered one of the pioneers of documentary cinema. A lifelong communist and anti-fascist, his films confronted worker exploitation and western imperialism and celebrated workers’ movements allover the world. Among his best-known films are Rain (1929), Misère au Borinage (1934), A Valparaiso (1937), 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968), How Yukon Moved the Mountains (1976) and A Tale of the Wind (1988).

[5] Rain (orig. Regen, 1929) is a short documentary film co-directed by Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken about a rain shower in Amsterdam. Considered by many a masterpiece of Dutch avant-garde cinema, it is an impressionist and lyrical example of a “city symphony” that organizes urban images according to musical guidelines by combining experimental, documentary and narrative techniques. During the rain shower, the city becomes a screen that Ivens’s camera uncovers and doubles.

[6] Here Deleuze is most likely referring to The Cry (Orig. Il Grido, 1957), starring Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Betsy Blair, and Dorian Gray, in which the protagonist is a man who wanders aimlessly, drifting away from his northern Italian hometown and from the woman he loved and becoming emotionally distant and socially lethargic.

[7] François-Pierre-Gontier de Biran (1766–1824), known as Maine de Biran, was a French philosopher. Although he was described by Henry Bergson as the greatest French philosopher since the Seventeenth Century, Biran’s work has received scant attention from American and English scholars. Biran was concerned to present the case for an Empiricism that did not try to explain away either inner or outer experience but which saw both as equally necessary for a doctrine of the source of human knowledge.

[8] The only book-length publication of Maine de Biran’s work currently available in English is The Relationship between the Physical and the Moral in Man, edited and translated by Darian Meacham and Joseph Spadola, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

[9] Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes considered the father of Semiotics. Peirce proposed a theory of signs that played a key role in pragmatist philosophy and served as a foundation for the theory of thought and action. According to him, meaning is non-existent if there is no sign pointing to another sign. In other words, there is no meaning which does not generate signs from signs, in long chains distributed over time in a certain direction (semiosis).

[10] See Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl, (Trans. Grace Rubin-Rabson) New York: Grune & Stratton, 1951, p.21 (Translation modified).

[11] Mediterranée (1963) is an experimental essay film by Jean-Daniel Pollet with a script by Phillipe Sollers.

[12] Sergei Eisenstein, Nonindifferent Nature (trans. Herbert Marshall), Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1987.

[13] Here we translate “pathétique” with “pathos” (the term consistently used in Herbert Marshall’s translation of Eisentsein’s Nonindifferent Nature) also in order to avoid the derogatory connotations the word “pathetic” has acquired in English. It should be noted, however, that Cinema I: The Movement-Image retains the use of “pathetic”.

[14] Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Orig. Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, 1967) is a film by Jean-Luc Godard – the second in a series after Masculin féminin (1966) – that takes the apparent form of sociological investigation. It stars Marina Vlady as a “typical” Parisian housewife and mother from the emerging urban middle classes who relieves her boredom and supplements her spending power through occasional forays into prostitution. The “Her” of the title conflates the investigation into the woman’s life with that into the changing cityscape of Paris caught in the throes of capitalist modernization.

[15] Here Deleuze is referring to the years of the Dziga Vertov Group, when following the 1968 uprisings, Godard renounced his authorial signature to make a series of collective films partly inspired by Maoist revolutionary thought. His main partner in this venture was Jean-Pierre Gorin, a former student of marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Together they made a series of overtly political yet ludic films, mixing elements of documentary, essay and fiction, beginning with A Film Like Any Other (Orig. Un film comme les autres, 1968) followed by British Sounds (1968), Wind from the East (Orig. Vent d’est, 1969), Pravda (1969), Struggles in Italy (Orig. Lotte in Italia, 1970), Vladimir and Rosa (1971), Tout va bien (1972) and Letter to Jane (1972).

[16] Here and Elsewhere (Orig. Ici et ailleurs, 1974), the first film Godard made with his partner Anne-Marie Miéville, takes up rushes from the Dziga Vertov Group’s aborted attempt to make a film on the Palestinian struggle (Jusqu’a la victoire) and weaves it into a critique of Godard and Gorin’s methods in making the film and the ideological framework of the Dziga Vertov Group as a whole.

[17] Godard and Miéville’s formally radical television period, experimenting with the aesthetic possibilities of video, began with Six fois deux / Sur et Sous la communication (1976), a series of six programmes, each in two parts, which deconstruct the functioning of the media as it relates and fails to relate to the lives and problems of ordinary people. This was followed by France / tour / détour / deux / enfants (1978, though only broadcast in 1981), which employed the format of a TV current affairs magazine programme to explore the views of two primary schoolchildren on a number of topics, both philosophical and political, as a prism of life and education in contemporary France. For Deleuze’s commentary on Six fois deux see Three Questions on Six times Two in Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (trans. Martin Goughin) New York, Chichester: Columbia UP, 1995 pp. 37-45. The entire conversation with the editors of Cahiers du cinéma is also available on line at http://www.ocec.eu/cinemacomparativecinema/index.php/en/29-n-7-english/373-three-questions-about-six-fois-deux

[18] See Charles Sanders Peirce, “Principles of Phenomenology” in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Edited and selected by Justus Buchler, New York: Dover Books, 1940.

[19] See Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers (Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss Eds.) Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1931-35 (Electronic Edition) p. 114.

Available at: https://colorysemiotica.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/peirce-collectedpapers.pdf

[20] Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science. In collaboration with Bertrand Russell, he co-authored the landmark three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913). He is often considered the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, economics and psychology.

[21] Whitehead defines the eternal object as follows: “Any entity whose conceptual recognition does not involve a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world is called an eternal object”. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne Eds.) New York: The Free Press, 1978, p. 44.

[22] See Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1920, in which several pages are dedicated to a meditation on Cambridge blue.

[23] Here Deleuze plays on the polysemy of the French word grenade which means at the same time grenade, pomegranate and the city of Granada.

[24] Bazin’s law is stated in the following paragraph: “If one forced oneself at this point to define the problem, it seems to me that one could set up the following principle as a law of aesthetics. When the essence of a scene demands the simultaneous presence of two or more factors in the action, montage is ruled out. It can reclaim its right to be used, however, whenever the import of the action no longer depends on physical contiguity, even though this may be implied”. Bazin goes on to give an example from Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, saying: “It is inconceivable that the famous seal-hunt scene in Nanook should not show us hunter, hole and seal all in the same shot. It is simply a question of respect for the spatial unity of an event at the moment when, to split it up, would change it for something real to something imaginary.” See André Bazin, What is Cinema – Volume 1 (Trans. Hugh Gray), Berkley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967, p.50.

Notes

For archival purposes, the French transcript part 1 was prepared for the first time in June 2019 for this site; the transcript part 2 was prepared at Paris 8 by Nicolas Lehnebach. The augmented and new time stamped version of the transcription (for part 2) was completed in January 2021. The translation was completed in January 2022, with additional revisions in January 2024. [NB: The transcript time stamp is in synch with the WedDeleuze recording link provided here.]

Lectures in this Seminar

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Reading Date: November 10, 1981
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Reading Date: June 1, 1982
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