Revealing a Structure of Immanence: Deleuze and the Cinematic

ROGER DAWKINS

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

School of Theatre, and Dance. University of New South Wales. July 2004. Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of the cinematic sign: it is a of the cinema. More specifically, it looks at 's cinema books and analyzes why Deleuze's semiotics rejects Christian Metz's thesis on the cinematic sign in preference for a version of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy of the sign, called semeiotics. Deleuze uses Peirce to account for an interrelated range of signs in the cinema, from the more conventional signs that have dominated film-critical discourse since Metz, to the purely affective and even temporal signs. The sign, for Deleuze, is first and foremost a representation of semiotic matter. I argue that Peirce's semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of developing this process of representation as it hinges on a relationship between Being on the one hand, and the sign on the other. Deleuze uses this relationship between Being and the sign to conceptualize the structure of the cinematic sign as a structure of immanence. His writings explain how matter is virtual, and how the sign, in the course of its representation, expresses the that is potential to matter. I argue that this very immanence of matter and sign ensures an idea of signification that is not predetermined by ideological structures. I undertake two distinct analytical operations. First, I examine Deleuze's thesis on the sign's immanent structure. A key part of this is Deleuze's critique of structural analysis, and his continuation of this critique in his encounter with Metz in the cinema books. Second, I examine Deleuze's preference for Peirce's semeiotics. Through an analysis of a range of cinematic examples, I consider how he adapts Peirce's semeiotics to what he calls classical and modern cinema. I flesh out some of Deleuze's examples in more detail, and at times I also use some of my own. These range from Sergei Eisenstein's The General Line to Rob Cohen's XXX. This dissertation, then, is more than an exegesis of the cinema books. It is a practical application of Deleuze's semiotics that aims to show how his signs have a life beyond the theses he puts forward in the cinema books. Acknowledgements

I owe a huge thanks to my two supervisors, Lisa Trahair and Andrew Murphie. Thanks are also due to my family, for standing by me and not asking "Are you finished yet?"; my friends, for dealing with my moods; and all the staff in the school of Theatre, Film and Dance, especially George Kouvaros for always giving me great advice. This dissertation is for Janine. Table of Contents

Introduction. The Problem of Semiotic Matter and Expression in the Cinema: T awards an Immanent Structure of the Sign 1

Signaletic Material and Sign u

Signaletic Material and Sign: Deleuze's Semiotics Rethinks Semiology 1v

Peirce's Semeiotics is a Viable Alternative to Semiology vt

My Argument (More Specifically) ix

Chapter One. Metz's Semiology vs. Deleuze's Semiotics

Introduction 1

Part One: Deleuze's Semiotics is the Remainder of his Critique of Metz's Semiology: 5

Metz: The Image is a Sign Because Narrative Acts as a Transcendent Structure Shaping its Matter 7

Deleuze and Metz: Two Different Perspectives on Hjelmslevian Matter: 12

1 Matter Presupposes Form 13

2 Matter is Independent of Form; Signs are the Emergent Forms of Matter 16

Part Two: Deleuze's Semiotics and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser 21

Conclusion 26 Chapter Two. Deleuze's Semiotics: What Does it Mean to Say that the Sign is an Expression of Matter?

Introduction 28

1 Matter is Not Directly Perceptible (Even Though it is Definitely There): It is a Symbolic Element of Language 32

2 Matter is Neither Signifying/Syntaxic nor Amorphous Because it is a Topology 34

3 The Creation of New and Original Signs is the Outcome of Deleuze's Thesis on Matter 38

4 There is a Temporal Component of Every Sign 41

5 A Language Involves Packets of Signs (Series) 44

6 There is No Transcendent Structure Because the Series Converge Upon an Emp!J Square (Which is Without its Own Identity) 46

7 For Deleuze's Conception of Language to Work, the Language Using Subject Must be Heroic 49

Conclusion 53

Chapter Three. Deleuze and Peirce's Semeiotics: Some Possible Points of Contact

Introduction 55

Immanence: An Organism Evolves by Actively Adapting the Properties of an Environment 58

Peirce's "Parable of the Cave": A Metaphor Designed to Illustrate the Active Adaptation of an Organism to its Environment 65

Semeiotics: Nine Sign Elements and Ten Classes of Completed Sign 68

Some Implications of Peirce's Ontology and Semeiotics for Deleuze's Concept of the Sign 88

Conclusion 96 Chapter Four. Towards a Structure of Immanence: Deleuze and Peirce

Introduction 97

Deleuze Identifies the Potential of Semeiotics 102

Deleuze: There is a Danger of Peirce's Signs Being Confused with Linguistic Signs 108

Deleuze Dispels Any Potential Problems with Peirce's Concept of the Categories 111

Deleuze Develops a Version of Peirce's Sign 119

Deleuze Uses the Perception-Image to Develop the Preliminary Sign Elements of His Semiotics on a Smaller Scale 127

Gaseous Perception and Its Sign Elements 137

Conclusion 141

Chapter Five. Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema. Part I: The Movement-Image

Introduction 144

The Affection-Image 153

The Action-Image 159

The Relation-Image 170

The Impulse-Image 180

The Reflection-Image 186

Conclusion 193 Chapter Six. Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema. Part II: The Time-Image

Introduction 194

Zeroness or Deleuze's Optical-Image: Another Principal Category in the Cinema 199

Time-Images/Chronosign Hyalosigns and the Special Kinds of Embodied Signs of Deleuze' s Semiotics 210

Mnemosigns and Onirosigns: These are Not Genuine Chronosign Hyalosigns 228

Conclusion 235

Chapter Seven. Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema: Noosign

Introduction 237

A Shock to Thought: Deleuze and Peirce 243

Thought and the Sign: Peirce's Interpretant and Deleuze's Noosign 249

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics 260

Conclusion 286

Conclusion. A Structure of Immanence 288

Works Consulted 295

Filmography 318 Jntrudu,:1i,,r, 1

Introduction

The Problem of Semiotic Matter and Expression in the Cinema: Towards an Immanent

Structure of the Sign

In this project I will show how Gilles Deleuze analyzes the cinema and develops what I will call an immanent stmcture ofthe sign. My argument is that he arrives at this structure by developing a concept of expression in language (according to which the sign is the expression of a matter-or signaletic material). He does this in tandem with a reading of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy of the sign, called semeiotics. 1 Based on Deleuze's application of certain principles of Peirce's sign, my aim is to explicate this structure and the signs it generates. My aim is not to analyze these signs in relation to the historical context of the cinema, nor is it to undertake a critique of Deleuze's use of semeiotics. Since

I am, in the first instance, a student of rather than a Peircian scholar, my reading of the Deleuze-Peirce encounter staged in this project is secondary to my overall aim of showing how all of Deleuze's signs comprise a single semiotic structure that stands for the whole of the cinema.

1 In his correspondence to Victoria Lady Welby, Peirce describes his analysis of the sign as a science of semeiotics. See for example his letter dated Dec. 23 1908 (Semiotic and Signifies 73-86). In this letter he notes how semeiotics is a scientific and philosophical form of study based on the relation between the sign and three categories of Being. Charles Deledalle makes the same point, insisting on the importance of philosophy in Peirce's study of the sign. He writes: "Just as Saussure's semiology is a branch of linguistics, Peirce's semeiotic is a branch of philosophy" (1 ). In this project I will use the term semeiotics whenever referring to Peirce's theory of the sign. Elsewhere I will use the term semiotics. So I will begin by setting the stage for my exploration of Deleuze's semiotics. lbis project discusses what is peculiar and original about Deleuze's concept of the cinematic sign, outlined in his two volumes on the cinema (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and

Cinema 2: The Time-Image).2 Furthermore, the backdrop of my thesis is comprised of the structural paradigms of cinematic language, popularized in the 1960s by theorists such as

Christian Metz.

Signaletic Material and Sign

I take as my starting point a key relationship Deleuze refers to in the cinema books. lbis relationship involves the sign on the one hand, and a signaletic material on the other.

In the cinema books a sign is something that means something for somebody. lbis is a process of representation and, in it, meaning is created. Furthermore, _meaning results

from the sign's presentation of the signaletic material. For example, a facial expression

(like a grimace) is the sign of some qualiry of the signaletic material of the universe.

Deleuze's determination of the signaletic material has a bearing on the role played by the sign. He describes the signaletic material in the following way: he calls it 1) an "a­

signifying and a-syntaxic material" even though, 2) "it is not amorphous" (Iime 29). From

the first point, the a-signifying means that the signaletic material is not naturally a signifying

matter-in other words, it is not naturally meaningful. Furthermore, the a-syntaxic means

much the same, but with a subtle difference. The a-syntaxic means that the signaletic

material is not naturally a syntaxic matter-in other words, it is not naturally organized into

a structure of meaningful units.3 The second point tells us that the signaletic material is not

2 When referring to Deleuze's two volumes I will use the following abbreviated titles: The Movement-Image and The Time-Image. 3 My understanding of the linguistic origins of the term ryntax is from Sidney Greenbaum. He defines syntax as "the ways in which words combine into structures of phrases, clauses and sentences" (23). Intn;dur:tir,n ll1

amorphous: it is not indeterminate and without any shape or character. By putting these two points together, then, Deleuze is telling us that the signaletic material is not a meaningful or organized substance, but neither is it meaningless or amorphous.

If we think about the role played by the sign in relation to the signaletic material, then it will become clear why Deleuze determines the signaletic material according to the above two points. First, if the signaletic material was signifying or syntaxic

(signifying/syntaxic), then it would already be meaningful in some sense, and the function of the sign would be to uncover a latent meaning. Another way of understanding this idea of latent meaning is to say that the meaningpossibfy exists. If we switch contexts from the cinema books to a similar discussion in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze tells us the

following: for existence to be determined as possible existence, its nature as such is necessarily defined in relation to actual existence (211). This implies the following about

our discussion of the sign: for the meaning of the sign to be possible it is inseparable from

actual existing meaning. And a consequence is that the meaning uncovered by the sign is

always determined in some sense by pre-existent meaning. Second, if the signaletic material

was amorphous, then the sign would not uncover a latent meaning (for there is no meaning

to be uncovered). Instead, the sign would shape the signaletic material and mould it into a

meaningful substance. For the sign to assume such a function, therefore, it must already be

meaningful in some sense. Again, the meaning that results from the signaletic material­

sign relationship is at best a version of pre-existent meaning.

Deleuze claims that the signaletic material is neither signifying/syntaxic nor

amorphous. It is an existing matter, but since it satisfies neither of the above conditions,

he calls it a "plastic mass" (Iime 29). The reason Deleuze insists on defining the signaletic

material as a plastic mass is to ensure that the meaning produced in his conception of the Jntrodur:1j,,r. 1v

sign is not a version of pre-existent meaning, but is completely new, fresh, original and spontaneous.

What, then, is the relationship of sign and signaletic material for Deleuze? We know that the sign does not make actual some possible meaning, and neither does it shape the signaletic material. Deleuze tells us instead that the sign is 1) "irreducible" to the signaletic material, yet 2) "not without a determinable relationship to it" (.Iime 34). For

Deleuze, the sign determines the signaletic material, but not in the sense I have noted so far. One way we can describe this process is with Deleuze's concept of expression. Deleuze develops this concept in most detail in his monograph on Benedict de Spinoza. Andre

Pierre Colombat, however, gives us an insight into its meaning when he defines expression as a process of unfolding and involvement (16). What is suggested is a sense in which

Deleuze's sign expresses the signaletic material by extending and transforming its matter into something different.4 Most importantly, the implication is the sign's creative role in the production of meaning.

Signaletic Material and Sign: Deleuze's Semiotics Rethinks Semiology.

In this project I take the ideas surrounding the concept "expression" as principle to the way Deleuze configures the sign in the cinema. In developing an idea of expression in the cinema, and thus entering what was at the time the burgeoning arena of structural film theory, Deleuze sets himself a particular problem. I would identify this problem with the following question: how can a semiotic theory of expression be made relevant to the current state of film theory?

4 In another context, Brian Massumi explains this process for us: "Everything that is present at the beginning comes out in the end[... ]. Only different. The success of the exercise is not measured by any godlike ability to create something from nothing. It is the more modest ability to extract a difference from a variation" ("Sensing" 1071). Ir.trodur:tiori v

Deleuze was writing the cinema books in the mid-1980s when was

already established as one of the key semiotic discourses of the cinema. Structuralism

refers to the systematization underlying (what Deleuze calls) a semiology of the cinema.5

According to Deleuze the fundamental disposition of this approach boils down to the logic

intrinsic to the structural sign. Deleuze explains this logic when he claims that semiology

determines the image as an "analogical sign" (Iime 27). The image is an analogical sign

because its primary function is to operate through "resemblance or analogy" to certain

"codes." Deleuze doesn't actually define the , but often uses this concept in

conjunction with linguistics. This suggests that the code, most generally, is a structuring

device or syntax that is transcendent to the sign, and can be anything from a narrative code,

to a social and/a: cultural code.6

To say that the image in semiology is primarily an analogical sign is to imply some

givens about the signaletic material-sign relationship. To understand these givens we must

bear in mind how the cinematic image, for Deleuze, is two things at once. First of all, in its

most fundamental capacity as "matter in movement" (Iime 33), the image is a signaletic

material. Second of all, the images presented in the cinema are signs because they

"compose" and "combine" the signaletic material (33). This is a process of specification,

according to which matter in movement (signaletic material), is expressed through certain

compositions of images (signs). Now, to say that the image is primarily an analogical sign

is to say that the semiotic process depends on the code. This means that the images are

signs only in so far as their signaletic material is thought to be analogous to the code-in

other words, in so far as the images reflect the pre-existent meaning contained in the code.

5 I have borrowed "systematization" from Alfred Guzzetti (292). 6 Deleuze refers predominantly to Christian Metz and the narrative codes realized by Metz's eight syntagmatic types of the cinema (Iime 26). If we consider Metz's thesis in Film Language we will see that Metz also describes social and cultural codes, and with this in mind we can suggest that Deleuze's idea of the code includes the social and cultural also. In this project I refer to this broad idea of the code as a transcendent structure. In bringing the concept of expression to the cinema, Deleuze rethinks the signaletic material-sign relationship. He takes aim at the whole gamut of what Warren Buckland refers to as the structural linguistic foundation of film semiology.7 He hails Christian Metz as the main proponent of semiology, and traces its roots back to the birth of Saussurean linguistics in the early twentieth century, claiming that semiology is fundamentally erroneous in its focus on ideological systems (as given by the code), for this excludes

certain aspects of the signaletic material's potential. He corrects semiology's error by putting a different spin on the concept of the analogical, claiming that the image is

analogical not because of the resemblance of its signaletic material to the code, but because

of the associated concept of "modulation" (Iime 27). 8 For Deleuze, the sign is analogical in so far as it stems from the analogical (read: modulated) nourishment of the signaletic

material. Modulation, in Deleuze's correction of semiology, is another way of thinking

expression.

Peirce's Semeiotics is a Viable Alternative to Semiology

"Not a great deal can be done with codes" (Deleuze Time 28). This is the claim

Deleuze makes in the cinema books when levelling a critique against semiology.

Keyan G. Tomaselli is of the same opinion. When considering a suitable model for the

analysis of how meaning is made in ethnographic documentaries, he claims that semiology

takes codes for granted. For instance Tomaselli writes:

7 I am referring here to Warren Buckland's essay, "The Structural Linguistic Foundation of Film Semiology." s I use the word "correct'' here, because (as I make clear in Chapter One), the tone ofDeleuze's critique of semiology is constantly suggestive of an error or miscalculation on the latter's ?art. For ex~ple, Del~uze seems to be critical of a certain hastiness in Metz's thesis, a hastiness from which the foundattons of his theory are the outcome of "approximations" ~ 25). [Codes] are not natural, neutral or even necessary. They are, however, taken for

granted by those located within the dominant ideology, and legitimized as natural

occurrences or "timeless truths"-the "God's eye view''. They are presented as

"common sense", the unquestioned way of interpreting "reality'' or doing things.

(Tomaselli, K., R. Tomaselli and J. Muller The Press in South Africa: 17 qtd. in

Tomaselli, K. Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation:

44-45)

Deleuze is not the only one who thinks that a rigorous theory of the sign needs to look beyond the code.

In his book Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation,

Tomaselli questions the strength of the code in semiology. According to Tomaselli, the coded sign implies a notion of meaning that is "saturated with the ideological imperatives

of society" (45). Furthermore, he feels that these ideological imperatives unavoidably restrict the sign's ability to represent an experience. Consequently, he states the importance

of another model of the sign, one based on the logic of an American pragmatist: Charles S.

Peirce. Peirce developed a philosophical theory of the sign from the late 1890s until the

early 1900s which he called semeiotics.

For Tomaselli, semeiotics is a theory of meaning that considers the sign independently of codes, or what I will refer to as transcendent structures. In Tomaselli's

reading of Peirce, signs are the way a subject makes sense of an encounter: they are "the vehicle through which experience becomes intelligible" (56). Furthermore, this process of

making sense does not depend entirely on the subject attributing codes to an encounter.

Tomaselli explains this point in semeiotics when he notes three steps involved in a subject's

attempt to make sense of an encounter. These steps correspond to the fundamental Jntn,d1w1ir;n viii

properties of the universe, or what Peirce calls the phenomenological categories of Being:

Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. First is the subject's most basic and general experience of the encounter, and this experience is characteristic of Peirce's category of existence in-itself (Firstness); second is the subject's experience of the encounter as a

specific kind of stimulation in a specific time and place, and this experience is characteristic of Peirce's category of actual existence (Secondness); and third is the subject's logical

evaluation of the encounter, and this experience is characteristic of Peirce's category of

logical existence (Ibirdness). Each step, taken separately, implies a different notion of

what an encounter is, and each step implies a different notion of the sign (there are signs of

Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness). Furthermore, the semiological sign would fall

among Peirce's logical or conventional signs ofThirdness, and so semeiotics supports a

broader and more varied idea of the sign and meaning than semiology. For Tomaselli,

semeiotics supports an idea of the sign and meaning based on the different ways a subject

makes sense of different aspects of an encounter.

Deleuze also uses Peirce to move beyond the limitations of coded signs and

transcendent structures. Deleuze, however, uses semeiotics to develop a theory of

expression in the cinema. Furthermore, Deleuze is not a semiotician, and so his project is

not an abstract delineation of signs: it is not as straightforward as that. Expression is a

philosophical concept, and Deleuze brings to the study of the sign and meaning a huge

amount of philosophical baggage. In this project I unravel Deleuze's discussions of the

sign, his examples, his philosophical baggage, and using some examples of my own, make

clear what I see as the underlying Peircian structure of Deleuze's semiotic theory of

expression in the cinema.

My argument, in most general terms, is as follows. Deleuze analyzes the image as a

sign and elucidates a Peircian theory of how the sign works by incorporating arguments Intrndur:1i,,n 1X

from various philosophical avenues. Based on Henri Bergson's ontology of matter and

time, Deleuze equates matter in the universe with the cinematic image. He then uses

Peirce's signs of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness to conceive a theory of meaning in

the cinema that is independent of transcendent structure-in other words, he uses Peirce's

signs to conceive of a semiotic idea of expression. Yet Deleuze's reading of Spinoza is also

key here. Deleuze conceives of Peirce's signs as expressions because, from Spinoza, he understands Peirce's categories as immanent to the universe/cinema. The categories and

the universe are "in immanence" in the sense that the categories rightfulfy exist and are not

determined to exist by something transcendent in the universe. 9

My Argument (More Specifically)

In this project I contend that a sign, in Deleuze's semiotics, is an expression of a

signaletic material. A sign is not the product of the signaletic material's formation by a

transcendent structure. Furthermore, I will explain how Deleuze develops this concept of

the sign in the cinema through a reading of semeiotics.

In Chapter One I compare Deleuze's semiotics and Metz's semiology in order to

arrive at a concept of the signaletic material in the cinema. My approach is to unpack

Deleuze's critique of Metz, and in tum, his critique of . As I wrote

earlier, Deleuze thinks that structural linguistics is at the foundation of semiology. I will

emphasize how the principle difference between Deleuze's semiotics and semiology lies

with their respective emphases on a concept of Hjelmslevian matter in the cinema, or what

Deleuze calls the signaletic material of the image: for Deleuze, the sign is an expression of

9 I have borrowed "in immanence" from Deleuze, who uses this tum of phrase to describe the relation of substance and mode in his reading of Benedict de Spinoza's ontology: "Absolute immanence is in itself: it is not in something, to something; it does not depend on an object or belong to a subject. In Spinoza, intrndur:1i,-,n x

the signaletic material of the image---a material that is neither signifying/&yntaxic nor

amorphous-while for Metz, the sign is the product of the signaletic material's formation by the code.

I also describe what is at stake in Deleuze's critique of Metz by using a cinematic

example to touch on the implications of semiology for the cinema. My own examination

of a sequence from Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) will show what it means for Deleuze's semiotics to deny the role played by the code in the formation of

the sign. In practical terms we will see that Deleuze's concept of the matter-sign

relationship implies an idea of meaning that is based first and foremost on the material

properties of the images themselves.

In Chapter Two I describe the process behind what I am asserting to be Deleuze's

theory of expression in the cinema. I explain in concrete terms how and w~ the signaletic

material is neither signifying/eyntaxic nor amorphous; I explain how the sign teases out of

the signaletic material what is potential to its matter, and how the sign, as an expression, ends

up being similar, yet different, to the signaletic material.

I tease the answers to these questions out of the particular approach Deleuze takes

to critiquing structural analysis in an early essay called "How Do We Recognize

Structuralism?" (1967). This essay posits a general theory of language, and in it Deleuze

uses structural analysis to derive the nature of what he generally refers to as the matter of

the sign (which in the cinema is the signaletic material of the image). Distinct from

semiology and the pre-eminence given to structure/form over and above any conception of

matter in language, Deleuze argues that matter is structured in-itself. For Deleuze,

therefore, structural analysis is an approach that foregrounds the independence of matter in

the formation of signs. He turns the typical idea of structuralism upside down: structural

immanence is not immanence to substance; rather, substance and modes are in immanence" ~ Immanence 26). int-rnd111:1ion X1

analysis is not concerned with an analysis of fonnal systems, but with an analysis of exactly

how the matter of a language gives rise to meaning in language. I use each step of

Deleuze's structural analysis as the basis for unpacking the signaletic material-sign

relationship of the cinema. Furthermore, I develop Deleuze's concept of structure in and

through a range of cinematic examples; including Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and

Takeshi Kitano's A Scene at the Sea (1992).

Structural analysis outlines the principles of a semiotics of expression, and with

these principles at hand I return to the cinema books. Between Deleuze's dismissal of

Metz and his development of his own semiotics, the cinema books include some explicit

(yet brief) references to Peirce's semeiotics. When it comes to conceiving the cinematic

sign, Deleuze claims in The Time-Image that Peirce's semeiotics is a viable alternative to

semiology. In order to begin testing the validity of this claim, I hypothesize Deleuze's

appreciation for Peirce in Chapter Three. In light of Deleuze's conception of the

signaletic material-sign relationship I have laid out so far, I ask: ''What is it about

semeiotics that might be appealing for Deleuze?"

So that I can suggest these points of contact, I explain what semeiotics is and how

it works. In general terms, semeiotics is the study of how a subject makes sense of an

encounter. It is, moreover, a study of signs because, in attempting to make sense of

something (such as the experience of a smell or a sound), Peirce claims that the process

involved is an interpretation of signs. Furthermore, Charles Deledalle suggests that a

subject's interpretation of signs is homologous to the way an organism, in the course of its

evolution, adapts itself to the properties of a particular environment. We will see that this

last point is key to my argument about the appeal of semeiotics for Deleuze.

This last point is where I begin my exegesis of semeiotics. I start Chapter Three by

examining Peirce's ontology, and taking my cue from a comment made by William James, I intrndur:1i,,n xn

argue that in Peirce's thesis an organism evolves based on a relationship to its environment

that can be characterized as one of active adaptation. Active adaptation is a creative relationship, and is similar to what Bergsonian ontology defines with the concept novel!).

Such theories hold that an organism does not follow a predetermined course of

evolution-in other words, an organism is not thought to evolve according to transcendent

causality (transcendent structure).

What has this relationship of organism and environment got to do with semeiotics?

Before I answer this question, I outline the theory of the sign and meaning particular to

semeiotics. I said above that the sign for Peirce is the way a subject makes sense of an

encounter. Something I need to add to this statement is that Peirce's understanding of

how a sign works depends on his division of the universe into three ultimate or fundamental

properties.

He calls these the three phenomenological categories of Being: Firstness,

Secondness and Thirdness. These categories are ordinal and hierarchical-in other words,

Thirdness contains Secondness and Firstness, and Secondness contains Firstness-in the

same way that a Russian doll contains a doll within a doll within a doll. When the

categories are separated from each other, Firstness is the category of existence in-itself, for

example, redness (independent of its embodiment in an object) is a First; Secondness is the

category of actual or genuine existence, when the redness is embodied in an object in a

state of things (a rose, a fez, a Ferrari 306 GTS); Thirdness is the category of logical

existence, when an object in a state of things is conceived as a general type that is

representative of some law.

What about the sign? Consider Peirce's concept of the sign. The categories of Being

have a bearing on Peirce's concept of the sign in two ways. 1) For Peirce, a sign, like

everything else in the universe, is divisible into the three categories of Being. There are, Jn tn ;duc1iqn xiii

then, three properties (or what I will call aspects) of every sign. These are apparent when

Peirce defines the sign as something which stands for something else (its object) for some interpreting mind. From this definition a sign is first of all something in-itself, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the Representamen. Secondly, a sign stands in a relation with an object, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the Object. Thirdly, a sign-object relation is interpreted by somebody, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the lnterpretant. 2) The sign is the way a subject makes sense of an encounter. Peirce's categories suggest that there are three kinds of experience in the universe. This means, moreover, that in semeiotics there are three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object, and three kinds of lnterpretant.

Now consider Peirce's sign practicalfy, deployed in an actual semeiotic context. I call

Peirce's aspects of the sign, when considered from the perspective of their different

categorical kinds, the sign elements of semeiotics. From the three aspects of every sign, then,

are nine sign elements of semeiotics. They are represented in the table below: Table 1

A Tri-Square of the Nine Sign Elements of Semeioticsa

1 2 3 Qualisign Sinsign Legisign Representamen (quality that is a sign) (actual event that is a (general type that is a sign) sign)

Icon Index Symbol Object (qualitative relation of (genuine relation of (abstract relation of sign and object) sign and object) sign and object)

Rheme Dicent Argument Interpretant (general interpretation (specific interpretation (logical of some possible of actual properties of interpretation or ob·ect ob·ect u ement

Table 1 sets out the three different kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant (sign elements) of semeiotics. I will not explicate them here, instead I will simply note how each sign element is characteristic of a particular category of Being; for example, a Legisign is a general type that is a sign (a law), an Index is a genuine sign-object relation (smoke as a sign of its object,fire), and a Rheme is a general interpretation since it focuses on the Firstness

(qualities) of an object. In Chapter Three I explain each of these nine sign elements by examining specifically their appearance in Michael Snow's film Wavelength (1967).

Peirce's sign has three aspects, and in a given semeiotic context a sign is a particular combination of the sign elements shown above: a sign is composed of a Representamen,

Object and Interpretant. When referring to the sign from the perspective of its combination of the sign elements in a semeiotic context, I will be more precise and call the sign a completed sign. The fact that there are nine sign elements suggests a certain amount of

• I have borrowed this table of Peirce's sign elements from Deledalle (19) and C.W. Spinks (97). Peirce does not actually use the name "Tri-Square"; it is from Spinks (96). Ir.trndw:tinr. xv

variation potential to the completed sign. Pei.tee's categories, however, are ordinal and hierarchical, and this means that the combination of elements involved in every sign is ordered by a certain leading principle derived from Pei.tee's phenomenology. 1bis is what

James Liszka calls the "qualification rule," which states that a First cannot be combined with a Second or a 1bird, and similarly, that a Second cannot be combined with a Third

(45). The result is that Pei.tee's sign elements combine to form only ten classes of completed

Table 2

Ten Classes of Completed Signs of Semeiotics (Deledalle 19)

R 0 I I Rl 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign II R2 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Sinsign III R2 02 12 Rhematic Indexical Sinsign IV R2 02 12 Dicent Indexical Sinsign V R3 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Legisign VI R3 02 11 Rhematic Indexical Legisign VII R3 02 12 Dicent Indexical Legisign VIII R3 03 11 Rhematic Symbolic Legisign IX R3 03 12 Dicent Symbolic Legisign X R3 03 13 Ar~ent Symbolic Lel?isign

* Note: All expressions such as Rt, 02, 13 should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen which is a First, an Object which is a Second, and an Interpretant which is a Third (8.353).

I will not explain these completed signs here, but merely offer examples: a Rhematic Iconic

Qualisign is a fieling of red; an example of a Dicent Indexical Sinsign is a telephone ring, and an

example of an Argument Symbolic Legisign is a .ryllogism (Parmentier 18). I analyze each of

the completed signs of table 2 in Chapter Three by considering their appearance in a

sequence from John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969). I began by posing a question about the appeal of semeiotics for Deleuze, and I suggested that this appeal has something to do with a similarity between Peirce's thesis of evolution and his concept of the sign. Having outlined Peirce's theory of the sign, I address the idea that Peirce's ontology and semeiotics are homologous. If, as Deledalle suggests, an organism's adaptation to its environment is homologous to a subject's interpretation of a sign, then semeiotic interpretation is a novel process. In the same way that evolution does not proceed according to the realization of a transcendent causality, it can be said that the subject of semeiotics does not attribute transcendent ideas to the sign.

I explain how this is the case because of the implications associated with Peirce's claim that semeiotics is grounded in the principle of the continuity of matter and mind in the universe.

Since matter and mind are continuous, the categories are not attributed to a universe by a mind that is independent of the universe. This means that the phenomenological categories of Being and the subsequent classes of sign exist rightfully in-themselves.

Implied, therefore, by the continuity of matter and minds is that the subject does not attribute anything transcendent to the sign (there is nothing transcendent to the sign and subject that could possibly be attributed to the semeiotic process). I sum up by stating that the categories of Being and subsequent classes of sign in semeiotics are immanent to the umverse.

This brings me to identifying some possible points of contact between Deleuze's semiotics and Peirce's semeiotics. I argue that the immanence of Peirce's categories and the immanence of his classes of sign could afford Deleuze a way of conceiving of a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema. In other words I suggest that Peirce's signs, since they are immanent to the universe, suggest a range of ways the signaletic material of the image can be composed and combined independently of transcendent structures. i ~. i ; xvu

Having suggested why Peirce's philosophical theory of the sign might appeal to

Deleuze, I eventually test my hypotheses by looking specifically at the Peircian semiotic

Deleuze develops in the cinema books. The focus of Chapter Four is on how Deleuze uses Peirce to posit a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema. We will see that

Deleuze develops the very points of contact between his concept of the sign and Peirce's that I identified above.

He begins by explaining how Peirce's categories are immanent to the universe. He is careful about being absolutely clear on this point because he wants to avoid any potential confusion about the nature of Peirce's categories (for this would impact on his development of semeiotics into his own theory of expression in the cinema). He explains the immanence of the categories by detouring his reading of semeiotics through Bergson's ontological thesis on subjectivity. Deleuze notes a dimension of existence more abstract than Peirce's categories of Being. This is the primeval soup of luminous matter, or what

Deleuze (from Bergson) calls the plane of "images" in infinite variation. Deleuze explains how subjectivity is deduced from the primeval soup when a "perception-image" breaks apart the infinite mass of images and discerns actions ("action-images") and affections

("affection-images'') in the universe. Then Deleuze identifies Firstiless with the affection­ image, Secondness with the action-image, and Thirdness with the whole process of subjectivity itself, which Deleuze calls a "relation-image." Based on the deduction of subjectivity from the fabric of the universe and Deleuze's equation of Peirce's categories with the key moments of subjectivity, he convincingly shows how the categories are immanent to the universe.

Deleuze, however, is developing a concept of the cinematic sign in the cinema books, so what has the immanence of the categories got to do with the cinema? Deleuze returns to his reading of Bergson, and this time, based on his analysis of Bergson's theses on movement, Deleuze equates the cinematic image and Bergson's ontological image as matter in movement. With this equation, the deduction of the categories in the universe is also the deduction of the categories in the cinema. The categories are, therefore, immanent to the cinema. Now Deleuze is all set to develop his Peircian concept of the cinematic sign.

Deleuze notes three semeiotic categories in the cinema, and I call these the image­ types of the cinema: Firstness: the affection-image; Secondness: the action-image; and

Thirdness: the relation-image. However, when it comes to describing the sign he begins by discussing only two aspects of the sign (above, I noted how there are three aspects of the sign in semeiotics: the Representamen, Object and Interpretant). He calls these the sign's polarities of Genesis and Composition, and I argue that they are quite similar to Peirce's

Representamen and Object and are used by Deleuze to describe the sign in-itself and the nature of the sign's embodiment in a specific context. Deleuze does eventually develop a third aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's lnterpretant, but in terms of his focus on

Genesis and Composition, Deleuze's concern in the bulk of the cinema books is simply with the sign's themselves, as embodied forms (independent of their interpretation).

Important also is my contention that the Spinozistic context of Genesis and

Composition makes clear Deleuze's understanding of the immanence of Peirce's signs.

Genesis advances a notion of the sign in-itself (Representamen), but the Spinozistic context of this term reveals Deleuze's understanding of how each kind of sign is like an essence of semeiotics and is immanent to the universe. Composition advances a notion of how the sign exists or is embodied (Object), but also, this term reveals Deleuze's understanding of

Peirce's sign as a naturally occurring composite whole that exists in the same way a body for Spinoza expresses an essence of substance. For Spinoza, a body exists because its parts express an essence of substance (God), not because a transcendent God breathes life into its parts. For Deleuze, then, Peirce's signs are thought to have a rightful existence because,

as Compositions of reality, they are expressions of a category of Being characteristic of a

Genesis.

In the cinema, therefore, Deleuze uses Genesis to describe a kind of sign, and

Composition to describe the sense in which this kind of sign is immanent because it is

expressed in a Composite whole of cinematic elements. Moreover, in so far as Deleuze's

semiotics has its basis in a Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness of the cinema (the three

image-types of the cinema: affection-image, action-image and relation-image), we will see

that Deleuze develops three principal kinds of Genesis and three principal kinds of

Composition. Since Deleuze has yet to describe an aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's

Interpretant, these different kinds of Geneses and Composition constitute what I call the preliminary sign elements of his semiotics. These are represented in the following version of

Peirce's Tri-Square:

Table 3

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Schematic?

Type of Image

1: affection-image 2: action-image 3: relation-image Genesis Genesis Genesis Polarity Composition Composition Composition

In the remainder of Chapter Four I start to explain, in general terms, how Deleuze

defines the preliminary sign elements of his semiotics, and how they are similar to the sign

elements of the Representamen and Object in semeiotics. But, before Deleuze explicates

b I am aware that this table is not actually a tri-square since it represents three categories of Being and only 111/o aspects of the sign. In light of my thesis regarding ~e similarity of Del~~e's se~otics and Peirce's , semeiotics , I will nevertheless maintain the term Tn-Square when descnbtng the stgn elements ofDeleuze s semiotics. the preliminary sign elements, he returns to a discussion of the perception-image. 1bis

seems like an about-face, for the perception-image up until now has simply been described

as the interval from which the other image-types are deduced-in other words, the

perception-image seems to be without an identity of its own. Deleuze's return to the

perception-image is an ambiguity which is further compounded when he discusses a range

of different kinds of Genesis and Composition particular to the perception-image. I

resolve this ambiguity by clarifying how the image-types of the cinema are farms of a perception-image, and when Deleuze discusses different Geneses and Compositions of the

perception-image (using such as Jean Gremillon's Maldone (1928); Jean Epstein's La

belle Nivemaise (1928);Jean Vigo's L' Atalante (1934); and Dziga Vertov's Man With a

Movie Camera (1929)), he is in fact discussing a Firstness, Secondness and lbirdness of

these two polarities of the sign. I argue that Deleuze is using the perception-image to

develop the preliminary sign elements of his semiotics on a small scale, thereby introducing

the reader to the arguments he will develop in full in the remainder of the cinema books.

Furthermore, I suggest a sense in which the combination of these preliminary sign

elements (in the manner of the combination of sign elements in semeiotics) will eventually

lead Deleuze to positing a range of immanent signs of the cinema.

In Chapter Five I examine specifically Deleuze's analysis of the affection-image,

action-image and relation-image and the Genesis and Composition particular to each. The

preliminary sign elements are noted below: ir.tn ,d1w1inr. XX1

Table 4

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics

1 2 3 affection-ima e action-im e relation-im e Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/Index Mark/Demark

My explication will show that these sign elements are quite faithful to the sign elements of

the Representamen and Object in semeiotics. There is a difference, however, which lies in

Deleuze's identification of two ways in which the signs of Secondness and Thirdness in the

cinema are embodied-he claims two signs of Composition for both the action-image and

relation-image. Deleuze also claims that a great potential of the cinema lies with its ability

to readily create Qualisigns. According to Peirce, Qualisigns only occur in fleeting moments of lost-consciousness. Using films like Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of

Arc (1928), however, Deleuze examines cinema's ability to harness the potential of what might otherwise go unnoticed in everyday experience.

I mentioned earlier that Deleuze's initial concern in developing a semiotic theory lies with the way the signs of the cinema are embodied-independently of their interpretation. In Chapter Five I will be more specific about this point and say that in

Deleuze's semiotics the combination of the two aspects (Genesis and Composition) amounts to a notion of what I described earlier as the completed sign in Peirce's semeiotics.

In so far as Deleuze's discussion of the sign has not yet identified a third aspect equivalent

to Peirce's Interpretant, I will call the combination of Genesis and Composition an embodied

sign. An embodied sign, then, is a certain essence of Being (Genesis), expressed in a certain composite

whole of cinematic elements in the frame (Composition), independently of its interpretation.

Furthermore, the structure of Deleuze's preliminary sign elements and the fact that this

structure is taken from semeiotics suggests a range of embodied signs potential to Deleuze's semiotics based on the hierarchical combination of the different Geneses and

Composition noted in table 4. These are represented below:

Table 5

Six Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics

G C I Gt Cl Icon Qualisign II G2 Cl Icon Imprint III G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint IV G3 Cl Icon Symbol V G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol VI G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: The sign elements of the affection-image (in their correspondence with Peirce's categories of Being) are represented as 1, the sign elements of the action-image are represented as 2, and the sign elements of the relation-image are represented as 3. All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis of the affection-image that is expressed in a Composition of the action-image.

Deleuze is most explicit about the ~mbodied signs characteristic of a particular image-type, and using Deleuze's examples and some of my own, I will explain how each of the embodied signs in table 5 underlies Deleuze's discussion of the sign elements of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image. According to my thesis that Deleuze uses semeiotics to conceive of a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema, each of the embodied signs points towards the various ways the signaletic material of the cinema is expressed. For example, an Icon Imprint is an event that is a sign (conceived in the relation between a situation and an action), and it is expressed in an iconic Composition of cinematic elements. Deleuze suggests one such case of the Icon Imprint with Joan of Arc's face in Robert Bresson's Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), since the situation of the trial is expressed in the quality ofJoan's facial expression. lntn,dur:ti,,r; xxiii

Finally, Chapter Five isolates an exciting question in Deleuze's cinema books, the answer to which expands the semiotic theory of expression afforded him by the Peircian structure of the categories. I explain how Deleuze goes beyond Peirce and expands the structure of semeiotics to include a "degenerate" image-type between the affection-image and the action-image called the impulse-image, and another between the action-image and the relation-image called the reflection-image. This also suggests two more kinds of Genesis and

Composition potential to Deleuze's sign. I will explain how Deleuze uses films like Luis

Bufiuel's The Exterminating Angel (1972) to describe the Genesis and Composition of a sign that is midway between existence in-itself (affection-image) and actual existence

(action-image). He also uses films like Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1973) and

Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard (1964) to describe the Genesis and Composition of a sign that is midway between actual existence (Secondness) and logical existence (relation-image).

In reference to this degeneracy, I will call the affection-image, action-image and relation­ image th~ principal image-types of Deleuze's semiotics, and the impulse-image and reflection-image the degenerate image-types of Deleuze's semiotics. The structure of

Deleuze's semiotics is now expanded to include the following:

Table 6

A Tri-Square of Ten Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Six Principal Sign Elements

(bold type) and Four Degenerate Sign Elements)

1 I 2 I 3 (affection) (impulse) (action) (reflection) (relation) Genesis Qualisign Symptom Imprint Discursive Symbol

Composition Icon Fetish Synsign/ Figure Mark/ Index Demark I r, tn ,d1JC1 inn xxiv

Moreover, these degenerate elements extend the list of embodied signs potential to

Deleuze's semiotics, which I also examine in Chapter Five:

Table 7

Fifteen Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics (Six Principal Embodied Signs (bold type)

and Nine Degenerate Embodied Signs)

G C I Gl Cl Icon Qualisign II Gla Cl Icon Symptom III Gla Cla Fetish Symptom IV G2 Cl Icon Imprint V G2 Cla Fetish Imprint VI G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint VII G2a Cl Icon Discursive VIII G2a Cla Fetish Discursive IX G2a C2 Synsign/Index Discursive X G2a C2a Figure Discursive XI G3 Cl Icon Symbol XII G3 Cla Fetish Symbol XIII G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol XIV G3 C2a Figure Symbol xv G3 C3 Mark/Demark Svmbol

* Note: The sign elements of the affection-image (in accordance with Peirce's categories of Being) are represented as 1, the sign elements of the action-image are represented as 2, and the sign elements of the relation-image are represented as 3. For the sake of this table, the sign elements of the impulse-image are represented as la, and the sign elements of the reflection-image are represented as 2a. All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis of the affection-image that is expressed in a Composition of the action-image.

In Chapter Six, I continue my argument about Deleuze's expansion of semeiotics.

So far, it has been my contention that Deleuze examines three principal kinds of Genesis

and Composition characteristic of the affection-image, action-image, relation-image; and

also, that he examines two degenerate kinds of Genesis and Composition characteristic of

the impulse-image and relation-image. In the second volume of the cinema books Deleuze

discusses signs of non-chronological time (real Time) in the cinema, which he calls time- tmages. In Chapter Six I examine how Deleuze is addressing another principal category of the cinema, a Zeroness, or what Deleuze identifies as the absolute category of the optical­ image of the cinema. My argument is that Deleuze continues the semiotic structure of sign elements laid out so far and adds a Genesis and Composition of the optical-image to table

6 above.

Table 8

A Tri-Square of Twelve Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Eight Principal Sign

Elements (bold type) and Four Degenerate Sign Elements)

0 1 I 2 I 3 (optical) ( affection) (impulse) (action) (reflection) (relation) Genesis Hyalosign Qualisign Symptom Imprint Discursive Symbol

Composition Chronosign Icon Fetish Synsign/ Figure Mark/ Index Demark

The Genesis of the optical-image is a scrap of real Time that is a sign Deleuze calls a

Hyalosign, and the Composition is an indiscernible relation of cinematic elements Deleuze calls a Chronosign. When cinematic elements are "indiscernible," they are distinct but their difference is unattributable.10 For Deleuze, what is constituted is a perpetual relinkage of elements, a flourishing that is non-chronological time (Iime 273). Taking these two aspects of the sign together gives us the embodied sign of the optical-image, a Chronosign

Hyalosign, which is a scrap of real Time expressed in an indiscernible Composition of tmages.

Based on his analysis of films like Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year at Marienbad

(1961 ), Deleuze gives several examples of time-images in his second volume on the cinema

(he calls these S heels, Peaks, Genesigns and Lectosigns). I fill in the blanks of Deleuze's

10 My understanding of indiscernibility is from Deleuze ~ 69-70). semiotics and clarify how these time-images are examples of the Chronosign Hyalosign from the above structure of signs. Moreover, based on my own analysis of films like Wong

Kar Wei's In the Mood for Love (2001) and Carine Adler's Under the Skin (1998), I specify how Chronosign Hyalosigns are, in fact, indiscernible Qualisigns (Chronosign Qualisigns), indiscernible Symptoms (Chronosign Symptoms), indiscernible Imprints (Chronosign

Imprints), indiscernible Discursives (Chronosign Discursives) and indiscernible Symbols

(Chronosign Symbols). I show, in consequence, how Deleuze's thesis on the expression of non-chronological time is an extension of the structure of sign elements from his first volume on the cinema since his time-images (Chronosign Hyalosigns) are produced from the combination of the sign elements of the optical-image with the sign elements of the other image-types. What I arrive at in Chapter Six is the following extended list of embodied signs. Tntn,du~ti,,n xxvii

Table 9

Twenty Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semioticsc

G C I Gl co Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl Icon Qualisign III Gla co Chronosign Symptom IV Gla Cl Icon Symptom V Gla Cla Fetish Symptom VI G2 co Chronosign Imprint VII G2 Cl Icon Imprint VIII G2 Cla Fetish Imprint IX G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint X G2a co Chronosign Discursive XI G2a Cl Icon Discursive XII G2a Cla Fetish Discursive XIII G2a C2 Synsign/Index Discursive XIV G2a C2a Figure Discursive xv G3 co Chronosign Symbol XVI G3 Cl Icon Symbol XVII G3 Cla Fetish Symbol XVIII G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol XVIV G3 C2a Figure Symbol XX G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

I will not explain these new embodied signs here, but suffice to say that a Chronosign

Imprint, for example, is an event that is a sign expressed in the indiscernible relation of a situation and action.

Finally, in Chapter Seven I bring Deleuze's semiotics to a conclusion. I argue that, based on Deleuze's analysis of what he calls classical and modem cinema, he is rounding up his semiotics by elucidating another aspect of the sign alongside the polarities of

Genesis and Composition. This is the element of thought with its associated problem of interpretation. Deleuze calls this aspect of the sign the Noosign of his semiotics. I argue

c The reader will note that in respect of my claim that a Chronosign Hyalosign is produced when a Genesis from the image-types of the cinema is expressed in an indiscernible Composition (Chronosign), I have not listed the Chronosign Hyalosign per se, but its five variations (in italiu). I nt rndur:ti,,r. XXV111

that this third aspect of the sign functions like Peirce's Interpretant and completes the semiotic structure from which all of Deleuze's signs are a product.

My concern in this chapter is with establishing the kinds of interpretation associated with Deleuze's image-types. In an attempt to avoid over-complicating things, I focus only on revealing those Noosigns characteristic of the principal image-types: the optical-image, affection-image, action-image and relation-image. 1bis is because, according to the logic of my discussion so far, these are the basic Noosigns of Deleuze's semiotics, making the Noosigns of the degenerate image-types (impulse-image and reflection-image) versions of these basic kinds. Most important for my discussion at this stage is the establishment of these basic kinds. Like the range of Interpretants in semeiotics, I will show how there is a continuum of Noosigns in the cinema, from the most absolute kind of thought associated with the optical-image, to the logical thought associated with the relation-image. With the third aspect of Deleuze's sign, I note the completed structure of

Deleuze's semiotics:

Table 10

The Principal Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics

0 1 2 3 affection-ima e action-im e relation-ima e Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/Index Mark/Demark Noosign Term Pro osition Whole

Taking the combination of these elements into account, we will see that the principal

embodied signs listed so far (table 5) can in fact have different Noosigns, _thus generating a

range of completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics. The definition of the completed sign I will

be working with is the following: a completed sign is a certain essence of Being (Genesis), Jr.tr,;d11r:1ir,r, XXJX

expressed in a certain composite whole of cinematic elements in the .frame (Composition), that is inte,preted in a certain Wf!Y (Noosign). Each of the completed signs is afforded by the combination of sign elements specific to the qualification rule of Peirce's hierarchical categories of Being.

Table 11

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semioticsd

G C N I Gl co NO Caesura Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl NO Caesura Icon Qualisign III Gl Cl Nl Term Icon Qualisign IV G2 co NO Caesura Chronosign Imprint V G2 Cl NO Caesura Icon Imprint VI G2 Cl Nl Term Icon Imprint VII G2 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/lndex Imprint VIII G2 C2 Nl Term Synsign/Index Imprint IX G2 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint X G3 co NO Caesura Chronosign Symbol XI G3 Cl NO Caesura Icon Symbol XII G3 Cl Nl Term Icon Symbol XIII G3 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/lndex Symbol XIV G3 C2 Nl Term Synsign/lndex Symbol xv G3 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol XVI G3 C3 NO Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol XVII G3 C3 Nl Term Mark/Demark Symbol XVIII G3 C3 N2 Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol XVIV G3 C3 N3 Whole Mark/Demark Symbol

Deleuze isn't explicit about these completed signs, but I argue that they underlie his semiotic theory in the cinema books. I use the above table to unify all of Deleuze's signs into a single semiotic structure. I sustain my argument about Deleuze's reading of immanence in semeiotics and analyze these completed signs as nineteen WC!JS the signaletic material of the cinema is expressed. And, using some of Deleuze's examples from the cinema books, and some of my own (from films such as Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums

d Table 11 represents the principle embodied signs together with their characteristic Noosigns. Regarding the embodied signs, I state in Chapter Six that a Chronosign Hyalosign is, in fact, a Chronosign Qualisign, a Chronosign Imprint, and a Chronosign Symbol. For this reason I did not list the Chronosign Hyalosign per se as an embodied sign of Deleuze's semiotics. In table 11 I do not list the Caesura Chronosign Hyalosign as a (2001),John Cassavetes' Gloria (1980) and Claire Denis' Beau Travail (1999)), I give examples of these completed signs and make explicit their differences; for instance, I argue that a N oosign is of different degrees of purity depending on the Composition to which it is attached.

Finally, in my Conclusion I recap my argument about how semeiotics affords

Deleuze a way of conceiving of the signaletic material-sign relationship in the manner I outlined at the very beginning of this project. But I also emphasize how, in attempting to uncover the Peircian structure of immanence underlying Deleuze's semiotic thesis in the cinema books, I hope to put forward a theory of the sign that stands alone and is applicable to the whole of the cinema.

***

I consider the task I have set myself in this project important for the following reasons, the first of which relates to the significance of my focus on the principle of

Deleuze's concept of the sign established at the very outset of this Introduction. I have read many valuable critiques of Deleuze's sign, but none that relates expression to a semiotic conception of matter, or that uses Deleuze's essay on structuralism to provide a detailed explication of exactly how the sign functions as an expression of matter.11

completed sign for the same reason. Instead, I list its three principal variations: the Caesura Chronosign Qualisign, the Caesura Chronosign Imprint, and the Caesura Chronosign Symbol. 11 There is some excellent work on the relation between Deleuze's conception of the sign and his idea of Hjelmslevian matter. See for example: Dorothea Olkowski, "Semiotics and Gilles Deleuze"; and Therese Grisham "Linguistics as Indiscipline: Deleuze and Guattari's Pragmatics." Gary Genosko describes the matter- in terms of Guattari's idea of the "abstract machine" (Guattari L' i nconscient machinique: 13 qtd. in Genosko Felix Guattari: 164). Deleuze and Guattari develop this concept together in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Genosko's discussion of how the abstract machine works suggests a concept similar to the immanent process of unfolding and involvement that I described as specific to expression. The abstract machine is not a transcendent force acting on matter, but the productive force according to which the potentiality of matter is crystallized (Felix Guattari 163-164; for an earlier version of Genosko's thesis see his essay "Guattari's Schizoanalytic Semiotics"). Bruno Bosteels describes the relationship between matter and its production (in signs) as a "diagrammatic conjunction" (163). Again, there are no transcendent structures-Bosteels calls these "ready-made representations" (163)--determining introdur:t;qr, XXX1

Secondly, in the plethora of secondary material on the cinema books there is not much detailed explication of Deleuze's critique of Metz and Saussure. Certainly, this critique has been noted, but in each case it is too quickly dismissed. For the most part, these critiques can be boiled down to a single point: that Deleuze is critical of semiology simply because semiology presents a reductionist theory of meaning according to which signs are modelled on structures, as if that is all that needs to be said. Now, I'm not saying that this is wrong, or that every approach to the cinema books needs to go further in accounting for the Deleuze-Metz relationship. I am endeavouring to make clear something else: that other exegeses of Deleuze's sign in the cinema books do not take the direction I do in this project. I account for Deleuze's critique of Metz based on what both a Deleuzian and Metzian approach to the sign presuppose about a conception of semiotic matter. I follow, in detail, the steps of Deleuze's critique, and furthermore, I ask why Metz develops a thesis of the sign that, in Deleuze's opinion, is riddled with so many difficulties.12

this conjunction. For a more general idea of matter in Deleuze's conception of the sign, see Massumi's ,a User! Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia as well as Parables of the Virtual: Movement Affect Sensation. Laleen Jayamanne in Towards Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis discusses an idea of matter in relation to the cinematic image. She identifies how the meaningful potential of the image's matter is overlooked when a (semiotic) analysis focuses on narrative codes: "One risks becoming blind to the image in the drive to narrativize what is seen rather than letting the image guide and sensitize one to its own movements, rhythms and durations" (206). Gregory Flaxman, in his excellent Introduction to The Brain is the : Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, notes cinematic matter as specifically Hjelmslevian (24). Moreover, he describes how signs "arise immanently" from this matter, and he notes a sense in which this semiotic process is Peircian. The constraints ofFlaxman's Introduction, however, do not permit him to expand much further on this aspect of the cinema books. For the idea of matter as structured in-itself, see Tim Clark, "Deleuze and Structuralism." I pursue the matter-sign relationship in a slightly different direction from these texts by claiming the sign as an expression of matter, and by using Deleuze's essay on structuralism to focus explicitly on 1) the nature of matter; and 2) the process involved in the concept of expression. 12 James Morrison in his essay "Deleuze and Film Semiotics" goes into considerable detail regarding the relationship between Deleuze and Metz in the cinema books, but he does not pursue the idea I advance; namely, that Deleuze and Metz have differing conceptions of the signaletic material of the image. For other texts that mention Deleuze's critique of Metz and identify semiology as a ndllctionist theory of the sign but do not develop this critique in any more detail, see: Ackbar Abbas' review of the cinema books; Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, "The Cinema, Reader of Gilles Deleuze"; Raymond Bellour, "Cinema and ... "; D. N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze's Time-Machine;John Marks, Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity; Andre Pierre Colombat, "Deleuze and Signs"; Claire Colebrook, Deleuze: Ronald B~gue, "Word, l~a_ge, and Sound: The Non-Representational Semiotics of Gilles Deleuze; Flaxman's lntroducuon to The Bra1n 1s the ~ Laura U. Marks, "Signs of the Time: Deleuze, Peirce and the Documentary Image"; and Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Cinema. In trndur:1inr. xxxu

Thirdly, in explicating a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema developed by

Deleuze in the face of Saussurean linguistics, I specify its origins in Peirce's semeiotics, and more importantly, I examine the extent to which Deleuze sustains his reference to Peirce throughout the entirety of the cinema books. My argument here is significant for the following two reasons: first, because there is a paucity of secondary texts concerned with an examination of and engagement with Deleuze's development of semeiotics in the cinema;13

13 Toma_selli in A~pr?p~a~g lma~s cites Deleuze's cinema bo_oks as an e~ample of an attempt to develop a conception of Peirce s sign ln the Clnema, but he does not provide any detail as to ho111 Deleuze uses Peirce. Yau Ka-Fai in "3rdness: Filming, Changing, Thinking Hong Kong" identifies the importance of Peirce's categories of Being in Deleuze's cinema books, but rather than analyzing Deleuze's use of semeiotics in relation to his semiotic thesis, examines a more general idea ofThirdness as a fresh, spontaneous and creative way of thinking, and uses this concept ofThirdness as his basis for reconfiguring Hong Kong cinema. Marks in "Signs of the Time" explains Deleuze's broad reference to Peirce's categories ofFirstness, Secondness and Thirdness and his examination of a quali!J that is a sign (affection-image), an event that is a sign (action-image), and a logical relation that is a sign (relation-image) respectively, but she chooses not to engage with the specifics of how Deleuze transforms semeiotics into his own (exhaustive) theory of the cinematic sign. Jayamanne in Towards Cinema and Its Double uses Deleuze's development of Peirce's categories as a tool for analyzing different sequences of narrative cinema. Like Marks, she thinks about how cinematic techniques can focus our attention on certain kinds of image. In Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel (1989), for example,Jayamanne examines: the effect of the close-up in emphasizing pure qualities or affection-images (209); the effect of slow-motion and sound in emphasizing impulse-images (212), and the effect of action in emphasizing action­ images. And, she examines the short-circuiting of action and the production of time-images in Charlie Chaplin's The Circus (1925) (181-205) and Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman 23 Q:uai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1976) (159-160). While the secondary texts above use Deleuze's semiotics to understand cinema, I focus more on how cinema can help us to understand Deleuze. My primary aim is unpacking what Deleuze's signs are, how they are formed, how they work, and how they are part of a JY.rfem of signs: a structure of immanence. Late in my research (Nov 2003) I discovered an unpublished dissertation by Alberto Hernandez­ Lemus, and this is the most in-depth analysis of Deleuze's development of semeiotics as an alternative to semiology in the cinema I have come across. Hernandez-Lemus uses (what Deleuze defines as) the cinematic movement of "Italian Neorealism" to analyze Deleuze's semiotics. Hernandez-Lemus makes the argument that, although preferable to Saussurean linguistics, Deleuze nevertheless identifies some problems with the principles of Peirce's sign. In this respect Hernandez-Lemus claims that Deleuze solves these problems by reading semeiotics through Bergson's cosmology. In terms of this Deleuze-Bergson-Peirce encounter, Hernandez-Lemus claims that the signs of The Movement-Image are only Peircian in the most general and fleeting sense. Further to this, Hernandez-Lemus claims that Deleuze eventually abandons semeiotics altogether in The Time-Image. choosing to focus entirely on a model of the sign based on a Bergsonian conception of time. The reason according to Hernandez-Lemus: the insufficiency of semeiotics in accounting for signs that are expressive of what Deleuze calls "real Time" (lyioyement 68). This is an interesting point in Hernandez-Lemus' argument, for he goes into a considerable amount of detail showing how, in his opinion, Peirce's philosophy does account for signs of real Time. In this respect, Hernandez­ Lemus claims an interpretation of Peirce that goes against the grain of the reading he identifies in the cinema books. Most generally, my aim is the same as the one outlined in Hernandez-Lemus' disse~ati~n: the analysis ofDeleuze's sign in the cinema books. My method and outcomes, however, are qwte different. I use the concept of signaletic material as the platform from which to debate the rela~ons~p be~een D~e~e, Metz, and Peirce. Like Hernandez-Lemus, I too examine some problems Deleuze identifies with semeiotics, but 1) I suggest the significance of Spinoza's philosophy as w~ll as ~er~on's in Dele~e's reading of~eir~e, and 2) I suggest that the so-called problem Deleuze identifies 1n Peirce is o~y a potential probl~. This said, Deleuze refers to Bergson and Spinoza in an attempt to pre"."ent the potential probl~ becommg actual. Related to the second point above is my argument that the signs Deleuze ~ev~ops _in The ~~~t-Image are Peircian in essence, making them homologous to the structure of the sign identified earlier 1n this Introdur:ti<.m xxxiii

and second, because the primary explications of Deleuze's cinema semiotics hold that

Deleuze abandons his reference to Peirce at about the time he develops the time-image in the second volume of his study.14 In the face of the above opinions, I argue that all of

Deleuze's signs are reducible to a single semiotic structure. I call this a Peircian slrllcture of immanence, and I propose that it is significant because it shows how all of Deleuze's signs are related, and how each of Deleuze's cinematic examples (throughout what he calls the classical and modern periods of cinema history), are different combinations of the same principal sign elements.

My argument that Deleuze's semiotics is Peircian as a whole relates to the final point

I want to make about the importance of the present study. lbis study is a contribution to the relatively unchartered problem of the application of Peirce's semeiotics to the moving image. There have been inroads into this problem, but these have only gone as far as to

Introduction with Peirce's Tri-Square. While Deleuze's terminology may be slightly different, we will see a sense in which his signs are Peircian through and through. Finally, I concur with Hernandez-Lemus' argument that semeiotics can account for time-images. My approach to this problem is different from Hernandez-Lemus' in that I make an extended comparison between the notion of real Time and its relation to Deleuze's conception of an absolute dimension of Being, and a pure zero degree of Peirce's phenomenology. Based on my argument that Deleuze's sign sustains a homology to Peirce's structure of the sign, I claim, moreover, that Deleuze's discussion of the time-image is no different: it extends the Peircian structure of the sign developed throughout the cinema books, revealing how Deleuze's analysis of real Time is an analysis of another (absolute) category of Being in the cinema. This said, I argue not only that there is the potential for semeiotics to tackle the problem of real Time, but that Deleuze is aware of this potential, and-with the help of some key notions from Bergson and Spinoza-brings this potential to fruition with the structure of the sign he develops in the cinema books. 14 On the idea that Deleuze abandons Peirce, see Rodowick's examination of the Deleuze-Peirce relation. See also Bogue in Deleuze on Cinema. He understands Peirce's three modes of Being as tools strictly for developing and extending Bergson's ontological thesis, thus stating that Deleuze's affection-image, action­ image and relation-image are fundamentally Bergsonian (67). And, he claims that Deleuze abandons Peirce completely in his second volume on the cinema with his concept of the time-image. Moreover, Bogue does not consider any relationship between Deleuze's concepts of Genesis, Composition and Noosign and Peirce's Representamen, Object and Interpretant. He understands Genesis and Composition as two different kinds of sign characteristic of each image of the cinema (80-81), he claims that in Deleuze's thesis on modem cinema, Genesis and Composition are no longer applicable and are abandoned as concepts, and he specifically identifies the Noosign with modem cinema when discussing time-images in relation to the kinds of thought they generate in a subject. Marks in "Signs of the Time," however, hints at the idea that the "mental-image or relation-image" (or signs ofThirdness in Deleuze's reading of Peirce) can function like a time-image, thus suggesting that Deleuze's use of semeiotics is maintained throughout Deleuze's thesis (198- 199). I am more specific about Deleuze's continued use of semeiotics throughout both cinema books. I argue that Deleuze's signs can be united according to a single semiotic structure that is essentially Peircian. I show that the kinds of images in the cinema (affection-images, action-images, relation-images and optical-images or time-images) are Peircian, and that the concept of the sign Deleuze develops in relation to these image~ has three aspects (Genesis, Composition and Noosign) that are equivalent to Peirce's three aspects of the stgn (Representamen, Object and Interpretant). Jntrodw:t.ion xxxiv

consider the moving image in relation to the typology Peirce builds around the rrpresentati11t

condition of the sign-in other words, the sign-object relation as a First (Icon), Second

(Index) or Third (Symbol)-and use this aspect of semeiotics to offer an alternative to

semiological approaches to the image. I have noted how a semiological account of the

cinema holds that the image is most typically considered as a sign dependent on the code.

In semeiotics, this kind of sign is a Symbol. The potential of semeiotics is identified with

the realization that a sign doesn't have to be symbolic in the manner described above, but

can be indexical or iconic also. 15 Based on my explication of Deleuze's semiotics in this

project, however, I develop this potentiality of Peirce's sign in more detail. In terms of

argument about the Deleuze-Peirce encounter staged in the cinema books, I look at all

three aspects of Peirce's signs, and based on the completed signs created through the

combination of these aspects in different semeiotic contexts, I develop a list of interrelated

signs that stand for the whole of the cinema. And most importantly, I insist on the

immanence of these signs to the universe and the cinema, and in this way I use the

Deleuze-Peirce encounter staged in the cinema books to develop a semiotic theory of

expression in the cinema.

ts For the idea that the moving image is iconic, indexical and symbolic, see Peter Wollen's pio_neering study Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, as well as Tomaselli Appropriating Images and Stephen Pnnce •~e Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and ." Nils Lindahl Elliot in "Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries" a~plies Peirce's ~adic model of ~e sign to documentary television, again insisting that an image is iconic, indexical and s~mb,olic. In a_ further ~fference from my study, however, Elliot doesn't account for the immanence of Peirce s cate~ne,~ of Being, an~ co~seq_uen~y states that all of Peirce's signs are human constructs and "anthropomorphi':12e na~e: The ~plication ts that Peirce's signs are the product of a ''humanizing'' of nature and that their meaning ts pre-existent or . transcendent. This reading of Peirce returns us to the very concept of the semiological sign I outlined earlier.

Ch:1pt1'r

Chapter One

Metz's Semiology vs. Deleuze's Semiotics

Introduction

My aim in this dissertation is to engage with Deleuze's semiotics of the image. In this chapter I will develop the governing principles of Deleuze's conception of the sign through an examination of what it is not. Deleuze identifies a branch of semiotic theory based on a specific reading of 's and 's linguistics that he calls semiology. He claims Christian Metz to be the main proponent of semiology in the cinema, and Deleuze is critical of the way Metz reads Saussure and Hjelmslev. In what follows I will unpack the reasons for Deleuze's criticism of Metz, reasons which also reveal Deleuze's own ideas of what a sign is and what a semiotic theory should take into account. We will see that Deleuze's concept of the sign has its basis in a selective reading of aspects of Hjelmslev's linguistics.

In semiology, a sign is said to signify by virtue of its relation to a system of rules and conventions. This process is called systematization.1 The system is the way the sign is made intelligible (Guzzetti 293), and it is constitutive of a ready-made structure that is transcendent to the sign (Buckland 201). In an attempt at making film-critical discourse

1 I have borrowed "systematization" from Alfred Guzzetti (292). Similarly, Samuel Weber describes linguistics as a "systematic theory" ("Saussure" 914). Ch:ipt,:r One 2

scientific, Metz places an emphasis on the system when he claims that the image is

meaningful by virtue of its detennination by narrative structures.

Deleuze tells us that Metz develops a semiology of the cinema from his close

reading of Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics.2 Both thinkers agree that the analysis

of transcendent structures, like the language system in linguistics, is the only way to analyze

the way meaning is created in language. Without these structures, they argue, there is no

meaning. As a result of this emphasis, Deleuze explains that Metz does not focus on the

matter of the sign itself, or what Deleuze calls the signaletic material of the image.

Furthermore, Deleuze is critical of Metz's approach because of the implication that

meaning is always predetermined in a large part by the already established meaning of the

structure.

With his criticism of Metz, Deleuze reveals his own philosophy of the sign. The

sign, he says, does not presuppose transcendent structures for its signification. He puts

forward this thesis in the context of understanding the cinema, arguing that the signaletic

material of the image is not, in-itself, completely meaningless. Signs are not formed when

transcendent structures, like narrative, shape the signaletic material. Instead, Deleuze

argues, signs are formed when the signaletic material itself is composed and combined in

different compositions of images. For Deleuze, the signaletic material is explicated in the

sign, and involved in the sign, and he suggests that one way of thinking about this process is to say that the sign is an expression of the signaletic material. The implication of this

semiotic perspective is that the meaning of the sign is never predetermined, but is based

only on the givens of a particular composition of images.

This chapter proceeds as follows.

2 Deleuze' s argument in The Time-Image. Cha?ter T':"o:. "Rec~pitulatio? of Images an~ Signs," contains references to Metz's attempt to reconcile the cinemattc sign with a vers10~ ofSauss~e s lanriage ~ystem (25). See also Deleuze's reference to Metz's discussion of this very problem as it appears in Metz s Essa1s sur la In Part One I explain Metz's claim that cinema operates according to a version of the language system of Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics. Once Metz's concept of cinematic language is established, I return for a closer look at the linguistic context of his work in an attempt to explain his reasoning. I explain this reasoning by assuming the following interpretation of Hjelmslev. For Metz, Hjelmslevian linguistics places primary emphasis on the role played by the language system in the creation of signs and meaning, and this is because (in Metz's opinion), Hjelmslev thinks that transcendent structures are entirely necessary in order to make the acoustical and conceptual matter of a language meaningful. For this reason, Metz determines narrative codes as the transcendent structure of the cinema, and asserts, moreover, that these codes are entirely necessary in order to make the image meaningful.

But as soon as I suggest this reading of Hjelmslev, I pick it apart, and this is how I arrive at positing Deleuze's semiotics. In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia and

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Felix Guattari claim a sense in which Hjelmslev's linguistics stands opposed to Saussurean linguistics and semiology's emphasis on transcendent structure.3 I unpack this reading of Hjelmslev by using Gary Genosko's examination of Guattari's analysis of Hjelmslev in La revolution moleculaire and L 'inconscient machinique. I argue that the sense in which Hjelmslev's linguistics stands opposed to Saussurean linguistics lies with Guattari's suggestion that matter is not amorphous, and therefore, that it does not require a transcendent structure such as the language system for its meaningful articulation. Consequently, my understanding of Guattari stresses a reading of Hjelmslev that puts forward the idea that a

signification au cinema I (Editions Klincksieck, 1968) [Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema) (285 note 1). For Deleuze's reference to Metz and Hjelmslev, see note 9 of Chapter Two (286-287). 3 See for example Anti-Oedipus (242) and A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter Three, "10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)" 39-74. sign is not formed when matter is shaped by a transcendent structure, and therefore, that matter plays a more active role in the creation of signs.

With this alternative reading of Hjelmslevian matter, I contend that Deleuze has the same understanding of Hjelmslev's linguistics in mind when he theorizes the signs of the cinema. Deleuze's conception of Hjelmslevian matter is evident in a footnote of The

Time-Image when he criticizes Metz for basing semiology on what Deleuze describes as an exclusive reading of Hjelmslev. Deleuze's criticism addresses Metz's assumption that transcendent structures are entirely necessary for the formation of cinematic signs. In this respect Deleuze suggests that Metz conceives of the matter of the image (signaletic material) as amorphous and without meaning.

Furthermore, Deleuze's semiotic theory is revealed in the inverse of this critique.

Deleuze accounts for the signaletic material of the image, and based on his reading of

Hjelmslev, claims that transcendent structures are not necessary in the cinema. For

Deleuze, the signaletic material is not amorphous and plays an active role in the creation of signs. In respect of this creative role he identifies the signaletic material-sign relationship as a process of expression.

In Part Two I use the climactic scene from Werner Herzog's The Enigma of

Kaspar Hauser (197 4) to illustrate, in more concrete and practical terms, how the semiotic theses discussed in Part One might be played out. I consider this film in order to suggest what might be involved in Metz's semiology of the cinema and his focus on the analysis of structures; and, to introduce the reader to what might be implied by Deleuze's concept of the sign as an expression of the signaletic material. In the first case, the meaning of the image is reduced to its reflection of narrative codes, and in the second the meaning of the image is reducible only to the material significance of the images themselves. Part One: Deleuze's Semiotics is the Remainder of his Critique of Metz's Semiology

The application of the concept of the sign marked a turning point in the historical development of film analysis. For some, thinking in terms of the sign and signification freed film analysis from the "impressionistic debate" about auteurism and realism that dominated film-critical discourse (Stam x).

Metz was one such proponent of semiotic theory in the cinema and in the 1960s and 70s he developed a scientific approach to the cinematic sign. In so doing Metz wanted to retrieve film theory from what he saw as the "generalized" approach of film analysis dominating the early twentieth century (Andrews 213). Metz decided to consider cinema as a kind of language, and he developed a method of analysis based on the systematization inherent to Saussure's and Hjelmslev's structural linguistics. With the question of language at the forefront, Metz determined cinema as a "textual system" (Stam 50). He considered the image as a sign and understood its function according to its already conceptualized function in the linguistic structure.

For Deleuze, writing in the mid-1980s, this very emphasis on transcendent structure drastically reduces creativity in language. Deleuze himself is aligned with the post-structuralist debates of the late 70s that proclaimed the notion of the transcendent structure in structuralism to be fundamentally limiting to the possibility of thought.4

Deleuze looks at cinema from a philosophical background. As a way of escaping the implications of transcendent structure, Deleuze proposes a matter of the image that is meaningful in its own right. This makes the sign a development of the image's matter-or

4 For a discussion of Deleuze's position in the post-structuralist debates of the 1970s, see Jean-Jacques Thomas, "Post-Structuralism and the New Humanism." what Deleuze calls the image's signaletic material--and semiotics a creative process of emergence (Iime 29).

In his cinema books Deleuze identifies a scientific or systematic approach to the sign with Metz's emphasis on narrative form. Deleuze and Metz are in agreement on the point of the widespread acceptance of narrative as the dominant mode of cinematic expression. In The Time-Image, for example, Deleuze agrees with Metz that the fact of the image lies with its historical constitution as "narrative utterance," by "presenting a story and rejecting its other possible directions" (25). They part company, however, when

Deleuze accuses Metz of converting the fact of narrative form into principle, which, he says, amounts to confusing fact and principle. Narrative codes are principle for Metz because these codes constitute a transcendent structure, equivalent to Saussure's language system.

For Metz, like Saussure before him, it is by virtue of this system that the object of semiology is delimited. But Deleuze is critical of Metz because Metz's emphasis on narrative denies the cinematic sign its matter.

In what follows I will unpack Metz's semiology, reveal Deleuze's critique of this approach to the signs of the cinema, and in turn, arrive at Deleuze's own semiotics of the unage.

First I look specifically at the semiotic thesis Metz outlines in his early work. I summarize Saussurean linguistics and briefly analyze how, in natural language, Saussure explains the production of meaningful articulations according to the way an arbitrary structure of rules and conventions, called the language system, determines a subject's articulations. I emphasize Saussure's opinion that analyzing language in this way makes language itself a closed, manageable structure: like a science. And, I note how this idea of the closed system appeals to Metz. Thus I explicate Metz's attempt to develop a concept of Saussure's language system and systematicize the cinema in the same way. Additionally, I will explain how Metz's project was initially frustrated because, bas~d on the image's analogical relation to reality, Metz claims that the image has no equivalent to the linguistic idea of double articulation, and thus no language system. Then I arrive at Metz's solution.

From Metz's understanding of Hjelmslev's analysis of the dependencies between signs in linguistics, I explain how Metz eventually asserts a cinematic language system based on the finite number of ways images are ordered together in a narrative sequence.

Second, I return to the philosophical background of Metz's semiotic thesis and reveal Deleuze's critique of semiology. Metz draws on the work of both Saussure and

Hjelmslev, and his reading of these two theorists emphasizes the necessity of transcendent structures for the formation of matter in language. Then, using Guattari's critique of

Hjelmslev, I suggest that matter can in fact be interpreted as a material in-itself, and I identify the importance of conceiving of the autonomous existence of matter for a creative conception of language. But most importantly, I return to the cinema and note how

Deleuze accuses Metz of basing his semiotic theory on a misinterpretation of matter in

Hjelmslevian linguistics. Deleuze's critique of Metz is based on a different reading of

Hjelmslev which in tum reveals his own semiotic theory.

Metz: The Image is a Sign Because Narrative Acts as a Transcendent Structure Shaping its

Matter

For Saussure, linguistics is inherently problematic because the object of its analysis

(natural language) is fundamentally heterogeneous. In his Course in General Linguistics,

Saussure writes that natural language is several things at once. It consists of "syllables" produced from oral articulations, which at the same time are "acoustical impressions perceived by the ear" (8). And added to this "complex acoustical-vocal unit'' is the articulation of a thought, an idea. Consequently, Saussure defines language as "a complex

physiological-psychological unit'' (8). But for Saussure, this is still not the complete picture

of what natural language involves. Natural language is speech, which is both individual and

social. Speech, moreover, "implies an established system and an evolution," and the

difference between the system and its history is not easy to pin down. For Saussure,

natural language is "a confused mass of heterogeneous and unrelated things," and this

makes the task of its study (linguistics) rather difficult (9).

Saussure's solution to the problem facing linguistics is to analyze language as a

system made up of two things: an individual act-in other words, the individual articulations of a given language, called parole; and a social fact, or the rules and conventions of natural language according to which an individual articulation is considered meaningful, called the language system Oangue). Each individual act of language takes place in what Saussure calls a "speaking-circuit'' of communication between two or more people (Course 11). In this circuit a sign is formed when a material signal, called a signifier, is related to a mental representation, called a signified The language system triggers the relation of signifier and signified, and Saussure calls this relationship signification.

Furthermore, the "matching" of phonic differences with conceptual differences in the above process is sometimes referred to (by linguists like Andre Martinet) as a double articulation (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis 32). 5 The first articulation consists of the meaningful units of signification (morphemes), and the second articulation consists of the non-meaningful units of sound (phonemes).6

s "The notion of double articulation develops, and gives precision to, Saussure's view of the linguistic system as a kind of 'matching' of phonetic differences with conceptual differences" (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman- Lewis 32). . 6 According to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Martinet "represents the final an~ de~g movement of Sau~surean linguistics" (Heretical Empiricism 202). Warren Buckland also descnbes this_ process as ~ollows: 'Ve~bal language is posited by Martinet to be organized on two levels: the first (the higher) l~v~l 1s analyzable ~to meaningful units (morphemes) which are signs[... ]; and a second, lower level, consisting of non-meaningful units" ("The Structural Linguistic Foundation of Film Semiology" 206). The key place assigned the language system in the speaking-circuit determines speech as a closed process not dissimilar to the notion of energy-conversion (a

technological innovation at the time Saussure was presenting the Course), thus delimiting the linguistic object of study for Saussure, while at the same time placing linguistics on par with physics and chemistry as a modem science.7 Based on the conventions of the language system, the relationship between the signifier and signified results in an arbitrary signification. In Saussure's thesis, "The sign 'cat,"' for example, "in the disposition of its letters or the organization of its sounds, does not resemble or imitate the concept, but has an arbitrary and unmotivated relationship to it'' (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis 8).

Furthermore, Saussure claimed that all utterances in language "are composed from the same small number of signs used recursively in different combinations" (Buckland 201).

Saussure also claims that the sign enters into two fundamental kinds of relationship, defined according to what he calls the sequential or syntagmatic axis of signification, and the associative (or paradigmatic) axis. In the syntagm, a sign acquires its meaning "only because its stands in opposition to everything that precedes or follows it'' (Course 123).

The paradigmatic is what Saussure describes as the "inner storehouse" of terms that may be chosen to combine with other signs (123). All "language-states," he says, are based on

these two kinds of relation (122).

I noted in the introduction to this chapter that Saussure's scientific rigor appealed

to Metz because he was frustrated by what he considered the generalized approach

plaguing film-critical discourse. In response to Saussure's pioneering work, Metz's early writing aimed at a systematization of the cinema-in other words, with "isolating and

abstracting" the transcendent structure specific to film (Buckland 208). To this extent his

7 On this point of Saussure's desire to legitimize linguistics as a modem science, I am r~ferring to B~ckland's citation of Roy Harris who writes: ''By determining speech as a clos~d, ca~sall~ ~etenruned p~ocess ~ every way analogous to energy-conversion processes of physics and chen:ustry, lingwsttcs was provided wtth a (J,:1pt1'.r (me 10

work in Essais sur la signification au cinema I is founded on the problem of whether there is a cinematic language system.8 Metz's project, however, was initially frustrated, and the reasons are two-fold. Metz believes the image is not comprised of "discrete elements," equivalent to the linguistic phoneme (Film Language 115). This was the first nail in the coffin of a cinematic language system. For example Metz writes that "even the most partial and fragmentary 'shot' (what film people call the close-up) still presents a complete segment of reality" (115). The second nail in the coffin of Metz's project stems from his opinion that there is a lack of arbitrariness in the "image discourse" (59). From Saussure,

Metz determines the image as a signifier, and he calls the object of its representation the signified. But in Metz's opinion the "distance" between signifier and signified is "too short" to claim an arbitrary signification (62). Both these points mean that "the image does not derive its meaning in opposition to other images, but from a direct correspondence to profilmic events"-in other words, cinema has no language system and no double articulation (Buckland 209).

Is it possible to apply the rigor of Saussurean linguistics to the problem of the image's signification? This was the kind of question that vexed Metz's early career. Warren

Buckland explains how Metz eventually achieved his desire for systematization by claiming a kind of language system in the cinema based on his reading of Hjelmslevian linguistics:

For Metz, cinematic language is constituted by a small number of image sequences,

or orderings, whose specific articulation is located in the spatio-temporal

relationships between the profilmic events depicted in the image[ ... ]. In other

words, the spatio-temporal relationships between the images constitute cinematic

forged carte d' entrie to the prestigious palace of modem science" (Harris, R. Reading Saussure. London: Duckworth, 1987: 216. qtd. in Buckland: 202)...... s Note: my page references to this text will be from the English translatton: Film Language: A Serruottcs of the Cinema. Ch:1pt1:r (me 11

language because they articulate the profilmic events in terms of a specific cinematic

time and space that confers upon these events a meaning that goes bryond their

analogical relation to the image[... ]. (210)

In terms of Hjelmslev's analysis of the dependencies between signs, Metz focuses on the

"spatio-temporal" relationships of images in a sequence (210). 9 From these relationships he claims a finite range of ways images are ordered together in narrative film. In Essais sur la signification au cinema I, Metz lists eight principle types of image ordering, each one being a specific narrative code, the total system of which he calls the Grand Syntagmatique.10

Implied, for Metz, is a syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimension of the cinematic sign. The syntagmatic is given with the various sequential arrangements made possible by the Grand

Syntagmatique, and the paradigmatic is given with the (vertical) oppositions of these eight syntagmatic types. 11 Moreover, this idea of a system, and its effect in conferring upon the images a meaning that goes beyond their referent, suggests an element of arbitrariness in

Metz's idea of cinematic language.

The end result, based on this idea of arbitrariness, is Metz's identification of cinematic language at the level of the narrative code. Narrative for Metz, therefore,

9 At this point Buckland also cites Hjelmslev who writes that "the important thing is not the division of the object into parts, but the conduct of the analysis so that it conforms to the mutual dependencies between these parts" (Hjelmslev Prolegomena to a Theozy of Language: 22 qtd. in Buckland: 210). 10 Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis provide a useful summary ofMetz's "Grand Syntagmatique" ~ Vocabularies 40-48). For examples from Metz, see ''The Modem Cinema and Narrativity" in Film Language (185-228). 11 The following note appears with the updated version ofMetz's essay ''Le cinema: langue ou langage?" (1964): "It should be remarked that the existence of several types of image-ordering has the effect of creating [... ] a specific paradigmatic category, which is constituted precisely by the total system of the different syntagmas" (Eilm Language 68). More specifically also, since these syntagmatic types are determined at the level of the image's relation, the paradigmatic for Metz really begins with the type of cut or edit, and the spatio-temporal relations between images. Describing a certain "" of the cut, Metz writes:

This is the case with the "fade-dissolve" duality within the framework of the "conjunction of two sequences": a simple commutation, which the users-that is to say, the spectators-perform spontaneously, makes it possible to isolate the corresponding significates: a spatio-temporal break with the establishing of an underlying link (dissolve), and a straightforward spatio-temporal break (fade). (99) constitutes a kind of language system because of its capacity to function as the same kind of transcendent structure as the rules and conventions of natural language.

Deleuze and Metz: Two Different Perspectives on Hjelmslevian Matter

To begin Deleuze's critique of Metz, I need to say some more about the background of Metz's semiology. Above, I established how Metz's idea of the sign is motivated by Saussure's exclusive concern in linguistics with the study of what I have been calling transcendent structures (the language system); and, that it takes as its model

Hjelmslev's analysis of the dependencies between signs. In what follows I want to also

suggest a sense in which Hjelmslev insists on the study of transcendent structures in language, and that Metz's emphasis on the determining role played by narrative in a

semiology of the cinema is not just a response to Saussure's notion of systematization, but

also, what Metz sees as the scientific perspective of Hjelmslevian linguistics.

This is an important point to make because Deleuze criticizes Metz's understanding

of Hjelmslev, and in this criticism reveals his own understanding of Hjelmslev, and most

significantly, his own idea of the sign. I begin in this section by putting forward a

conventional interpretation of the principles of Hjelmslevian linguistics. I analyze the relation

between matter and form in Hjelmslev's linguistic theory and suggest a sense in which

matter is conceived as amorphous, and in tum presupposes form for its meaningful

articulation. Then I suggest an alternative understanding of matter based on Guattari's

reading of Hjelmslevian linguistics. For Guattari, Hjelmslevian linguistics stands opposed

to semiology when matter is considered independently of form. When this is the case

meaning does not result from the imposition of form, but emerges through the expressive

potential of matter itself. Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari both develop this reading of (J,npt,:r One 13

Hjelmslev's matter-form relation in detail in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia. In the cinema books specifically, Deleuze identifies a conventional reading of Hjelmslevian linguistics when he claims that Metz's emphasis on transcendent structures stems from a misreading of the matter-form relation.12 He puts forward his own understanding of the sign when he suggests that Hjelmslevian linguistics allows for a conception of semiotic matter independent of form. Deleuze calls the semiotic matter of the cinema the signaletic material, and he notes its independence from form when he states that the signaletic material is expressed in signs.

1 Matter Presupposes Form

Consider again Saussure's aim as it is articulated in the first few pages of the Course in General Linguistics. His intention was to define "the integral and concrete object of linguistics," and in turn, push the study of language in the direction of an authentic and legitimate science (7). Natural language presents a problem for Saussure because it is a heterogeneous mass of "the physical, physiological and psychical domains" and therefore eludes the scientific imperative (Weber 916). For this reason Saussure decided to base his analysis on the language system, which afforded him a definitive object of analysis.

Samuel Weber claims that the fecundity of Saussure's systematization some years later in structuralism is testimony to the importance Saussure placed on the system

("Saussure" 914). Structuralism takes Saussure's scientific approach on board with its emphasis on what Weber calls the "inaugural and constitutive point of view" in analysis

12 My understanding of matter in Hjelmslev is from Genosko ("Guattari's Schizoanalytic Semiotics"; Edix Guattari), and Bosteels ("From Text to Territory"). They describe Guattari's interpretation of Hjelmslev according to a specific view on matter (Genosko Felix Guattari 164): a selective interpretation (Bosteels 162). Since Guattari's interpretation of matter is considered out of the ordinary (and in tum, Deleuze-Guattari's interpretation of matter in A Thousand Plateaus and Deleuze's interpretation of matter in The Time-Image is (:hnpt1,r One 14

("Saussure" 917). In the wake of Saussure's footsteps, some of the "tenets" of structuralism outlined by Weber emphasize: the rejection of empirical observation for establishing the object of analysis; the independence of the laws governing the function of the sign system; and "the assertion that the object of semiotics is dependent on a prior point of view[ ... ]" ("Saussure" 917).

In Hjelmslev's Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (written some years after

Saussure), he defines linguistics according to a "sign-function" that is divisible about a plane of "content" and "expression." Hjelmslev begins by noting expression and content, and then further divides these two planes into three strata: "purport," "form" and

"substance." Purport is the unformed thought matter common to all languages. A

substance is a formed matter-in other words, a product of purport and form. As an

example consider a prison: its form of content is the prison itself, and its substance of

content are the prisoners; its form of expression is penal law, and its substance of

expression is "delinquency."13 Purport is the "dynamic 'matter' of both content and

expression" (M:assumi "Like a Thought" xx), the "jumble of semiotic traits, facial and

gestural features, particles of matter, splinters of the flesh, senseless indices, light flashes,

and so on" (Bosteels 164). Furthermore, a sign is formed when the plane of content and

the plane of expression are fitted together.

Most readings of Hjelmslev think that the most important thing about his sign­

function is the role of form in shaping the purport of content and expression.14 This is

because of the sense in which Hjelmslev suggests that matter presupposes form. Hjelmslev

is quite explicit in arguing that without form, the matter of language is so meaningless that

similarly out of the ordinary), I have chosen to call a non-Deleuze-Guattarian interpretation of Hjelmslev conventional 13 Titis example is from Foucault, M. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975: 233. qtd. in Deleuze Foucault: 47). See also Massumi ("Like a Thought" xviii). Ch:ipru <_)n,: 15

it is hard to say it exists at all. For instance Hjelmslev describes linguistics with a series of analogies, claiming substance as a shadow that results, most importantly, from the net-like form cast over the amorphous matter:

By virtue of the content-form and the expression-form, and only by virtue of them,

exist respectively the content-substance and the expression-substance, which

appear by the form's being projected on to the purport, just as an open net casts its

shadow down on an undivided surface. (Erolegomena 57)

This process, Hjelmslev also suggests, is similar to the way boundaries are laid down in the sand:

Each language lays its boundaries within the amorphous "thought-mass" and

stresses different factors in it in different arrangements, puts the centres of gravity

in different places and gives them different emphasis. It is like one and the same

handful of sand that is formed in quite different patterns. (52)

Hjelmslev sums up the implications of this famous analogy, writing that, "Purport remains,

each time, substance for a new form, and has no possible existence except through being

substance for one form or another" (52).

This explanation of Hjelmslev's sign-function suggests a sense in which an

explication of Hjelmslev's linguistics would focus on the role of form in language.

Furthermore, this implies a reason why Metz asserts narrative structure to be key in a

semiology of the cinema.

14 On this point Genosko cites a review of Hjelmslev's work that describes the Proleg.omena as an exclusive reading of~ (Garvin, P. "Review of Proleg.omena to a Theocy of Language." Language 30.1 (1954): 90 Ch:-iptcr (me 16

2 Matter is Independent of Form; Signs are the Emergent Forms of Matter

In a more contemporary context, Guattari takes issue with Hjelmslev's linguistics and identifies another way of thinking about the way signs are formed. It is purport that

Guattari finds most troublesome, and where Hjelmslev seems to claim that purport has no possible existence except through its formation as substance, Guattari takes a different perspective and insists, as Genosko explains, that "the Hjelmslevian sand" is "already 'as differentiated as the most material of matters"' ("Guattari's Schizoanalytic Semiotics"

185).15 Referring to Hjelmslev's analogy with sand, Guattari states: "Anyone who has been to a beach would recognise this under foot."16 Prelinguistic matter, he argues, has its own existence. It is not amorphous, but a matter of "continuous variation" (Genosko Felix

Guattari 164), a "hyperactive continuum of machinic intensities, a chaosmotic field of tensions" (Bosteels 164).

This leads Guattari to an important conclusion about the sign: since matter is real, it does not presuppose form for its expression. In Guattari's reading of Hjelmslev, purport

"is not at all an 'amorphous mass [... ]that would await the arrival of an external formalism

that would then animate it"' (Guattari L'inconscient machinique: 227 qtd. in Genosko

Felix Guattari: 166). Guattari is not doing away with form completely, but he is reversing

its precedence over matter in semiotics. Moreover, I want to draw attention to the

following implication with this reversal of the matter-form relation: since the sign does not

result from the imposition of form, the sign teases out of matter what is already real, yet

qtd. in Genosko "Guattari's Schizoanalytic Semiotics": 177). 15 In the discussion that follows, I am referring specifically to the arguments Genosko makes based on his reading of Guattari's La revolution moleculaire. 16 Note: these are not actually Guattari's words, but can be attributed to Guattari based on Genosko's argument ("Guattari's Schizoanalytic Semiotics" 185). Massumi writes in another context that Hjelmslev's unformed. This is to say that matter expresses itself in form. Brian Massumi sums this process up nicely for Guattari. He writes that "what effectively comes to be signified, manifested [or] designated[ ...] emefl,CS from expressive potential through a process of the capture of that potential" ("Like a Thought'' xx).

I would contend that Guattari insists on the reality of matter in language for ethical reasons. He thinks that if matter relied on form for its meaningful articulation, all signs would simply be reflections of pre-existing forms. Quite obviously, then, Guattari perceives at the heart of Hjelmslev's linguistics an ethical dilemma (a dilemma that takes into account questions of creativity in language). With the emphasis on the language system, Hjelmslev describes linguistics as "a systematic exact and generalizing science," according to which "all events [and] possible combinations of elements [... ] are foreseen" and "the conditions for their realization established" (rrolegomena 9). But Guattari asks:

How can language be creative if every signification is already prescribed from a repertoire of possible significations?

We can note a similar perspective on matter in Guattari's collaborations with

Deleuze. For example, in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the two

thinkers construct an evolutionary cosmology based on the expression of what they call the

"plane of consistency." And in so far as the plane of consistency is the essence of all life,

matter is the principle of expression in an ontology of the universe. Matter, therefore, is

not just the matter of the subject's thoughts, but is the matter of all life, according to which

the subject is only one kind of articulation. Let me explain this further. The plane of

consistency operates beneath formalized "contents" as the dimension from which

"stratification" is formed.17 Each formalized content is a product of the plane of

formation of substance is comparable to "the oddness of a quarry whose species does not preexist its capture, a prey whose determinate existence results from the casting of the hunter's net'' (''Like a Thought'' xx). 17 For the concept of stratification see Chapter Three, "10,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who does the Earth Think it is?)," in Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. Ch:ipr,:r (Jnc 18

consistency in different contexts. Thus Deleuze and Guattari describe the plane of consistency in the following way: "The most disparate of things [... ] move upon it: a semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a chemical interaction, an electron crashes into a language, a black hole captures a genetic message, a crystallization produces a passion" (69).

From this description we can see how there are various regimes of stratification, and these take into account various regimes of signs. There is, for example, a geological regime of signs, but also linguistic, artistic, subjective, musical, and psychoanalytic regimes of signs.

Turning now to the cinema books specifically, Deleuze's idea of the independence of matter in a semiotics of the image is key to his criticism of Metz. For Deleuze, Metz's approach to the sign boils down to the fact that the semiology he deploys cannot account for a matter of the sign that exists independent!J ofform. Deleuze makes this point in the cinema books by undertaking a reading of Hjelmslev from the Guattarian perspective on matter that I have just elaborated, suggesting that an exclusive interpretation of Hjelmslev is informing

Metz's understanding of the cinematic sign. Deleuze writes in a footnote that,

The linguist Hjelmslev calls "content" (matter) precisely this element which is not

linguistically formed although it is perfectly formed from other points of view. He

[Hjelmslev] says "not semiotically formed" because he identifies the semiotic

function with the linguistic one. This is why Metz tends to exclude this material in

his interpretation of Hjelmslev. (my emphasis Time 287 note 9)

In this passage Deleuze, reading Hjelmslev, states that matter is not linguistically formed,

but is nevertheless formed in a different way. These two points are essential in making

clear Deleuze's understanding of how matter can be considered independently of form, and

in turn, why Metz misinterprets Hjelmslev. To say that matter is linguistically formed is to Ch:1pt1:r One 19

say that it is already meaningful in some sense, that it is a matter of possible signification.

As I explained in the Introduction of this dissertation, for a signification to be possible, an actual signification is presupposed in relation to which the possible is, in fact, possible. In terms of Deleuze's reading of Hjelmslev, this is the same as saying that the matter of the sign presupposes transcendent structure. The solution, however, is not for matter to be amorphous. If matter is not formed at all, then it would also require a transcendent structure to give it existence and make it meaningful. When Deleuze says, therefore, that matter is not linguistically formed but is nevertheless formed in a different way, he is making a case for a reading of Hjelmslev that does not prioritize transcendent structures in the creation of signs. 18 Moreover, Deleuze suggests that Metz's structuralist position on the form-purport-substance relation of the sign-function privileges form because in Metz's interpretation of Hjelmslev he does not account for Hjelmslev's idea of matter as not linguistically formed, but nevertheless formed in a different way. The result, therefore, is that Metz presupposes transcendent structures in his analysis of signification in the cinema.19

With the idea that matter can be considered independently of form, Deleuze also making quite clear his own semiotic theory. In the cinema books Deleuze identifies an idea of cinematic matter he calls the image's "signaletic material" (Iime 29). It is, he says, a matter of "sensory (visual and sound), kinetic, intensive, affective, rhythmic, tonal, and even verbal (oral and written)" "modulation features" (29). And similar to Guattari's

18 Note: In this footnote Deleuze's use of the term "semiotic" in 1) "semiotically formed" and 2) "the semiotic function" is not to be confused with Deleuze's reference to his own thesis on the sign in the cinema books as a "semiotics." 19 Deleuze sums up the problematic implications of this position for Metz:

The double of utterances and "grand syntagmatics" has been substituted for that of images and signs, to the point where the very notion of sign tends to disappear from this semiology[ ...]. The film appears as a text, with a distinction comparable to that made by Julia Kristeva, between a "phenotext" of utterances which actually appear and a "genotext" of structuring, constitutive or productive syntagms and paradigms. (:rims: 26) Ch:1ptcr One 20

reading of matter in Hjelmslev, Deleuze stipulates how the signaletic material is not linguistically formed, but is nevertheless formed in a different way: "It is a plastic mass, an a-signifying and a-syntaxic material, a material not formed linguistically even though it is not amorphous" (29). The signaletic material is neither signifying/syntaxic nor amorphous.

Both these conditions ensure that matter has a rightful independence of form.

It follows that the cinematic sign for Deleuze is based on the same process of emergence described also in Guattari's interpretation of Hjelmslev. The sign does not mark the imposition of form, but results from a harnessing of material intensity. In the

Introduction to this dissertation I described the underlying process of Deleuze's sign as an expression. Expression is a concept Deleuze develops from Spinoza and, used more generally, it refers to the inseparability of the expression and the arrangement it expresses.

Deleuze uses this concept in the cinema books as a way of describing the relationship between the signaletic material and the sign. In The Time-Image he defines signs as

"features of expression [... ] borne or carted along by matter in movement" (33). Like the

other signs potential to matter, they do not proceed towards some pre-determined

signification, but towards the truth of an expression which is established at the same time.

In sum, the root of Deleuze's difficulty with Metz can be boiled down to

semiology's failure to ethically account for the matter of language. Metz's emphasis on the

narrative code makes clear the systematicization informing his approach to the cinematic

sign, and this systematicization, furthermore, marks his debt to what he considers

Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics' prioritization of form over matter. This is a

significant difficulty for Deleuze because, in his opinion, a semiotics of the image is first

and foremost an analysis of the expressive potential of the image's matter (signaletic

material). (J,:ipt•:r (Jnc 21

Part Two: Deleuze's Semiotics and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

In what follows I will explain, in more concrete terms, the implications of a semiotic theory that does not account for the matter of the sign. I will do this by analyzing a sequence of Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser from a Metzian perspective on the sign, and then from a Deleuzian perspective on the sign. The sequence occurs in the last moments of the film when the central protagonist, Kaspar Hauser, has a strange vision while lying on his deathbed. I claimed above that a sign, for Metz, is produced when a semiotic matter is formed by a transcendent structure. Using Herzog's film I will explicate this idea of the sign by suggesting that a Metzian analysis of the vision would argue that the vision is a sign in so far as the narrative codes of the film determine and give meaning to the matter of the vision's images (signaletic material). The implication is that the vision signifies in so far as its matter conforms to pre-existent meaning. This leads us to a

Deleuzian perspective on the vision. In what follows my comments will be general because

I spend the remainder of this project unpacking the specifics of Deleuze's semiotics. I argued in the previous section that the sign, for Deleuze, explicates and involves-in other words, expresses-the modulation features of the signaletic material. Using Herzog's film

I will explain this idea by suggesting that a Deleuzian analysis of the vision would argue that the vision is a sign because of the way its images compose and combine the signaletic material. What this means is that the vision is interpreted strictly in terms of the material properties of that composition of cinematic elements.

Set in the nineteenth century, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is the story of a young

man (Kaspar) who was locked up in a dark cellar for his entire adolescent life. The film

begins in this cellar, and the camera lingers from a slight distance, revealing a dark and

oppressive atmosphere. Kaspar sits on the ground, hunched over like an animal, playing Chnpr,:r {)nc 22

with a small toy horse. He grunts as he repeatedly drags the horse across the stone floor: the mundane repetition of this action is reminiscent of the tirelessness of a dog playing fetch. At one stage a darkly dressed man enters the frame and drags Kaspar into the brightness of daylight. We watch, now from behind some trees, as the caped and hooded man purposefully teaches Kaspar how to walk in a leafy green meadow. We are shocked by the silent submission of Kaspar's body to these alien gestures, and we assume he is going to be taken somewhere. This is the last we see of Kaspar until he is abandoned in a small town just outside of Nuremberg, where the plot begins.

Herzog's film is about Kaspar's forced assimilation to social and cultural life in this conservative German village. A focus of the film is the friction surrounding Kaspar's assimilation. Kaspar, now a fully grown adult, is bewildered by his newfound social obligations, and at the same time the villagers are fascinated by and scared of him

(sometimes he is considered a gift from god: a pure "nature's child"; at others, he is thought of as a dangerous freak). There is a scene early in the film where Kaspar is taught by a child how to drink from a cup and eat from a bowl. Like an infant, Kaspar learns with great difficulty "this is beer," "this is soup," "this is my arm, hand, mouth." It is the duration of Herzog's shots that are important in creating this tension. Kaspar is rarely shown in close-up and is often framed at a slight distance so that we can see the frustration spreading throughout his whole body as he tries to articulate himself: in his clothes, his

stance, and the way he punctuates his sentences with the clamped thumb and forefinger of

his right hand. Things get worse later in the film when the villagers begin to demand an

explanation of his previous life, but Kaspar cannot remember anything since the solitude of

his dark cellar didn't leave much to his imagination.

The moment of the vision occurs in one of the final scenes and epitomizes this

thematic tension. Kaspar, stabbed by a masked stranger, lies dying in bed. He is Ch:ipt,,r ()nc 23

surrounded by village notaries and friends. Hoping he will explain the mystery of his past, the villagers ask if Kaspar has any last words. Kaspar, however, says he is still plagued by a vision that has been haunting him since his arrival in the town, and rather than ruminate about the significance of the attack, Kaspar describes his strange vision of the desert.

This vision is rendered cinematically in the following way. To begin with, the camera, immobile and looking on from a medium distance, frames Kaspar on his deathbed.

He is shrouded in the sterility of white sheets, his head propped up on a massive white pillow. The onlookers surround the bed, encircling Kaspar like a kind of iris. When asked what he would like to say, Kaspar begins to speak: "I see a big caravan, which is moving through the desert, through the sand ... " At this moment the film cuts to a flickering image-like an old home movie-of a desert. The sand is a hot orange under the deep blue sky. A panpipe plays a distant melody in the soundtrack. Kaspar's words are now in voice-over, simultaneous with the image. He describes an old blind Berber leading the caravan, which is lost. He describes how the caravan stops, the old man tastes a handful of sand, and turns to his son to proclaim the direction they must go. Then, Kaspar says, the caravan moves on, until it arrives at "a town in the north." As Kaspar describes the final moments of his vision, the image of the old man is barely discernible as the string of the

caravan weaves its way, like the rise and fall of the panpipe, through the orange dunes in

the distance.

If a semiotic analysis were to begin from the premise that structures are entirely

necessary for a sign's signification, then what would a semiologist such as Metz say about

the vision sequence? They wouldn't begin with the images themselves, for this would be

like beginning with matter in Hjelmslevian linguistics. I contend that they would begin by

thinking about how the vision is continuous with the film as a whole, and more specifically,

they would wonder about what the vision contributes to the film's narrative. They would Chnpt,:r {)ric 24

begin, therefore, with an idea of narrative structure, and they would proceed in their analysis by fitting the vision into this narrative structure. In Herzog's film specifically, this kind of semiotic analysis might involve determining a cause-effect relationship between the vision sequence and the preceding sequence (Kaspar lying in his deathbed). In this case, the vision would be like a kind of suf?jective insert that tells the viewer more about Kaspar's character in the film and his actions in the narrative, and Kaspar's words would be interpreted as the link binding the two sequences.20 The vision might be considered as some kind of summary or postscript to the previous action. Or perhaps the desert would be interpreted as the metaphorical equivalent of Kaspar's life. And maybe Kaspar, as a kind of hero, is like the Berber: a martyr that dies while trying to lead the village.

A Deleuzian analysis, however, would be quite different. Deleuze's semiotics begins from the premise that a sign says something about a signaletic material. To translate this to Herzog's film would be to say that the vision is not meaningful because of the particular way it fits into the narrative structure of the film as a whole. From a Deleuzian perspective, the vision is a sign because of the way it expresses the signaletic material. The signaletic material is the matter of the images, and this is the plane of consistency from which all the elements in Kaspar's vision are an expression: the desert, the dunes, the

Berber. Added to this are the qualities of these elements: the shimmering light, the orange

of the sand; the sound of the panpipe. The vision, therefore, is not interpreted in relation

to narrative codes or plot thematics, or any transcendent structure for that matter

(social/ cultural codes for example), but in terms of what is presented by the material

composition of the cinematic elements themselves. Furthermore, this idea of the sign and

this kind of interpretation makes Deleuze's semiotics a creative and ethical endeavour.

20 The "subjective insert" is one of the subdivided types of the first of Metz's eight syntagmatic codes (the "autonomous shot") (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis 40). Ch:iptcr One 25

When the materiality of the vision is emphasized over transcendent structures, the vision sequence and the other sequences of the film are not interpreted as mutually dependent. The vision is considered in an absolute relation with the other images of the film. Deleuze sometimes calls this relation a serial relation. A serial relation refers to a non­ chronological grouping of images, in which each image, as a series of time in its own right, is different in-itself.21 Implied is a reciprocity between contents: a continual displacement of potential meaning from one sequence to other. The question, then, is not how is the vision different from the other images of the film? but, how does the vision and the other images give rise to difference?

With Deleuze's semiotics, meaning is not attributed to the vision from a source external to the images themselves. Meaning emerges from the materiality of the images, the signaletic material. The sequence might be experienced simply as a moment of time, stretching out before us as Kaspar's life slips away. The meaning of the sequence might be as general as the feelings of redness, blueness and orangeness associated with the images; or more specifically, one might have an idea of the heat of the sun, of the dryness of the sand in the Berber's mouth, or, of its weight under foot. The tone of the panpipe might make us sad at the passing of Kaspar's life. Or the vision might be interpreted more logically, in which case its meaning is limited only to whatever can be inferred from the images of the

sequence.

Let me conclude the arguments I have made in Part Two. Semiology emphasizes

transcendent structures as the determining force in signification, while Deleuze's semiotics

focuses on semiotic matter and emphasizes the sign, not as a reflection of codes, but as an

expression of matter. For Deleuze, the emphasis on matter, not form, leads to a greater

potential in interpretation and a more dynamic and creative notion of language.

21 I discuss Deleuze's conception of the series in relation to what he calls the Genesign in Chapter Six. (J,:-ipt,:r (me 26

Conclusion

In this chapter I have suggested that Deleuze's semiotics has its basis in what we can call a semiotic theory of matter. Matter is the material element of the image, the signaletic material, and a semiotic theory of matter is one that claims all signs and meaning, in principle, are the emergent forms of this signaletic material.

This philosophy of matter becomes apparent when we consider Deleuze's critique of semiology and his claims about what semiology leaves out in its analysis of the cinematic sign. For Deleuze, semiology overlooks the matter of the sign and places its emphasis instead on transcendent structures. Moreover, he accuses Metz of being the main proponent of this oversight in the cinema, and this is because of Metz's emphasis on the narrative codes of the Grand Syntagmatique.

For Deleuze, to exclude the image's matter is to assume that its meaning derives solely from its conformity with transcendent structures. And, to exclude the image's matter is to overlook the role of the image's materiality in the production of meaning.

Deleuze insists that the cinematic sign is, most importantly, a product of its matter: it is an expression.

As for the semiotic production Deleuze has in mind, I will discuss how Deleuze develops his thesis of meaning and signification in the following chapters. In Chapter Two

I will spend some more time describing what exactly the signaletic material of the Chnpter One 27

cinema is, what it means to say that it is neither signifying/ syntaxic nor amorphous, and how this constitution of the signaletic material brings with it an idea of the sign as an expression. [)eleu7 '

1) lcuzt. opuurm,

rmattq 1

n,q

p Chapter Two

Deleuze's Semiotics: What Does it Mean to Say that the Sign is an Expression of Matter?

Introduction

The first chapter of this project was concerned with Deleuze's critique of semiology, and how this critique revealed Deleuze's own semiotic theory. I argued that in

Deleuze's opinion, Metz's sign is reducible to a transcendent structure. Deleuze identifies this idea of a transcendent structure with the narrative codes of Metz's Grand

Syntagmatique. I suggested a key reason underlying Metz's emphasis on narrative as a transcendent structure: narrative is a kind of form, and in Metz's reading of Hjelmslev,

form is entirely necessary in order to make the matter of the image into a sign. Like Metz,

Deleuze aligns himself with Hjelmslev, but he does not prioritize transcendent structures in a semiotic theory because he claims that the matter of the image, or what Deleuze calls its

signaletic material, is a "plastic mass." In Deleuze's conception the signaletic material does

not presuppose form for its meaningful articulation because, as a plastic mass, it is already

formed in a very special sense. This makes the sign an expression of the signaletic material.

As a way of distinguishing Metz's semiology from Deleuze's semiotics I have

claimed that the image's signaletic material has an expressive potential, but I have yet to

explain in detail what exactly the signaletic material is and how it is expressed in signs. In

this chapter I do so by examining the way Deleuze tackles the same problem in an essay he

wrote in the 1960s called "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?". In this essay Deleuze discusses matter in language and describes seven criteria according to which the signs of a language are produced as the emergent forms of this matter. Each criterion explains some aspect of matter necessary in order ensure that the signs produced are not the effect of a transcendent structure. In this chapter I unpack each of the seven criteria as a way of developing a better understanding of the process of expression in the signaletic material­ sign relationship of the cinema books.

In "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?" Deleuze approaches his discussion of language through a critique of structuralism in France, a movement popularized by theorists like Jacques Lacan, Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and consolidated by the

French translation of texts like Hjelmslev's Prolegomena to a Theot;y of Language.

Deleuze is critical of the emphasis structuralism places on formal systems (transcendent

structures) in shaping the matter oflanguage. This is the same argument Deleuze's aims at

Metz's semiology. As I suggested in Chapter One, Deleuze contends that the matter of the

sign does not need transcendent structures because it is productive of meaning. In his

opinion, then, structuralism's emphasis on the pre-existent meaning of transcendent

structures implies that a certain amount of meaning potential to matter itself is overlooked.

He puts forward this argument in "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?" by using

structural anafysis to derive the nature of the matter of the sign. As distinct from the pre­

eminence semiology gives to transcendent structures over and above any matter, Deleuze

argues that matter is structured in-itself. Deleuze, therefore, reads structural analysis as an

approach that foregrounds the independence of matter in the formation of signs, thus

turning the typical idea of structuralism upside down. Structural analysis for Deleuze is not

concerned with an analysis of transcendent structures, but with an analysis of how the

matter of a language, as a matter that is structured in-itself, gives rise to meaning. Chnpt,:r Two 30

Deleuze's seven criteria, therefore, provide the answer to the question: "How Do We

Recognize Structuralism?".

In the first three criteria Deleuze develops a general theory of matter in language, taking special care to explain how the sign is the emergent fonn of this matter. In the first criterion he calls matter the .rymbolic element of a language. He uses a reading of Lacan's

Symbolic order as a way of explaining how the matter of a sign, like the Symbolic order, is not really in plain view. For Deleuze, it is the jumbled combination of all the elements that the sign embodies-in other words, Deleuze calls it the "genesis structure" of a language.

Deleuze's second criterion attempts to explain the content of the symbolic element of a language and introduces us to an idea of how meaning is produced. But attending to this problem of content is troublesome, for Deleuze has already stipulated in the first criterion that the symbolic is a "genesis structure" only. Using Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

(1980), I explain how Deleuze gets around this problem by stating that the content of the symbolic is something like the shifting positions of a topology. Also, I argue that this idea of content is what Deleuze is referring to in the cinema books when he describes the

signaletic material as neither signifying/ syntaxic nor amorphous. Furthennore, Deleuze's

description of how signs are produced when these symbolic positions are filled is a good way of understanding the process of expression described in the cinema books and the idea

that matter does not presuppose transcendent structure for its formation in signs. In the

third criterion Deleuze tells us that another way of conceiving of matter is to say that the

jumbled combination of elements that compose it are in differential relations. In mathematics

the tenns of a differential have no value in themselves, but taken together amount to value.

Deleuze explains how the value produced from the differential is unique and singular.

Thus with the third criterion Deleuze uses the ideas of the differential and the singular as a way of suggesting that the filling of the signaletic material most importantly leads to the

creation of new and original signs.

Having established the immanence of sign and material element with the idea that

the sign is the singular expression of a symbolic element, Deleuze continues in the next

four criteria to nuance some of the finer points of his idea of matter. Using Takeshi

Kitano's A Scene at the Sea (1992), I explain Deleuze's fourth criterion, and his claim that

the production of the sign from a symbolic element is an actualization that occurs in time.

Not only does this imply a component of time underlying all signs, but Deleuze's fourth

criterion also suggests a potential of the sign to focus entirely on expressing time. (Ibis is

an important point because Deleuze takes up the problem of the semiotic expression of

time in some detail in the cinema books). In his fifth criterion Deleuze considers the

actualization of more than one sign, defining a language according to multiple packets of

signs he calls series. An example I consider is the narrative of The Shining, and how it is

organized according to the relation between a filial series of signs, a psychotic series of

signs, and a supernatural series of signs. Key to this discussion, however, is Deleuze's

insistence that the relation of series is never rightfully determined by anything outside the

terms of the relation itself-in this case, the singularities of each series are naturally in a

state of displacement with other series. In his sixth criterion Deleuze maintains his focus

on the series and addresses the concept of displacement by identifying a special point of

contact between series called the object = x. This point of contact is not a lacuna or void

across which series are in an oppositional relationship, but a point of passage only.

Deleuze likens it to the empty square in a children's board game, without which the terms

of the game would not more forward or function. Finally, in his seventh criterion, Deleuze

boils his thesis on matter down to the role played by a subject. He suggests that the

properly structural subject is one who interprets a sign with a view to the symbolic element (J-.npt,:r 'f,,..,, 32

of language. For Deleuze, a sign is meaningful because it is an expression of matter, but now he is saying that even though this is the case, for language to work, the subject must not attribute anything to the sign other than what is presented by the particular composition of its material properties.

1 Matter is Not Directly Perceptible (Even Though it is Definitely There): It is a Symbolic

Element of Language

Deleuze begins by introducing us to a general notion of matter in language. Using

Lacan's conception of the Symbolic order and the idea that it is constitutive of a deeper

kind of reality, Deleuze describes matter as a symbolic element of language that is beyond

the bounds of natural perception.

According to Lacan, experience can be divided into three fundamental orders: the

Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. The Real is the truthful world of objects and

experiences: it is "concrete and already 'full"' (Ragland-Sullivan 131). The stars are often

used as an example to demonstrate Lacan's Real. They have always been in the same place,

more or less, and it is in this sense of their fixity, independent of humankind's naming of

them, that they are constitutive of the Real (187). The Imaginary is located within the

individual: it is the locus of the primordial sexual energy and desire that propels the

individual. The Symbolic refers to the conventions and strictures of society, and for Lacan

it is imposed on the Real and Imaginary. In respect of these three orders, the social subject

is the product of a three way relation (creating what Lacan describes as a kind of

Borromean knot) of the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Put simply, Lacan's Symbolic plays the role of generating relations in an individual's life; it is like the wooden spoon that mixes the Real and Imaginary together.

To explicate Deleuze's first criterion I want to focus on the idea of mixing from

Lacan's Symbolic order, not on what is produced by this mixture.1 From Lacan, the

Symbolic puts the Real in touch with the Imaginary. On the one hand Lacan's thesis gives us the following idea of the Symbolic: we can say that it moves between the objects of the

Real in the same way it moves between the contents of the Imaginary. On the other hand though, Deleuze interprets the Symbolic slightly differently. For Deleuze, the Symbolic moves between the objects of the Real and the concepts of the Imaginary in a more radical sense: as the orig,inary point offlux that is presupposed by the Real and Imaginary. Like Lacan,

Deleuze sees the Symbolic order as a kind of mixing force, but Deleuze claims that the

Real and the Imaginary do not pre-exist this mixing. In this sense Deleuze determines his own idea of the symbolic as a "genesis structure" ("HDWRS?" 260).2 Furthermore, as a genesis structure Deleuze posits the symbolic as a continuum of differential relations. In terms of this continuum, formed contents like the Imaginary and the Real "must be thought of as the limit of a process in which they constitute themselves in relation to the symbolic" (260).

In Deleuze's interpretation, the symbolic is "irreducible" to formed contents like the Imaginary and the Real, and "deeper than them" ("HDWRS?" 261). Based on the

1 In other texts, Deleuze is critical of psychoanalysis because he claims that what is produced by the mixture is the continual repetition of sameness. For instance in Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari claim that psychoanalytic theory is restricted by the "dogmatism" of Oedipal identity: ''We cannot say that psychoanalysis is very innovative[... ] it continues to ask questions and develop its interpretations from the depths of the Oedipal triangle as its basic perspective" (14). In this text they suggest that a Lacanian conception of the unconscious mistakenly reduces desire to the identity of the father-mother-child relation (Oedipal triangle). This marks the impact of the Symbolic as a definitive moment in time, and the trauma associated with this moment fuels the child's psychic development. In another text Deleuze explains: ''The former present would play the role of a complex point, like an ultimate or original term which would remain in place and exercise a power of attraction: it would be the one which provides the thing to be repeated, the one which conditions the whole process of repetition" (Difference 103). Deleuze is suggesting that the subject's development, throughout the course of their psychic life, is based on the repetition of the original traumatic moment. 2 I am abbreviating Deleuze's essay "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?" as "HDWRS?". Ch:iptcr 'J\,,r, 34

Lacanian context of the symbolic, and based on Deleuze's qualification of the symbolic as a

"deeper" kind of reality, it is apparent that the dimension of experience Deleuze is describing is inaccessible to everyday perception. We can see the effect of the symbolic in the formed contents of everyday experience, but because it is a deeper kind of reality, we cannot see the symbolic in-itself.

Deleuze rethinks Lacan's Symbolic order to posit a genesis structure of experience in the universe, but also a genesis structure of language. We can clarify something about

Deleuze's first criterion and locate an absolute symbolic element of all experience and all language called the plane of immanence.3 But Deleuze also writes that a symbolic element is the "original point" at which a language is "constituted" ("HDWRS?" 261). Each individual language, therefore (like painting, cinema, and natural language), have a symbolic element particular to that language, but together they are constitutive of the plane of unmanence.

In terms of the cinema specifically, its symbolic element is the signaletic material of the image. Deleuze's first criterion pinpoints the signaletic material not just as a prior form of cinematic language, but as an elementary and generative structure of cinematic language. It is the genesis structure of the cinematic image, the continuous flow, the jumbled mass of all the elements that together make up the sounds and sights of the audio-visual image. It is not directly perceptible (even though it is most definitely there).

2 Matter is neither Signifying/Syntaxic nor Amorphous Because it is a Topology

Deleuze's second criterion, "Local or Positional," attempts to explain the content of the symbolic element of a language and introduces us to an idea of how meaning is

3 I have borrowed this concept from Deleuze's ontology in The Movement-Image (56-66). produced. Attending to this problem of content is troublesome, for Deleuze has already stipulated in the first criterion that the symbolic is a genesis structure only. What, then, is the content of something that is entirely productive of content? Deleuze responds to this difficulty by claiming that the symbolic is composed ofpotential contents, these potential contents being something like "positions" in a "topological" space (262). Moreover, meaning is created when these positions are said to be filled.

Deleuze's concept of topology explains how the content of the symbolic is purely positional. Massumi defines for us what topology is. Topology, he says, is "the science of self-varying deformation." His explanation is given in the following example:

A topological figure is defined as the continuous transformation of one geometrical

figure into another. Imagine a pliable coffee cup. Join the surfaces of the brim,

enlarge the hole in the handle, and then stretch it so that its sides are equally thick.

You get a doughnut. You could then tie this doughnut into complex knots. All of

the geometrical figures you can create in this way are versions of the same

topological figure. ("On the Superiority of the Analog" 134)

A topological figure is a figure in continuous transformation, and by the same reasoning a

topology is a space of continuous transformation. Massumi's example of the coffee cup

tells us that such a figure is without a definitive content, for the moment we identify the

brim of a handle, we are already looking at the circumference of a doughnut hole. The

brim of the handle is no more the brim of a handle than a shifting position on a topological

figure. We can argue that when Deleuze calls the symbolic a topological space, he is

describing it as a self-varying deformation, a combinatory formula. As such, it is more accurate to think of it not as a content proper, but as a shifting structure of positions and potential contents.

Deleuze writes that meaning is produced when a topological position is filled

("HDWRS?" 263). Again, Massumi's analysis of geometric transformations is useful for clarifying Deleuze's discussion. From Massumi's example above, a new figure (a coffee cup, a doughnut) is produced with each transformation of a topological figure. Most important about this process is how the new figure is not produced from the addition of any properties to the original figure. It is in this sense that the new figure is a transformation of the old. With this we can understand the significance of Deleuze's idea of filling. Meaning is created through the transformation of the givens of the topological space. In Deleuze's

essay the idea of filling refers to this very sense of transformation-in other words, it refers

to the way in which meaning is created. Meaning for Deleuze is produced in exactly the

same way that filling a cup with water, or a child's beach bucket with sand, creates a form by embodying the properties of the container in a slightly different way. 1bis discussion

also gives us a handle on the concept of expression, and how the expressed (the meaning,

form or sign), explicates and involves the expressor (the topological space of matter; the

symbolic element of language).

The Shining is a film that visualizes all of this for us. In Kubrick's film, Jack is a

writer, and is employed as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the winter off­

season. He sees his new job as a perfect opportunity to get some writing done, and so he

takes his family, his wife Wendy and his son Danny, to spend the winter months with him.

As it turns out, the hotel is haunted. There was a brutal murder in room 23 7 some years

ago, and it seems that ugly traces of this event still inhabit this room and other places in the

hotel. What is interesting is how the characters see these traces of the murder differently.

Different characters see different things and experience the various spaces of the hotel in different ways. For example, the ambience of the hotel lounge fills Jack with an ugly rage, a rage that turns to a psychosis as he tries to kill his wife on the staircase. There is also the difference between what Jack and Danny see in room 237: the object of Jack's vision oscillates between beauty, the erotic and the grotesque; while Danny sees sheer horror.

The hotel, therefore, is certainly a space (it has rooms, corridors, different floors, ghosts), but it is the characters who define the specifics of what lies between its walls. We can say, then, that the hotel is without a fixed determinate content: it is a topological space. This leads us to claim that there is nothing between the hotel's walls except the positions of what Deleuze refers to as a purely symbolic "spatium" (262), positions that are filled by the characters' gaze as they move through the structure.

A key point, however, is missing from my analysis of Kubrick's film. My example fails to make clear whether the transformation of the topological space (the Overlook), enacted by each of the characters, is an immanent transformation. This omission leaves us pondering the following questions: Are the characters perceiving the Overlook from a subjective viewpoint?; is Jack a psychotic: is he simply hallucinating and seeing things that aren't really there? Kubrick's film doesn't explain these niggling thematic problems, but we

can based on Deleuze's second criterion. We can say that, at the most elementary level, what the characters see in the rooms and corridors of the Overlook is already there in some

respect or capacity. As a symbolic structure, the characters' perceptions are transformative

acts. Sure, Jack might be a psychotic, Wendy might even be a hysteric, but whatever

subjective predispositions the characters may have, these only add to a perception that, at

its most elementary level, is an act of transformation.

To recapitulate Deleuze's second criterion in terms of the cinema: it tells us that the

component elements of the signaletic material are not formed elements. Yet, most

definitely, they are a kind of content, and if we return to the cinema books we can say that he addresses this idea when he writes that the signaletic material is neither signifying/ syntaxic nor amorphous, but is composed of certain "modulation features"

('.Iime 29). Furthermore, understanding these modulation features as positions in space makes clear how the sign, as a filled position, is an expression.

3 The Creation of New and Original Signs is the Outcome of Deleuze's Thesis on Matter

In his third criterion, "The Differential and the Singular," Deleuze looks closer at what is produced from the symbolic element of a language. Deleuze calls it a singular. He explains this idea by turning again to mathematics, this time describing a language's symbolic element of topological transformations as a structure of differential relations. In

Deleuze's examination of differential calculus, the terms of the differential (tfy/ dx) have no value in themselves, but taken together produce value. Consequently, Deleuze writes that the value produced is a singular. It is in respect of the nature of the relation of terms implied by the differential that Deleuze discusses topological transformation as a

differential relation and posits the singular in language.

In Deleuze's opinion tfy/ dx is a special figure in mathematics because tfy and dx,

taken separately, amount to nothing: "Dy is totally undetermined in relation toy, dx is

totally undetermined in relation to x: each one has neither existence, nor value, nor

signification" ("HDWRS?" 265).4 This is unlike other mathematical equations whereby

4 My understanding of c!J/ dx is from Aden Evens' explanation of Deleuze's examination of the differential. In mathematics a discrete number is a whole number; for example: 0, 1, 2, 3. A rational number is a number between a whole number: a fraction. Furthermore, between rational numbers are sequences which tend towards a limit: i"ational numbers. A limit is an arbitrarily small interval between numbers, but the limit also applies to the relations of numbers. Such a limit is called a function or differential. A point on a curve is given by its position in relation to a vertical axis (y) and a horizontal axis (x). Dy is the differential at pointy; and, dx is the differential at point x. Since it is typically conceived in mathematics as a movement towards zero, the differential (dx) has no specifiable value in-itself (I say "typically" because, as Evens points out, Deleuze reverses traditional mathematics and claims that the differential generates number-that is, the differential represents a "movement of zero away from itself'). The differential obtains a value only in relation. "Dx, terms are typically related based on their identity, or, "through their negation if an identity cannot be found" (Murphie "Putting the Virtual Back" 198). For example, the equation

3 + 2 depends on its terms already being determined, in a way similar to the equation x2 + y2 - R2 = 0 (Deleuze "HDWRS?" 265). It is only when tfy and dx are taken together

(tfy/ dx) that they are determinable. This means that Deleuze identifies a principle of determinability in the differential equation based necessarily on the reciprocal determination of terms (265). Furthermore, it is with the reciprocal determination of terms that Deleuze identifies the singularity as the necessary outcome of the differential.

As a way of explaining how the value produced by the differential is a singular, I will pose the following scenario. Imagine you are riding on a bus, and sitting next to you is another person, Frank. You start to think about the differences between Frank and yourself. You already have certain ideas about yourself-about how you look, your personality, your intelligence, your fashion sense. But now, on the bus, you start to think about how you are different from Frank, and how Frank is different from you.

Considering the small seat you are both perched on, you might think about how you are

thinner than Frank. Or, you might think about how Frank is fatter. Considering the heat, you might think about how he looks hot and uncomfortable. You feel a lot cooler, and

you make this comparison as you watch a bead of sweat trickle down Frank's red cheek.

Then, you start to evaluate the comparison you're making. You realize that you are

comparing yourself to Frank based on how the terms of the comparison you identify

(fatness, thinness, perspiration levels), impact differently in relation to your body than

Frank's.

There is nothing wrong with comparing yourself with Frank in this way, but an

alternative is suggested in Deleuze's philosophy. Another way you might compare yourself

though undetermined, points towards its own determination in relation to another differential, dy" (t!J/ dx) (Evens "Maths Anxiety" 111). with Frank is based on Deleuze's idea of the differential, and it goes something like this.

Sitting next to Frank, you think about how you are defined not in terms of your difference from Frank, or Frank's difference from you. You think about how, at any moment in time, you are nothing but a position or threshold next to Frank in an absolute continuum of physical and mental properties. Consequently, you exist absolutely, only in your relation to

Frank. Deleuze calls this mutual existence of terms a reciprocal determination, and another way of putting it is to say that you and Frank are the terms of a differential (dy/ dx). You are what you are only in relation to Frank, and Frank is Frank only in relation to you. The implication is that in order to define yourself as different, you have to create yourself as different from Frank. Difference in this sense is not a distinguished difference, but that which distinguishes itself.5 For Deleuze, this means grasping what is peculiar to both

Frank's material existence and your own.6 The end result is an extrapolation of difference based on the reciprocal determination of your own body and Frank's. Again, you form an idea of how you are different to Frank. But this time the idea is based only on the play of differences between your body and Frank's, and because there is nothing determining your relation to Frank except your relation to Frank, the idea is a unique, singular occurrence.

As Deleuze says, it does not and cannot resemble the differential elements in the symbolic in any way ("HDWRS?" 266). And for as long as the differential is your point of comparison, every idea after that is a singularity also.

In his third criterion Deleuze describes his idea of the symbolic element in terms of

the concepts of the differential and the singular in order to be more specific about what

exactly is involved when a position in the symbolic structure is said to be filled. Previously,

5 I have borrowed this tum of phrase from Deleuze, who writes in another context that, "The difference between two things is empirical only, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic. However, instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself[... ]" (Difference 28). 6 I am referring here to a point made by Deleuze and Guattari, whereby they claim that the value produced from the reciprocal determination of terms takes the terms' "real distinction into account" {ElatelW 67). Deleuze explained that the elements comprising the structure were like positions in a topological space. But now, the third criterion tells us that these elements are, in fact, in a differential relation. In themselves, they are undetermined, and they are defined entirely by their absolute relation to the other terms of the symbolic element. This means that the value produced is unprecedented and completely new, a singular. For the cinema,

Deleuze's third criterion emphasizes how the sign, since it is a singular (produced by the differential relations of modulation features), is not the same as the signaletic material. But also, it tells us that in so far as it is a singular, each process of transformation results in a sign that is necessarify unique.

4 There is a Temporal Component of Every Sign

In his fourth criterion, "The Differenciator, Differenciation," Deleuze calls the relationship between the symbolic element and the singular (signs) a virtual-actual circuit.

For Deleuze, both the virtual and the actual are concepts used to describe different kinds of reality. Deleuze claims that the virtual is real without being actual, and the actual is the actualized form of the virtual. In this criterion the concept of the virtual makes clear how the symbolic exists, but also suggests that it is imperceptible because it is not actual.

Furthermore, the idea that the singular is an actualization of the virtual reveals a concept of time informing Deleuze's conception of language.

We can refer to one of Kitano's films as a way of approaching Deleuze's fourth criterion. · Picture the image of Shigeru gliding along a wave in A Scene at the Sea. The scene is a surfing contest at a beach in Japan. Shigeru is a young man with a hearing impairment, and the film is about his growing interest in surfing and its effect on his relationship with his girlfriend, Takako. We see him in long shot surfing at one of his (:h~pt,,r T'-'·" 42

contests. The frame is still as he glides along the wave. The yellow of his wetsuit makes him a brilliant streak of colour against the gloomy grey ocean and dirty caps of whitewash.

Shigeru, as he surfs the wave, is a sign. And as a sign, he is a singular produced by the differential relations of the elements in the image's symbolic element (signaletic material).

Particular to the surfer (and particular to the cinematic regime of signs too) is that Shigeru moves, and so we must also specify that the symbolic element is a mobile dimension of dynamic matter. Furthermore, we can follow Deleuze's lead in the cinema books and uncover the modulation features and differential relations proper to our sign. We can suggest, for example, the differential relations of colour and light (tonal differences), gesture and other kinetic differences (like the vector of the wave, the splash of spray from

Shigeru's board). Shigeru is entirely the product of these elements of the image's signaletic material. Another way of putting this is to say that there are two sides to Shigeru. The first is the topology of differential relations from which the sign is produced. The second is

Shigeru as a singularity, as a sign. As a synthesis of the differential relations in the signaletic material, what is implied is that both sides of Shigeru are inseparable: he is two things at

once.

In his fourth criterion Deleuze addresses the idea of how a sign is two things at

once by describing language as a virtual-actual circuit. Drawing on the work of Roman

Jakobson, Deleuze proposes that the symbolic element is a "virtuality" ("HDWRS?" 267).

Furthermore, since Deleuze insists that the virtual and actual are both real and their

difference lies simply in the fact that the virtual is real without being actual, he poses the

inseparability of the two sides of the sign. The virtual-actual circuit tells us that while

Shigeru appears in the register of the actual, the symbolic element of his actual existence is

ever present, only virtual. For Shigeru, and every other actual object, the virtual is all

around, it "sticks to anything and everything" (Murphie "Putting the Virtual Back" 192). The inseparability of the virtual and the actual (and the idea that the singular is an actualization of the virtual) introduces a concept of time into structure. Deleuze writes that, "One will notice that the process of actualization always implies an internal temporality, variable according to what is actualized" ("HDWRS?" 268-269). Deleuze describes this concept of time as an "internal" time or duration that is different from chronological time. For Deleuze, the latter expresses abstractly the internal time of the structure. Indeed, it would be better said that Deleuze is not introducing a concept of time to structure, but uncovering the non-chronological time principle to structure. With the temporal implications of actualization, it becomes evident that every singularity has a particular temporal rhythm. If we return to Shigeru in A Scene at the Sea, we must add

something to the symbolic element of our sign. This element is the rhythm of time

according to which Shigeru actualizes the symbolic element.

The concept of time in structure is often referred to in Deleuze's discussion of the

cinematic sign in The Time-Image; for example, he notes what Andrei Tarkovsky calls the

"pressure of time in the shot" (42). The examination of structure undertaken above makes

it apparent that Deleuze is referring to the rhythmic time of symbolic actualization in

cinematic language. All signs for Deleuze include this underlying temporal component, but

something special about the cinema is its potential to create signs concerned exclusively

with the expression of non-chronological time. Deleuze calls these signs time-images.

Shigeru is a similar kind of time-image. We know that there is a certain pressure of

time in the shot, for Shigeru is the actualization of the symbolic element of the image-its

signaletic material. But what is primary in this example is the surfer's expression of non­

chronological time. This is given through the point of movement particular to the act of

surfing and the surfer's body. The act of surfing involves the surfer's entry into an existing

wave. This means that there is no origin or starting point, but rather, as Deleuze suggests in another context, a "putting-into-orbit'' ("Mediators" 281). The surfer gets taken up in the movement of a wave and is constantly between points of movement. There is no before or after to the surfer's movement; the surfer implies a different kind of time.

Cleaved between the actual and the virtual, Shigeru expresses the non-chronological time of the signaletic material.

In sum, Deleuze's fourth criterion makes clear how the matter of a language is imperceptible-it is virtual. Also, it tells us that the creation of a sign from this matter

(expression) is a process that occurs in non-chronological time. As such, there is a

temporal component of every sign, even if the signs of a language are not concerned

exclusively with its expression.

5 A Language Involves Packets of Signs (Series)

A language involves packets of signs, and this is the point Deleuze makes when he

explains how the symbolic element can be productive of more than one singularity.

Deleuze addresses this point in his fifth criterion, the "Serial," when he examines a serial

actualization of the symbolic element of a language. These series often appear in relation to

other series, but Deleuze makes clear that the most important thing about serial relations in

a language is the absence of a hierarchical or causal relation between the series themselves.

The singularity is the product of reciprocal determination in the symbolic element,

but now Deleuze is telling us that there may be more than one singularity in a language like

the cinema. In his fifth criterion Deleuze writes that multiple singularities are sometimes

grouped together in what he calls variables, appellations or series; for example, Deleuze

writes that a species is a series: it is a grouping together of certain animals. Deleuze insists,

however, that within this grouping, and based on the particular composition of each Ch:ipt•:r 'J\v(, 45

animal's parts, each animal is nevertheless a singularity ("HDWRS?" 266).7 In The Shining another kind of serial organization of singularities is apparent. The narrative of Kubrick's film is organized predominantly around a filial series and a psychotic series. Deleuze's fifth criterion suggests another way of conceiving of meaning in a language: it is produced through the relation of these series. This is to say that The Shining depends on the relations of packets of signs, and this is manifest with the way the signs of Jack's delusions

(psychotic series) are put into contact with Wendy's signs (filial series).

Deleuze insists several times throughout his essay that the relations of the series is a

"relative displacement," and moreover, that this displacement "is not at all secondary; it does not come to affect a term from the outside and secondarily, as if giving it an imaginary disguise" ("HDRWS?" 273). Since a series is composed of singularities, and since there is no transcendent structure determining the actualization of the symbolic element and the

formation of the series, Deleuze is pointing out a logical consequence: that there is no

transcendent structure ("secondary" structure that "affect[s] a term from the outside")

rightfully determining the relations of series. Thus he describes how series are in a mutual

state of "slippage" and "displacement": "The terms of each series are in themselves

inseparable from the slippages or displacements that they undergo in relation to the terms

of the other" (273).

For the cinema specifically, Deleuze's argument about serial displacement makes

clear how the organization of a film's signs is not rightfully predetermined. This

organization is usually manifest in the film's narrative structure, but Deleuze's fifth

criterion tells us that while narrative may determine series of images to enter into certain

7 This is the same as Deleuze's thesis of modal expression which he develops from Spinoza. From Spinoza we can say that two humans are constitutive of a human series, since both are extended and thinking matter. But, as Deleuze explains in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, these two humans are nevertheless unique (singularities), because each is its own expression of a modal essence contained in the attribute. See Chapter Thirteen: "Modal Existence" (201-215). Chnpt,,r T•,-,-, 46

kinds of relations, this kind of determination is always secondary to the slippage and displacement of the series themselves. 8

6 There is No Transcendent Structure Because the Series Converge upon an Empty Square

(Which is Without its Own Identity)

In his sixth criterion, "The Empty Square," Deleuze describes in more detail his idea of the series by pinpointing the element essential to the very process of displacement involved. He claims that the serial displacement described above depends on a point of convergence between series called the empty square. Deleuze describes the empty square by drawing some similarities between the idea of serial displacement and the idea of sexual difference in Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Deleuze writes that displacement occurs in a language because a point of contact­

an empty square-is presupposed by which series can slip and slide against each other. An

example of the empty square we might think of is "GO" in Monopoly; another is the

empty place in Connect Four (which, when filled, finishes the game). One example

Deleuze gives is "the dummy hand in bridge ("HDWRS?" 275). In order for the

displacement of series not to be determined by a transcendent structure, Deleuze writes

that the empty square must not "itself entail any differential character" (276). Deleuze

emphasizes, then, how the empty square can have no identity proper, but is displaced in

relation to itself: "One would say that[ ... ] it does not coincide with its own resemblance

(and, in this, is not an image); and that it does not coincide with its own identity (and, in

this, is not a concept) (275). Also, Deleuze sees a similarity between the empty square and

8 Deleuze also describes a special kind of time-iinage concerned exclusively with serial relations of narrative sequences called the Genesign. I examine this sign in Chapter Six. Chnptcr 'j\,_,o 47

the operation of Lacan's phallus in the psychoanalytic relation of father-mother-child

(Oedipal triangle).

Lacan, reading Freud, determines the child's experience of the Oedipal triangle to be one of lack. Key to this lack is the child's separation from its mother in the early stages of infancy. The result, according to Lacan, is: 1) the child strives to recover the plenitude lost when separated from the mother; and 2) the child's accession to the signifier of language is a symptom of this striving. For Lacan the phallus is a signifier (not an existing object), that represents the male organ "as the possible object of castration in the Oedipal relation" (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis 134). The child, therefore, identifies with

the phallus as a way of imagining itself as what the mother lacks. Through this identification the child hopes to ameliorate the condition of lack caused by its initial

separation from the primordial breast. And, it is with the threat of castration that the child

makes the transition to sexual difference.

For Deleuze, since the phallus is not a real object (but a point of difference

according to which the terms of the Oedipal triangle become meaningful and the child

enters the Symbolic order), he sees a similarity between its operation and his own idea of

the empty square. For Deleuze, the phallus

is neither the real organ, nor the series of associable or associated images: it is the

symbolic phallus. However, it is indeed sexuality that is in question, a question of

nothing else here [... ]. But the phallus appears not as a sexual given or as the

empirical determination of one of the sexes. It appears rather as the symbolic

organ that founds sexuality in its entirery. ("HDWRS?" 277) Ch:1pt,:r Tw,, 48

Yet Deleuze distances himself from the lack propelling Lacan's conception of the sexual difference. For Lacan, the phallus has no content itself and is something like

Deleuze's empty square, but Lacan makes clear how the subject's relation to the phallus is inseparable from the lack that drives them. Thus the function of the phallus is wholly dependent on the subject's experience of lack, or what Lacan terms the "manQ,ue a etre"

(Lapsley and Westlake 67). Deleuze draws a comparison between the operation of the phallus as a point of difference in the Oedipal triangle and the operation of the empty square in language, but he does not interpret the phallus as a by-product of lack. For

Deleuze, the phallus is a convergence point of difference only, the "differentiating element of difference itself' ("HDRWS?" 275). In this way the displacement of terms produced by the empty square is not a displacement determined by anything transcendent to the terms themselves: "The displacement does not constitute a characteristic added from the outside"

(275). In order to mark his difference from Lacan, Deleuze calls the convergence point represented by the phallus the "object = x."

For Deleuze, the empty square (object= x) is implicit to all regimes of signs, but he

also claims that "the work is itself structural when it sets out to express its own virtualities"

("HDWRS?" 276). With this comment Deleuze is suggesting that some cases of language

pay special attention to the empty square, making the implicit function of the empty square

explicit. An excellent example is given in Adrian Martin's analysis of characterization in

Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973). Scorsese's film is a good example because the point

of difference between series (object = x) is itself actually quite visible. Drawing on a

comment by Jean-Pierre Gorin, Martin claims a certain "blind spot'' or "black hole" in

Mean Streets. Martin describes this point as an essential principle of narration that is

"something you cannot talk about or something you cannot break which is precisely what

allows you the detour" (153). In Mean Streets, Martin claims this blind spot is evident in the apparent failure of Scorsese's protagonists to achieve a totalized identity. As an example we might choose Charlie (Harvey Keitel): his character is constantly displaced between a gangster-series, lover-series, cousin-series, friend-series, martyr-series and betrayer-series. In the film he never settles on one of these series, but inhabits a blind spot of identity. Scorsese does not attempt a resolution, but simply circles this blind spot "over and over" (153). Thus Charlie is the object= x that traverses the series of symbolic structure and "never ceases at once to hollow out and fill in the gap" (Deleuze "HDWRS?"

276).

Deleuze uses his sixth criterion to return to the idea of serial displacement and

emphasize how there is nothing rightfully transcendent to the sign of language by identifying the process of displacement with a specific point of convergence. Most importantly, this point of convergence is nothing but an empty point according to which

series are displaced. The point does not have an identity according to which the relations

of series are determined in a particular way.

7 For Deleuze's Conception of Language to Work, the Language Using Subject Must be

Heroic

In his final criterion, "From Subject to Practice," Deleuze describes his conception

of language in terms of the language using subject. He suggests that the properly structural

subject is one who interprets a sign with a view to the symbolic element of language-in

other words, the structural subject interprets the sign as the singular expression of its

matter.

For Deleuze, the subject of language is heroic when s/he follows the twists and

turns of the symbolic element. He writes that language "depends on the resistant and Ch:-ipt•:r T\1• r, 50

creative force of this hero, on its agility in following and safeguarding the displacements, on its power to cause relations to vary and to redistribute the singularities [... )" ("HDWRS?"

281). When the subject safeguards the displacements of structure, Deleuze claims they are maintaining the emptiness of the empty square (279).

When Deleuze says that the subject follows the twists and turns of the symbolic element, safeguarding its displacements, he is saying that the properly structural subject is aware of the symbolic element underlying all the signs of a language. Practically speaking, this means interpreting the sign strictly in terms of the materiality of its elements and the composition of these elements. This kind of interpretation does not involve thinking about the sign in relation to a predetermined idea of what that sign could mean. And this also implies that the subject does not interpret a sign with the idea of the symbolic element in mind. Instead, an interpretation is properly structural when the subject interprets a sign without any ready-made ideas in mind whatsoever. In Deleuze's conception of language, a

sign is meaningful because it is an expression of a symbolic element, but now he is saying

that even though this is the case, for language to work, the subject must not attribute

anything to the sign other than what may be inferred by the particular composition of its

matter.

To reiterate, it is my contention that this idea of the subject as someone who

safeguards structure depends on a particular conception of the subject Deleuze develops at

length in Difference and Repetition. In this text Deleuze explains how subjectivity is a

problem in philosophy intimately related to thought and interpretation. He is critical of

what he calls the "traditional" conception of the subject in philosophy, claiming that for

philosophers like Descartes, the subject is defined according to the key role certain

psychological presuppositions are said to play in the thought process. According to these

presuppositions, the subject is a suqject precisely because they think in a certain way. For Deleuze, however, this conception of subjectivity and the associated idea of the psychological presupposition implies nothing more than a model of recognition in thought, and Deleuze is quick to point out that "the form of recognition has never sanctioned anything but the recognizable and the recognized" (134). In short, Deleuze argues that

"form will never inspire anything but conformities" (134). In order to distance his own thesis on thought from the model of recognition, one of his key aims in Difference and

Repetition is to uproot the Cartesian thesis of subjectivity. This means that Deleuze does not define the subject according to any psychological presuppositions, but claims that the subject is defined by the potential thoughts they generate in response to an encounter.

"Something in the world forces us to think" he says, and "this something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter' (139). For Deleuze, the subject is a thinking subject, but the kind of thought created is not determined by anything but the nature of the subject's encounter with a stimulation in the perceptual field. Subject and object are in immanence, then, and thought is a product of immanence. In order for the language using subject and the symbolic to be in immanence in Deleuze's essay on structure, the subject must be the kind of subject Deleuze describes in Difference and Repetition; namely, a

subject that does not necessarily think according to any psychological presuppositions.

For Deleuze, this occurs when the empty square is "no longer accompanied by a

nomad subject," when the structure is filled, but its "mobility is lost in the effect of a [... ]

fixed plenitude" ("HDWRS?" 280). A nomad is a person that is not rooted in a specific

territory, but wanders from place to place. In terms of Deleuze's conception oflanguage,

we can say that a nomad subject is one who interprets the sign in the same way they roam

the landscape: in terms strictly of the givens of that particular encounter. Thus a subject

that is not nomadic is one who is located in a specific milieu-this is what Deleuze and

Guattari call a territorialized subject. In terms of language, I would argue that a Ch::pt,,r 'J\,,q 52

territorialized subject is one who interprets language from the fixed perspective, attributing meaning based on fixed cultural or psychological ideas. 1bis is what Deleuze means when he says that structure's "mobility is lost in the effect of a fixed plenitude" ("HDWRS?"

280).9

Deleuze's final criterion suggests that the language using subjects must open themselves to the idea of the sign as a singular expression of a symbolic element, interpreting it in terms of the materiality of its parts only. The language using subject must accompany language "on new paths without occupying it or deserting it" (Deleuze

"HDWRS?" 281).

9 The Deleuzian position on language I am putting forward emphasizes that codes in language, or what I have termed transcendent structures, are not presupposed. Furthermore, transcendent structures are only one point of view on language, one Deleuze is not particularly interested in. He identifies the code with pre-existent meaning, and focuses on the way meaning is produced from semiotic matter. In this chapter I have used Deleuze's thesis on structural analysis to explain what is involved in this process. But I am not denying the importance of transcendent structures in language--or what I described above as a "fixed plenitude"-nor suggesting that Deleuze is not aware of their role. In this respect my position (although in a different context) is much like Stephen Prince's. He attempts to foreground the importance of iconic signs in film semiotics, claiming that these kinds of signs are "pictorial" and "mimetic" and do not signify by virtue of their relationship to "structuralist and Saussurean-derived linguistic models" (16); but at the same time, he clearly states that his thesis "is not intended as a substitute for the very real and necessary work on the role that culture plays in film spectatorship and interpretation" (17). Deleuze and Guattari discuss the relationship between creativity and the code--or what Deleuze calls in his final criterion of structure: deterritorialization and reterritorialization-in detail in terms of the relation between the "smooth" and the "striated" respectively in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia:

Smooth space and striated space-nomad space and sedentary space-[... ]. No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture [... ]. (474)

In this dissertation I do not address the importance of transcendent structures in language. My primary goal is to elucidate Deleuze's semiotic theory of expression (and eventually uncover its application in the (Peircian) signs of the cinema). Discussing the relationship between Deleuze's signs and codes/transcendent structures is a future step in the current project. Conclusion

For the purpose of my project, the brand of structural ana!Jsis Deleuze puts forward in his 1967 essay is a useful way of conceptualizing the relationship between the signaletic material of the cinematic image and the sign. In the first chapter of this project I explained how the signaletic material is the locus of cinematic language. I insisted that, for Deleuze, the sign is an expression of this signaletic material. Consequently, Deleuze's semiotic theory holds that the sign is not rightfully the reflection of transcendent structure. Now, with Deleuze's seven criteria of structure analysis, we can better understand the complexities of the signaletic material-sign relationship.

Each criterion tells us something about how the sign is produced, and how, as the emergent form of the signaletic material, the sign does not presuppose transcendent structure. The first identifies matter as a genesis structure of a language. In the second

Deleuze explains how a genesis structure is without a specifiable content: it is a structure of potential contents, a topology, and it is precisely in this respect it can be called a genesis structure. In the third, Deleuze looks more closely at this idea of potential content, using the ideas of the differential and the singular to show how potential meaning is transformed into actual meaning, and how the signs created are necessarily new and original

(singularities). In the fourth, Deleuze examines the principle of time in language, revealing a dimension of non-chronological time underlying every semiotic expression. In the fifth and sixth, Deleuze extends his discussion in the first five criteria and explains how languages involve packets of signs, and how these packets of signs are rightfully displaced in relation to each other. Finally, Deleuze's thesis culminates in his seventh criterion and his conception of the language using subject. I have noted how a sign, such as the image of

a face in the cinema, is not produced according to the way an amorphous matter is formed Ch:1ptcr Two 54

by a transcendent structure. A sign is an expression of matter, the emergent form of matter. A face in the cinema, therefore, is a transformation offace-ness potential to the elements of the signaletic material (the "modulation features" of the image). Deleuze's criterion of the subject insists that when the subject understands this idea of what a sign is, then the sign is interpreted based on whatever the subject may infer from the dynamic relations of the sign's material parts. Meaning, therefore, is not ready-made, but is a creative (and ethical) endeavor.

In the following chapters of this project I will analyze the signs of Deleuze's cinema books as an extended meditation on structural analysis in the cinematic language. This is a complex task, however, because we will see that Deleuze conceives of structure in the

cinema through the implementation of Peirce's semeiotics. 1n Ilu,

IIU'" n of

the on the 1011 1 ;\, h

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Deleuze and Peirce's Semeiotics: Some Possible Points of Contact

Introduction

In Chapter One I examined Deleuze's critique of Christian Metz's semiology. This critique drew our attention to what is at stake for Deleuze when it comes to the problem of the sign in the cinema. Deleuze describes Metz's idea of the sign in the following terms: the sign is what is produced when transcendent structures shape the signaletic material of the image. For Deleuze, then, one of the things at stake in Metz's account of the sign is the subordination of the image's matter to pre-existent meaning. In place of Metz's thesis,

Deleuze insists that signs are the emergent form of the signaletic material (expressions), and consequently, he places primary importance on the modulation features of the signaletic material itself. In this way meaning is not limited to its already conceptualized form in the transcendent structure.

In Chapter Two I applied an argument Deleuze develops in an early essay called

"How Do We Recognize Structuralism?" in order to draw some conclusions about how the

signaletic material is expressed in signs. I explained that expression is a process that

transforms the modulation features of the signaletic material into something different. A

similar idea of transformation is illustrated in the following simple example: when a beach

bucket is filled with sand and upturned on the shore, the form created by the sand reflects

the shape of the bucket, but at the same time, it is slightly different from the bucket (due to (J,:'lptcr Three 56

the particular properties of the sand). This extraction of a difference from the bucket is a transformation of the bucket's properties-an expression.

In this chapter I set the scene for Deleuze's application of his concept of the sign to the cinema, as it appears in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time­

Image. Deleuze claims to develop his cinematic signs with the help of some ideas he borrows from Peirce's semeiotics. I interrogate semeiotics in order to arrive at an understanding of how Peirce's concept of the sign might appeal to Deleuze. In a nutshell,

I argue the following. I contend that Peirce's signs are immanent to the universe, and based on this principle of immanence, I suggest a sense in which Peirce's signs can afford

Deleuze a way of conceiving of his own concept of the sign as an expression of a semiotic matter.

In order to develop this argument I need to first explain semeiotics. Deledalle tells us that to understand semeiotics we need to understand Peirce's ontology-in other words,

the answers to the semiotic questions can be found in the answers to the ontological

questions of Peirce's philosophy. I begin this chapter by taking Deledalle's advice and

examining Peirce's ontology. Taking my cue from a comment made by James, I argue that

for Peirce an organism evolves according to a relationship to its environment that can be

characterized as one of active adaptation. This is a creative process, similar to the concept of

novelty in Bergson's ontology. In it the organism is thought not to follow a predetermined

course of evolution-in other words, it is not thought to evolve according to transcendent

causality (transcendent structure). Since this is the case, I borrow an expression from

Deleuze and suggest a sense in which organism and environment are "in immanence"

(.rure Immanence 26). Furthermore, I use Massumi's analysis of one of Peirce's

metaphorical examples to describe how active adaptation does not refer to transcendent Chnpt,:r Three 57

structures. What will become clear is a sense in which active adaptation is a way of conceiving of an ontological idea of expression.

Then I turn to Peirce's sign. I start with Peirce's concept of the sign and examine how, based on his three categories of Being, he states that: 1) there are three aspects of every sign, and so a sign is composed of a Representamen, Object and Interpretant; and 2) since there are three categories of experience there are three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object and three kinds of lnterpretant. When referring to Peirce's sign in a practical semeiotic context, I call the different kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant the sign elements of semeiotics. Furthermore, when referring specifically to the different combinations of sign elements potential to the different categories of semeiotics, I call the sign a completed sign. Something I note, however, is that Peirce's categories are ordinal and hierarchical, and this means that the combination of elements must respect these two conditions. Consequently, a Representamen can only be combined with an Object and

Interpretant that are equal to or lower than its phenomenological kind. The result is that the nine sign elements combine to form only ten classes of completed sign. I use Michael

Snow's film Wavelength (1967) as a way of visualizing each of Peirce's nine sign elements.

In this film Snow creates an abstract milieu of light, shadow and sound, and I think that

Snow's images render quite literally the categories of Being and the sign elements characteristic of each category. Towards the end of the chapter I examine the combination of these sign elements and how they form Peirce's ten completed signs. I explain each of

Peirce's signs by interpreting a scene from John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969)

from ten different perspectives.

After outlining the principles of semeiotics, I think about how it might appeal to

Deleuze. It is at the very end of this chapter that I tie Peirce's ontology and semeiotics

together. Based on the homology of Peirce's ontology (active adaptation) and semeiotics Ch:1p1,:r Thro, 58

identified by Deledalle, I argue a sense in which Peirce's signs are immanent to the universe. It is in terms of this argument that I posit my theory as to how Peirce's signs could afford Deleuze a way of conceiving of his concept of the sign as an expression of a semiotic matter.

Immanence: An Organism Evolves by Actively Adapting the Properties of an

Environment

Deledalle tells us that Peirce's semeiotics is an extension of his ontology (70), and so in this first section I will move towards an understanding of semeiotics by first examining Peirce's ontology. In the analysis that follows I will show how, for Peirce, the evolution of an organism is a creative process. The concept of creativity refers to an evolutionary process that does not follow a predetermined path. It is typically associated with Bergson's ontology, but as James points out, creativity can also be attributed to

Peirce's philosophy based on Peirce's conception of habit.1 For both, there is no mechanistic or finalistic causality determining evolution-in other words, there is no transcendent causality determining evolution. Instead, the environment cannot be separated from the life cycle of the organism. In what follows I will interrogate the concept of creativity in evolution in order to arrive at a conception of immanence in

Peirce's ontology.

1 The concept of creativity in evolution, according to which evolution does not follow a predetermined path, is also referred to as novelty. Of Peirce and Bergson,James writes:

Mr. Peirce's views, though reached so differently, are altogether congruous with Bergson's. Both philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes, novelty can appear only as so much "chance"; to one who stands inside it is the expression of "free creative activity." (283)

Peirce himself acknowledges his relationship to Bergson in his correspondence to Victoria Lady Welby (Semiotic and Signifies 142). Chnpt,:r Three 59

Bergson's ontological thesis will give us a foothold in approaching Peirce's.2

Evolution for Bergson, according to Keith Ansell-Pearson, is fundamentally creative. A creative evolution is based on the principle that a living system evolves as the result of the active reality of its own existence. Ansell-Pearson explains that this idea of creativity is contrary to both Charles Darwin's and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's ideas on evolution. In

Darwinian evolution, or natural selection, "It is the environment which simply selects the organism, exterminating the ill-fitted and selecting the fitter ones" (Ansell-Pearson

"Bergson" 147). In Darwin's theory of natural selection "evolution is conceived as the unfolding of subsequent stages that already exist"; in other words, evolution is "always determined by an initial set of problems posed by an 'environment' once and for ever"

(148). Ansell-Pearson calls Lamarck's idea of the way an organism inherits certain acquired characteristics a "finalist" account of evolution, according to which the adaptation of an organism is thought to be based on the recognition and control of the appropriate changes required. Ansell-Pearson tells us that for Bergson, such a process involves the realization of "a plan or program for adaptation" (151). 3

Contrary to both of these ideas is creative evolution, an evolution more in line with the "co-evolutionary" theories of Gilbert Simondon, Brian Goodwin, George Kampis and

Francisco Varela. These accounts posit a more reciprocal relationship of environment and

organism: the life-cycle of the organism is defined by a series of "feedback loops" between itself and the environment. Such a relationship is a "tropistic process," defined in biology

as a growth by extension or bending, according to an external stimulus, where the organism

2 Key to my comparison of Peirce and Bergson are Peirce's ideas outlined in "The Monist Metaphysical Series" (1891-1893) and Reasoning and the Logic of Things (1898), and Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896) and Creative Evolution (1907). 3 Richard Lehan explains how finalism (or teleology) is nothing more than an "inverted mechanism": "It located a determining reality in the future rather than the past, put the emphasis on an internal finality, and gave priority to the controlled nature of 'becoming' rather than of 'being': 'it holds in front of us the light with which it claims to guide, instead of putting it behind"' (Bergson Creative Evolution: 39 qtd. in Lehan: 309). Ch::pt,,r T1m't' 60

is less a passive receptor of sensations and more an active adaptor than Darwinian theory would allow for. According to Ansell-Pearson, Simondon's thesis holds that:

An organism does not build up a rapport with its environment, including

knowledge of it, in abstraction from sensations, but rather "through a problematic

deriving from a primary tropistic unity, a coupling of sensation and tropism." A

living system resolves its problems not simply by adapting itself through modifying

its relationship to its milieu, but rather through a process of self-modification, in

which it invents new structures which then serve to mediate and define its rapport

with the environment. (Simondon L'Individu et sa genese physico-biologj.que.

Grenoble: Jerome Millon, 1964: 28 qtd. in "Bergson": 147)

In the tropistic process, the organism does more than simply modify its relationship to an environment. The organism modifies itself. It is this se!f-modification that defines the

organism's modification of an environment. Like Simondon's thesis of evolution,

Bergson's is contra the linear and mechanistic finalism of Darwin and Lamarck in that it

emphasizes how the environment cannot be separated from the life cycle of the organism:

Bergson gives the example of the eye, noting that to say that the eye "makes use"

of light is not only to declare that the eye is capable of seeing; rather it is to refer to

the exact relations between an organ and the apparatus of locomotion. Moreover,

it would be absurd, he insists, to say that the influence of light has "physically

caused" the formation of those systems that are continuous with the apparatus of

vision, such as a nervous system and an osseous system. Given the limitations of

such a reductive view it becomes necessary to attribute to "organized matter a Chnpt,:r Three 61

certain capacity sui generis [... ] of building up very complicated machines to utilize

the simple excitation that it undergoes." (Bergson Creative Evolution: 76-77 qtd. in

Ansell-Pearson "Bergson": 148)

For Bergson, like Simondon, a creative evolution means that the organism adapts to an environment, but this process of adaptation is not predetermined. The organism adapts based on the conditions of a given situation. This is an active adaptation. Furthermore, the farm the organism takes is created as a result of these conditions. The following passage from Creative Evolution sums up this thesis:

It may perhaps be said that the form could be foreseen if we could know, in all

their details, the conditions under which it will be produced. But these conditions

are built up into it and are part and parcel of its being; they are peculiar to that

phase of its history in which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form:

how can we know beforehand a situation that is unique of its kind, that has never

yet occurred and will never occur again? (27-28 qtd. in Lehan: 309)

The organism is not the telos of the evolutionary process (Ansell-Pearson "Bergson"

149). And as a result, time is not conceived according to the uncovering of pre-existent

forms-between forms as succession, but is more a process of continual actualization.

Therefore, evolution occurs in time as an immanent "becoming" (149), and time is

understood as duration.

Do Peirce's ideas on evolution accord with the same principles of creative

evolution? Deledalle gives us a starting point when he describes Peirce's conception of (J,;ipt,:r Tim,,: 62

"intelligence," a description that clearly gives us an idea of the kind of active adaptation described above:

Peirce's theory may be summed up in the following way. In the course of natural

evolution an animal found a special means of adapting itself to its environment.

This "means" was called "intelligence." "Intelligence" is thus a tool which is not

supernatural, but an extension or rather a continuation of nature. Thus nature has

become intelligent, but no more nor less "intelligible" [.. .]. (70)

Intelligence in this passage is not something that is realized by the organism, it is not something transcendent to the organism. Intelligence is produced as a result of the encounter between organism and environment, of the active adaptation of organism to environment.

We can see in more detail a concept of creativity in evolution if we consider

Peirce's interpretation of Lamarck in light of 1) the principle of chance developed by Darwin in the Origin of Species; and in light of 2) the notion of internal propulsion, developed not only by Lamarck, but also by Weismann, Nageli and Kolliker. According to Peirce, the most important idea in the Origin of Species, and from the evolutionists prior to Darwin

(Kronig, Buckle, Maxwell etc.), is the principle according to which "chance begets order"

(Peirce "Monist" 358), an idea which directly contradicts claims by naturalists like

Weismann, who contend that evolution proceeds according to an inward and necessary

principle and nothing is due to chance.4 Lamarck, on the other hand, can be situated

4 Peirce describes the logic typical of the naturalists:

If an egg is destined to go through a series of embryological transformations, from which it is perfectly certain not to deviate, and if in geological times almost exactly the same forms appear successively, the strong presumption is that this latter succession was as predeterminate and certain to take place as the former. ("Monist" 359) Ch:ipt,:r Thru: 63

between Darwin and Weismann, at least according to Peirce. Like Weismann, Lamarck is seen by Peirce to be expounding a thesis of internal propulsion, but Lamarck's principle of habit differentiates the two thinkers. In Peirce's reading, Lamarckian habit refers to a non­ necessary propulsion, a propulsion we can call creative because it does not involve the realization of pre-existent forms. 5 It is through habit that forms are created, but more importantly, it is through habit that intelligence is manifested. Peirce writes that,

Endeavour[ ... ] is essentially psychical, even though it be sometimes unconscious;

and the growth due to exercise[ ...] follows a law of a character quite contrary to

that of mechanics. Lamarckian evolution is thus evolution by the force of habit

[... ]. Habit is mere inertia, a resting on one's oars, not a propulsion. Now it is

energetic projaculation (lucky there is such a word, or this untried hand might have

been put to inventing one) by which in the typical instances of Lamarckian

evolution the new elements of form are first created. Habit, however, forces them

to take practical shapes, compatible with the structures they affect[... ]. (360)

With his reading of habit from Lamarck it can be said that Peirce describes the same idea

of active adaptation developed by Bergson. Habit is the means by which form is

developed, and like Bergson's theory of creative evolution, nothing predetermines the

outcome of habit in Peirce's thesis: "Habit is a mere inertia[... ] not a propulsion."

Having established a sense in which Bergson and Peirce's theses on evolution can

converge on the concept of active adaptation, I now want to sum up by stating that, in so

far as there is no transcendent causality operating in these evolutionary theses, Peirce's

ontology (and Bergson's) is an ontology of immanence.

s Later, when it comes to the problem of the sign specifically, we will see how Kelly A. Parker reiterates this point in Peirce. She writes: "Nothingforces a tendency towards regularity in the universe" (214). Ch:ipt,:r Tim,,, 64

Immanence is most often used in contrast to transcendence in order to describe an idea of how God is present in the world (Audi 418). For instance, God is said to be immanent when God is thought to be inherent in the world. Alternatively, God is said to be transcendent when God is thought to exist beyond the world, as an external force acting on the world. For Deleuze, this concept of immanence is best outlined in Spinoza's thesis on God (substance). In this context specifically Deleuze explains how God is not a transcendent force acting on the world because God and existing things (like plants, animals, rocks) are "in immanence" (Eure Immanence 26). But Spinoza also affords

Deleuze a more general philosophy of immanence. For Deleuze, objects and bodies in a state of things are said to be in immanence when their relation is not determined by anything independent of the process of their relation-in other words, anything transcendent to that relation. Deleuze explains that a transcendent determination occurs when a value is

"attributed" to an object or objects, the idea of attribution referring to the sense in which a value comes from an external source (27). In Chapter One I identified a conception of the transcendent with the way signs are formed in relation to the ready-made meaning of the code. Now, in the context of Peirce's ontology, I want to draw my arguments together by suggesting a sense in which organism and environment are in immanence. In the absence of a mechanistic or finalistic causality, there is no transcendent structure determining the relation of organism and environment.

Peirce takes Lamarck's thesis on habit as his ontological model for the evolution of an organism. This tells us that evolution for Peirce is creative in much the same way as it is for Bergson. According to both, an organism evolves based only on the properties of a particular environment. Nothing predetermines this relationship. One way we can describe both theories of evolution is to borrow from Deleuze and say that, in so far as Ch::pt,:r Tim,,: 65

there are no transcendent detenninants in these evolutionary theories, organism and environment are in immanence, and Peirce's ontology is a philosophy of immanence.

Peirce's "Parable of the Cave": A Metaphor Design~d to Illustrate the Active Adaptation of

an Organism to its Environment

It is my argument that organism and environment are in immanence in Peirce's ontology because their relationship is not detennined by a transcendent causality

(transcendent structure). An organism activefy adapts itself to the properties of a particular environment. I will now use one of Peirce's many examples, or more specifically,

Massumi's analysis of this example, in an attempt to illustrate the process of active adaptation. The example, which is more of a bizarre parable (Peirce himself even talks of the dangerous possibility of it being confused with "gibberish"), is from a lecture called

"The Logic of Continuity'' which is part of Reasoning and the Logic of Things (242-267).

Massumi argues that in "The Logic of Continuity," Peirce is describing how a subject navigates its position in space by translating the different properties of that space (its smells, its temperature) into varied muscular movements. It is through the subject's comparison of these muscular movements with each other that the space is made meaningful. Massumi describes this process with James' concept of proprioception, and I argue that with this concept we can understand active adaptation, and more generally, a

Peircian philosophy of immanence in the universe.6

6 I am referring here mainly to Massumi's online lecture: "The Parable of the Cave: Blind Version." He also discusses Peirce's "The Logic of Continuity'' in "On the Superiority of the Analog" and he makes further reference to the concept of proprioception in "The Bleed" (265 note 11). Peirce's aim in his lecture is to take his audience back to the primordial moments of evolution. He sets the scene for his metaphorical example:

Begin if you please by imagining a closed cave, bounded on all sides. In order not

to complicate the subject with optical ideas which are not necessary, I will suppose

that this cave is pitch dark. I will also suppose that you can swim about in the air

regardless of gravity. (.Reasoning 252)

The bizarreness of Peirce's example is apparent: he describes a subject in a dark cave without gravity, floating about. Massumi notes that Peirce stipulates three orders of

differentiation in the cave. First, the cave is made up of various odours. Peirce writes that

"the different parts [of the cave] have different odours by which they are known. I will

suppose these odours are those of neroli, portugal, limette, lemon, bergamot, and

lemongrass." Key to this order of differentiation is how the odours, although

heterogeneous, are genericalfy alike. They are, therefore, only vaguely different. Second is

the order of temperature. The cave is made up of regions of different warmth, but like the

various odours, these regions overlap and grade into each other. The third order of

differentiation is given with the sensations of the subject's joints, or what Massumi (from

James) calls proprioception.

From physiology, proprioception is defined as "the sensibility proper to the

muscles and ligaments" (Massumi "The Bleed" 58). This is a very particular kind of

sensibility, however, in that it is opposed to tactile sensation. Tactility registers the

presence of an object based on the effect of that object on the skin-as a surface of

contact--of the perceiving subject (58). In proprioceptive sensibility, an object is initially

sensed by the sensors in the subject's joints, but the object is registered in terms of the movements created by the muscles connected to these sensors. Massumi explains: "The muscles and ligaments register as conditions of movement what the skin internalizes as qualities" (58-59). According to Massumi's reading of "The Logic of Continuity," proprioceptive sensibility, not tactile sensibility, is key to the subject's experience of the

cave. The cave is perceived strictly in terms of the muscular variations of the body.

Having set up these orders of differentiation Peirce explains how, over time (as the

subject floats about in the cave), certain smells and temperatures are recognized. After a while these sensations are attributed to certain parts of the cave. Peirce is describing, at

this stage of his parable, the process of learning. Peirce parallels this process to his concept

of habit, stating that it is through habit that the subject learns the space, eventually working

out which way to tilt the head in order to whiff a certain smell, or which way to twist the

body in order to be enveloped in a blanket of warmth.

As I explained in the first section of this chapter, however, there are no

transcendent structures in Peirce's ontology. I want to use Massumi's reading of "The

Logic of Continuity" to make this principle clear in Peirce's example. Massumi emphasizes

proprioception as key to the learning process in Peirce's cave. I want to emphasize how,

with proprioception, the action of learning is not determined by anything transcendent to

the context of the subject's experience of the cave's properties. With proprioception the

subject navigates the properties of the cave based on the differential relationship of the

subject's muscular movements to each other. There is no transcendent causality guiding

the subject towards a certain act of contortion. The subject learns based on their

translation of the cave's properties into muscular movements and their understanding of

how the relations of muscular movements are constitutive of difference. For my purposes,

this process of translation gives us a way of understanding active adaptation and evolution

in an immanent universe. Furthermore, we can identify proprioception/ active adaptation

with the process of expression I outlined in Chapter Two. Each of these concepts describes a special kind of relation between things (organism and environment; sign and signaletic material) that is not determined by transcendent structures-in short, a relation of immanence.

To sum up, we can argue from Massumi's analysis that Peirce sets up this seemingly ridiculous scenario of the cave-its odours and warmth, the floating subject and proprioception-as a metaphor designed to illustrate the active adaptation of an organism to its environment. In this example the properties of the space are translated into muscular movements, and these properties are then understood in terms of the differential relationship of the subject's muscular movements to each other.

Semeiotics: Nine Sign Elements and Ten Classes of Completed Sign

I will now explicate Peirce's concept of the sign beginning with Peirce's claim that

the universe can be divided into three phenomenological categories of Being. Then I will

analyze how these categories have a bearing on Peirce's concept of the sign. From the

categories I will explain how Peirce describes three aspects of the sign. Furthermore, I will

explain how the sign (and its three different aspects) is deployed in an actual semeiotic

context in a variety of different ways. I use two films to help clarify aspects of my

explication: Snow's Wavelength and Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy.

Any analysis of Peirce's sign must start with his division of the universe into three

ultimate or fundamental properties. He calls these the three phenomenological categones of

Being: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Firstiless is the category of Being that is

ontologically primary. It refers to Being in relation to itself, and for Peirce it is manifest

most typically with qualities. In Peirce's parable of the cave, Firstness is given with the qualities of smell or warmth as they exist in-themselves before they are translated by the muscular movements of the subject's body and assigned relative positions in the space of the cave.7 Secondness is the category of actual things in the universe, of one thing in relation to another. In the cave it is given through the way the actions of the body articulate an odour from the continuum of odours; in so doing, an odour is an actual thing, the existence of which is now significant according to its place in a universe of actions.8

Thirdness takes Secondness a step further and introduces a third factor into the universe: generality. Because of this third factor of generality, the relations of Secondness are made logical.

For Peirce, it is logical for Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness to be ordinal and hierarchical. Deledalle conveys this logic when he writes that, "A Third cannot be an

empty mediation; it includes a Second, which is not an idea of existent, but this or that

existent, and if this existent happens to be, it is because it has been a possible First" (16).

In Peirce's phenomenology, Thirdness contains Secondness and Firstness, and Secondness

contains Firstness. The categories are ordinal and hierarchical in a similar way that a

Russian doll contains a doll within a doll within a doll. In light of the ordinal and

hierarchical nature of the categories, the following diagram of Peirce's conception of the

universe is useful:

7 Peirce gives his own example of Firstness: "The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red[ ... ] (Philosophical Writings 76). 8 Peirce's example ofSecondness is worthy of mention here:

The actuality of the event seems to lie in its relation to the universe of existents. A court may issue injunctions and judgements against me and I not care a snap of my fingers for them. But when I feel the sheriffs hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. (Philosophical Writings 75-76) Figure 3.1

The Universe Divided According to Peirce's Three Categories of Being

Peirce, however, makes clear that the categories are of equal importance, and in this respect the following diagram might be more faithful to his phenomenology:

Figure 3.2

The Universe Divided According to the Three Categories of Being

1 2 3

Peirce's division of the universe into three phenomenological categories has a

bearing on his concept of the sign. As a general semiotic concept, a sign is understood as

something which represents something else. Peirce's concept of the sign is much the same,

but he defines this process of representation in accordance with the three categories of

Being noted above. He explains in his Collected Papers that, fl-.. __ ,, 71

A Sign or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a

Second, called its Object, as "to be capable of determining a lbird, called its

Inte,pretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands to

itself to the same Object." (2.274 qtd. in Deledalle: 38)

Most basically, Peirce's sign is something that exists, in-itself. But also, Peirce's sign is something which stands for something else; for example, smoke is a sign of fire; or the word D-O-G is a sign of my dog Fido at home. And in a final complication, Peirce defines his concept of the sign as something which stands for something else for some inte,preti.ng mind. For Peirce, therefore, a sign is made up of what I will call the above three aspects. 9

Moreover, these three aspects correlate with Peirce's three phenomenological categories of

Being. We can define Peirce's concept of the sign more accurately and say that its three

aspects are: 1) the sign in-itself as a First; 2) the sign in relation to another thing (its object)

as a Second; and 3) the sign in relation to its object for some interpreting mind as a Third.

Peirce calls the first aspect of the sign the Representamen; he calls the second aspect of the

sign the sign-object relation, or Object for short; and he calls the third aspect of the sign

the Interpretant. Consider the following diagram of Peirce's concept of the sign:

Figure 3.3

Peirce's Sign (Divided According to its Three Aspects)

Representamen Object Interpretant

9 I am borrowing the term "aspect" (as a way of describing the three parts of Peirce's sign) from Deleuze Q"'ime 30). ' i .. ,,.,·: ; !·. 72

Peirce's division of the universe into three phenomenological categories of Being has a further bearing on his concept of the sign. Since Peirce's three categories of Being imply that there are three kinds of experience in the universe, it follows that there are three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object, and three kinds of Interpretant in semeiotics. Consequently, we need to combine figure 3.2 and figure 3.3 and produce the following representation of Peirce's sign:

Figure 3.4

Three Categories of Sign in Semeiotics

Category

1 2 3 Representamen Representamen Representamen Aspect Object Object Object Inte retant Inte retant Inte retant

Figure 3.4 tells us that there are three principal categories of Peirce's concept of the sign.

There is a Firstness of the Representamen, Object and Interpretant; a Secondness of the

Representamen, Object and Interpretant; and a Thirdness of the Representamen, Object

and Interpretant. Each category of Representamen, Object and Interpretant has a

character particular to Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness. Let me explain. A Firstness of

the Representamen is a certain kind of sign particular to Being in-itself: it is a quality that is

a sign. A Firstness of the Object is a sign-object relation particular to Being in-itself.

Being in-itself does not involve physical or logical relations (since there are no actual objects

between which these relations could be physical or logical), and so Peirce says that the sign

particular to this category stands for some possible object. Furthermore, it follows that

within this category a Firstness of the Interpretant is most general and fleeting. A

Secondness of the Representamen is a certain kind of sign particular to actual/ empirical '-.• ,,, 1 I. 73

Being it is a physically occurring event in a state of things that is a sign. Since actual Being involves physical and dynamic relations of objects, the sign particular to this category stands in a genuine relation to its object. Furthermore, a Secondness of the Interpretant is not as general as a Firstness of the Interpretant, but is more specific since it is conceived in relation to an actual object. A Thirdness of the Representamen is a certain kind of sign particular to logical Being: it is an event in a state of things that is a sign, but more than this, it is an event conceived as a general type that is representative of some law. It involves a more developed sign-object relation than the brute empiricism of Secondness: it involves an abstract sign-object relation. Finally, its Interpretant is not limited to the specifics of its object's actual existence, but the Interpretant ofThirdness makes logical and

reasoned inferences based on the object's actual existence.

I have outlined the concept of Peirce's sign, noting how (from the categories of

Being), it has three aspects (Representamen, Object and Interpretant), and how there are

three principal categories of sign-in other words, there are three principal kinds of

Representamen, three principal kinds of Object, and three principal kinds oflnterpretant.

Now, however, I want to consider Peirce's sign practical!J, as it is deployed in an actual

semeiotic context. Consider table 3.1 below and the names Peirce gives the different kinds

of Representamen, Object and Interpretant:

Table 3.1

A Tri-Square of the Nine Sign Elements of Semeiotics

1 2 3 Representamen Qualisign Sinsign Legisign Object Icon Index Symbol Interpretant Rheme Dicisi Ar ment Ch:-ipt,:r Three 74

Table 3.1 is based on the representation of Peirce's sign given in figure 3.4. I will use this

table as a way of presenting the different kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant in their practical application. In this format, I will call Peirce's aspects of the sign, the sign

elements of semeiotics. I will analyze the specifics of these sign elements in detail shortly,

but first I want to clarify that Peirce's sign is comprised of a Representamen, Object and

Interpretant, and since this is the case, the above sign elements suggest a range of different ways a Representamen can be combined with an Object and Interpretant.

When referring to the sign from the perspective of its combination of the sign

elements in a semeiotic context, I will call the sign a completed sign. The fact that there are

nine sign elements suggests a certain amount of variation potential to the completed sign.

Peirce's categories, however, are ordinal and hierarchical, and this means that the

combination of elements involved in every sign is ordered by a certain leading principle

derived from Peirce's phenomenology. This is what James Liszka calls the "qualification

rule," which states that a First cannot be combined with a Second or a Third, and similarly,

that a Second cannot be combined with a Third (45). Instead, a Representamen can only

be combined with an Object that is equal to or lower than the Representamen's

phenomenological kind; and, the Object can only be combined with an Interpretant that is

equal to or lower than the Object's phenomenological kind (45). The result is that Peirce's

sign elements combine to form only ten classes of completed sign: Cl,:1ptcr Tim,: 75

Table 3.2

Ten Principal Completed Signs of Semeiotics (Deledalle 19)

R 0 I I Rl 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign II R2 01 I1 Rhematic Iconic Sinsign III R2 02 12 Rhematic Indexical Sinsign IV R2 02 12 Dicent lndexical Sinsign V R3 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Legisign VI R3 02 11 Rhematic lndexical Legisign VII R3 02 12 Dicent lndexical Legisign VIII R3 03 I1 Rhematic Symbolic Legisign IX R3 03 12 Dicent Symbolic Legisign X R3 03 I3 Argument Symbolic Le~sivi

* Note: All expressions such as Rl, 02, 13 should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen which is a First, an Object which is a Second, and an lnterpretant which is a Third.

Before I analyze the ten completed signs of semeiotics, I examine each of Peirce's nine sign elements. To help us understand the complexities of semeiotics, I will look for the appearance of these sign elements in a cinematic example, Wavelength. 1bis film is a useful example because it makes quite blatant the properties of the universe Peirce outlines in his op.tology. Wavelength presents the properties essential to the very fabric of the state

of things. It does not subordinate these properties to plot or narrative development, but makes them valid and relevant for themselves. It presents the properties of an ontology. I want to take as my object specifically the play of light and the affect of shadow and

superimposition in Snow's film. 10

10 My analysis of Wavelength takes as its model Deledalle's explication of Peirce's analysis of Robinson Crusoe's footprint (4.531 qtd. in Deledalle: 105). Ch:ipt,:r Thn:,, 76

Wavelength is not a feature length film. In this film Snow uses a forty-five minute zoom to explore a room lengthways from one end to another. The camera eventually settles on an extreme dose-up of a photograph of the sea, stuck on the far wall of the room. Throughout the duration of the zoom, various things happen. We see some girls come into the room and listen to the radio. We hear a man enter the room and collapse.

We see one of the girls describe the man on the telephone. We can't see the man ourselves, for the zoom has already passed him. As the camera leaves the dead body in its wake, Snow's film makes us feel frustrated and helpless. As well as the dialogue and music, there is a (non-diegetic) electronic sound accompanying Snow's zoom. Snow himself describes this component of the soundtrack as a "total glissando": "a sine wave, which goes from its lowest (50 cycles per second) note to its highest (1200 c.p.s.) in 40 minutes"

(Sitney 375). There are various superimpositions and flashes of colour animating what we

see ("at one stage, a phantom of the girl in negative superimposition redoubles the

scene"),11 and at times, the image is sepia, then red. Snow uses different filters, film stocks

and shifting light sources to emphasize a dimension of the image other than its volumetric

depth.

In table 3.1 the first of Peirce's sign elements is given with the first division of the

trichotomy of the Representamen: Peirce's Qualisign. A Qualisign is a sign of Being in­

itself; for example the quality of redness or blackness independent of any object (a fez, or a

black stove). In Wavelength. we can say that the shadows, considered in terms of their

qualitative characteristics are Qualisigns onfy.

The second division of the trichotomy of the Representamen is given with Peirce's

Sinsign. A Sinsign is a sign of actual Being. The prefix "sin" refers to the idea of singular

occurrence (2.245), the Sinsign's "instantiation is the determining feature of its

11 This description is from Deleuze's analysis of Wavelength (Movement 122). representative capability [... ] it acts primarily through its singularity, its temporality, or its unique location" (Liszka 36). Peirce gives the example of a page in a book: "When we say of a page in a book, that it has 250 'words' upon it, of which twenty are 'the's, the 'word' is a sinsign" (Semiotic and Signifies 32). What, then, are some Sinsigns from Snow's film? A particular shadow at a particular spot on the timber floor is a Sinsign.

The third division of the trichotomy of the Representamen is given with Peirce's ugisign. A Legisign is a sign of logical Being. The representative capability of the Legisign is not based on its singularity, its unique location as a Second. Peirce writes instead that a

Legisign determines an occurrence according to a "definite identity," and in this respect it can have "a great variety of appearances" (Semiotic and Signifies 32). Consider again

Peirce's example of the page of a book: "As we use the term 'word' in most cases, saying that 'the' is one 'word' and 'an' is a second 'word', a 'word' is a legisign" (32). With this example, the identity of 'word' has been conferred on the individual 'words' ('the' and 'an').

Moreover, Peirce calls these occurrences of the Legisign Replicas. Turning to Wavelength. a

shadow is a Legisign in so far as it might be considered logically as belonging to a certain

type of shadow; for example, it might be considered as a hard-edged or harsh shadow

typical of_noir films such as Michael Curtiz's Mildred Peirce (1945).

In table 3.1, the first division of the trichotomy of the Object is given with Peirce's

Icon. Generally, Peirce defines an Icon as that which represents its object by virtue of

qualitative likeness (2.247). For example, "a photograph or a portrait is an Icon because

the photograph has many features which the original face has" (Liszka 37). In this case

Peirce writes that an Icon represents by virtue of "characters which belong to it in-itself as

a sensible object, and which it would possess just the same were there no object in nature

that it resembled" (2.447 qtd. in Liszka: 37). For Peirce, the Icon is also similar to its object

when "the relations among the elements in the sign are isomorphic to relations among elements in the object"; for example, a map is an Icon of a particular terrain (Liszka 37). In

Snow's film we might say that a shadow is an Icon in so far as the shape of its contours stands for the movement of the sun in the loft space of the diegesis.

The second division of the tr:ichotomy of the Object is given with the Index. Since the Index is a sign element of Secondness, it follows that the Index does not stand for its object by virtue of qualitative likeness (Icon), but is "a sign which refers to the object it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object'' (2.248). The Index is the sign of a genuine relation, "its 'here and now' vis-a-vis the object, rather than any qualities it has"

(Peirce 4.56 qtd. in Liszka: 38). Moreover, Peirce writes that in so far as the Index is

affected by the Object, it has some quality in common with the Object, therefore implying

a "peculiar kind" of Icon (2.248). We can say that this is a peculiar relationship because the

qualitative expression particular to the Icon is, in this case, based on actual modification:

"This act[ ... ] is a peculiar act of the will whereby we cause an image, or icon, to be

associated, in a peculiarly strenuous way, with an object represented to us by an index'

(2.435). A common example given by Peirce is smoke as an Index of fire. Taking this

concept of the ·Index to Wavelength, the shadows are an Index of the sun's rays as they

beam through the huge windows of the apartment. The shadows are an Index of the sun's

presence.

The third division of the tr:ichotomy of the Object is given with Peirce's Symbol.

The Symbol eventuates with the establishment of a rule of generality (law), and in this case

the Symbol is said to represent its object by virtue of its embodiment of that very rule.

"The Symbol is connected with its object 'by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using mind,

without which no such connection would exist"' (Peirce 2.299 qtd. in Liszka: 39). A rule is

established through habit, but as I explained above, the outcome of habit is not predetermined.12 The rule, therefore, is produced as a by-product of the ongoing semeiotic process. For example, the ongoing experience of light and shadow throughout the course of Snow's film might be the basis for establishing the shadows as (symbolic) representations of chronological time. With this, we can see also how the Symbol requires

Secondness in order to be invested with application, and Firstness in order to denote its character: "A Symbol is a sign naturally fit to declare that the set of objects which is denoted by whatever set of indices may be in certain ways attached to it is represented by an icon associated with it" (Peirce 2.295).

In table 3.1 the third trichotomy of Peirce's Tri-Square is the Interpretant. The

Interpretant is the third aspect of Peirce's concept of the sign. This aspect is concerned with the interpretation associated with the sign-object relation. There is a kind of interpretation characteristic of each category of Being, and so there are three sign elements of the Interpretant. I will sustain my reference to Wavelength and explain these by examining three principal ways the shadows are interpreted by a subject.

The first kind of interpretation accords with the first division of the trichotomy of

the Interpretant and the sign element Peirce calls a R.heme. The Rheme is the Interpretant

of Firstness, or Being in-itself. This kind of interpretation is one that focuses on the

qualitative properties of the sign (Firstness), not its existential properties (Secondness), or its

logical potential (Ibirdness). In so far as this is the focus of a rhematic interpretation,

Peirce describes the Rheme as a general and vague interpretation of its object (4.539 qtd. in

Liszka: 41). In Wavelength I want to broadly identify a Rheme when the shadows are

interpreted generally, in terms of their essential qualities only.

The second kind of interpretation accords with the second division of the

trichotomy of the lnterpretant and the sign element Peirce calls a Vicent. The Dicent is the

12 For an extended discussion of this idea of habit in semeiotics, see Parker (214). Cl,:1pt,:r Tim,, 80

Interpretant of Secondness, or actual Being. 1bis kind of interpretation is one that focuses on the existential properties of the sign, not its logical potential (Thirdness). In so far as this is the focus of a Dicent, the Dicent is more specific than the Rheme because it ascertains whether or not certain characteristics are true of its object (Llszka 41). In

Wavelength I want to broadly identify a Dicent with an interpretation of the shadows that makes some statement of fact about the existential properties of the sun.

The third kind of interpretation accords with the third division of the trichotomy of the Interpretant and the sign element Peirce calls an Argument. The Argument is the

Interpretant of 1birdness, or logical Being. Implied by the Argument is the formation of a logical judgement, of which Peirce has the following to say: "An act of judgement is the self-recognition of a belief' (Semiotic and Signifies 34). The Argument is a more evolved

Dicent, and Peirce makes this clear when he continues in the above remark and compares the Argument to the proposition: "A belief," he says, "consists in the acceptance of a proposition as the basis of conduct deliberately." An Argument is a judgement: a new piece of information that is not stated by the sign-object relation but is inferred from it.

An Argument reveals the "lawlike or habitual characteristics of its object" (Llszka 52), and in Snow's film an Argument is formed whenever the shadows are interpreted by inference.

I have explained the different kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant that arise when Peirce's concept of the sign is considered practical~in other words, when it is deployed in an actual semeiotic context. I have called these aspects of the sign, when considered from the perspective of their different categorical kinds, the sign elements of semeiotics. Now I want to consider their combination. When referring to the sign from the perspective of its combination of the sign elements in a semeiotic context, I will call the sign a completed sign. Furthermore, since Peirce's categories are ordinal and hierarchical, I Ch~pt,:r Three 81

explained how the sign elements can be combined to form only ten classes of completed sign:

Table 3.2

Ten Classes of Completed Signs of Semeiotics (Deledalle 19)

R 0 I I Rt 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign II R2 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Sinsign III R2 02 12 Rhematic Indexical Sinsign IV R2 02 12 Dicent Indexical Sinsign V R3 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Legisign VI R3 02 11 Rhematic Indexical Legisign VII R3 02 12 Dicent Indexical Legisign VIII R3 03 11 Rhematic Symbolic Legisign IX R3 03 12 Dicent Symbolic Legisign X R3 03 13 Argument Symbolic Legisil!ll

* Note: All expressions such as R1, 02, 13 should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen which is a First, an Object which is a Second, and an Interpretant which is a Third.

Table 3.2 notes the completed signs of Peirce's semeiotics are generated from the following combinations. A Legisign can be embodied in either an Icon, Index or Symbol. If it is embodied in Symbol, it can be interpreted as an Argument (X: Argument Symbolic Legisign), a

Dicent (XIV: Dicent Symbolic Legisign), or a Rheme (VIII: Rhematic Symbolic Legisign). If it is embodied in an Index, it can be interpreted as a Dicent (VII: Dicent Indexical Legisign), or a

Rheme (VI: Rhematic Indexical Legisign). If it is embodied in an Icon, it can only be interpreted as a Rheme (V: Rhematic Iconic Legisign). A Sinsign can be embodied in either an

Icon or Index. If it is embodied in an Index, it can be interpreted as a Dicent (IV: Dicent

Indexical Sinsign), or as a Rheme (III: Rhematic Indexical Sinsign). If it is embodied in an Icon, it can only be interpreted as a Rheme (II: Rhematic Iconic Sinsign). A Qualisign can only be embodied in an Icon, and can only be interpreted as a Rheme (I: Rhematic Iconic Qualisign). Ch:1pt1,r Thrn, 82

In what follows I want to breathe some more life into these classes of sign and, using a cinematic example, explain their significance in more concrete terms. I will refer to a sequence in Midnight Cowboy where Rizzo (played by Dustin Hoffman) is almost run over by a taxi on a busy New York City street.13 I will look at Rizzo's relationship to the taxi from a number of different perspectives, and beginning with the Rhematic Iconic

Qualisign I will explicate each of Peirce's ten classes of completed sign.

Schlesinger's film begins with an introduction to Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight).

Joe is a good looking and naive twenty-eight-year-old Texan Cowboy. He moves to New

York because he thinks he can make a lot of money from "hustling" wealthy middle-aged women. At the beginning of the film he arrives in the "Big Apple," but soon he discovers

that getting women to pay to have sex with him isn't as easy as he thought. Down on his luck, he meets a sleazy looking guy in a bar whom Joe thinks has the kind of street

knowledge he needs to make his hustling business a success. The guy's name is Rizzo.

The scene I will discuss takes place when Joe and Rizzo leave the bar together. They walk

towards us, along a New York sidewalk, as the camera tracks backwards in a medium close

shot. Joe is left of the frame's centre, and Rizzo walks quite closely by his side. Joe wears a

large cowboy hat, a vivid blue shirt, and a tan coloured tasselled jacket. He is a big guy, like

a beacon on the grey sidewalk. Rizzo on the other hand is small and awkward. He wears a

white suit, which contrasts his black, greasy slicked hair, with a red t-shirt beneath. He

walks with a limp. Suddenly there is a screech of car tyres. In an instant Rizzo turns and

screams "HEY!" as a yellow taxi enters the right of the frame and grinds to a halt.

Obviously Joe and Rizzo have stepped off the sidewalk and onto the busy street, and they

both jump as the taxi almost collides with them. As the taxi starts moving again and the

characters take a few shaky steps, Rizzo turns and bangs his fists on its bonnet. He yells at

13 I have chosen this scene because of its correspondence to the example discussed by Floyd Merrell in "Peirce's Ten Classes of Sign in a Somewhat Different Vein." Ch:1pt,,r Thff'' 83

the driver: "I'm walkin'here! I'm walkin'here!!" The taxi takes off and Rizzo offers one last bit of abuse, gesturing an "up-yours" signal to the taxi driver. Then, Joe and Rizzo continue walking; Rizzo takes Joe's arm and says, as if nothing happened, "Don't worry about that ... " After a moment he says candidly, "Actually, that ain't a bad way to pick up insurance."

I want to start explicating the ten classes of completed sign by focussing on the most primary element in Rizzo's near-death experience. As he hobbles along the street next to Joe, and in the instant when the taxi nearly hits them, we can locate an absolute

First in Rizzo's reaction. This would be, perhaps, the vague feeling he has about something-like theyellowness of the city street where a yellow taxi is approaching. This component of the experience is given with what Peirce calls the Rhematic Iconic Qualisign

(1).14

Next is a slightly more developed kind of sign. We can say that another stage in

Rizzo's reaction is his vague feeling (of yellowness) associated with an actual event

(Sinsign). He senses something, an actual thing, however this is as far as his reaction goes-in other words, Rizzo doesn't yet know what kind of event his feeling is associated with (is it a yellow submarine, a yellow car, a glint of the sun in a puddle on the sidewalk?).

In this respect, the event (whatever it is) is more a pattern in his perceptual field, a scheme or a diagram-in short, what Peirce calls an Icon.15 And obviously, it is in the sense of the iconic representation of the event that interpretation is vague, or in Peirce's terms, rhematic. What we are left with is the second class of sign in semeiotics: the Rhematic

Iconic Sinsign (II).

14 I am referring quite closely here to Merrell's description of the Qualisign in ''Peirce's Basic Classes of Signs in a Somewhat Different Vein." 15 ''Pattern" and "scheme" are from Merrell. "Diagram" is Peirce's example of the Icon (2.255). Ch:.pt,~r Thru: 84

The actual event Rizzo senses, however, seems more brute when we consider how it ahnost runs them over. The moment when Rizzo is startled is the moment when the event is no longer a pattern in his field of perception, but a physical thing like his own body. Throughout the film Rizzo seems very aware of the place his body occupies in a universe of (potentially threatening) objects and bodies. "I'm just a cripple with a bum leg," he says often, "Leave me alone!" Returning to our example, the event now is in an indexical relationship with Rizzo, but it is only a brute force, jolting Rizzo into a vague

realization of something. Rizzo yells a startled "Hey!", or what Peirce would call a Rhematic

Indexical Sinsign (III). 16

Rizzo is startled, but this surprise is soon directed at something specific. It's not

long before his surprise becomes shock at something going on around him. We can say that

his reaction is more specific, it's directed to some property of the event, but Rizzo isn't

quite sure what property specifically, and so he isn't yet ready to form any judgements

about the event. Peirce describes this kind of experience with a Dicent Indexical Sinsign,

and suggests a weathervane as an example (2.257). An interpretation is limited to the actual fact of the wind's force on the weathervane, a series of propositions are formed regarding

the wind's properties (its strength and cardinal direction), but judgements are not yet made,

and so an interpretation is essentially open ended. The same propositions are formed by

Rizzo as he is shocked by the event: the screech of tyres, the smell of burnt rubber, a gust

of wind, vibrations through the asphalt. As the taxi hurtles towards Rizzo, he's more than

aware of his place in a field of objects and bodies (Rhematic Indexical Sinsign), he's aware

of a connection that's about to link his body to some specific object. The sign is a Dicent

Indexical Sinsign (IV).

16 Peirce's example of the Rhematic Indexical Sinsign is "a spontaneous cry" (2.256), like "Ouch!" (Parmentier 18). Ch:ipt,,r Three 85

Another stage occurs when Rizzo begins to make some assumptions about his situation. Following from a brute experience of the event is Rizzo's determination to take a course of action-in other words, experience now takes on the category of Thirdness.

The first part of this process occurs with Rizzo's recognition that the danger he is facing is in the form of a car. The screech of the tyres the bonnet the windshield the ' ' ' yellowness in Rizzo's perception constitute a figure that stands for the object "car." 17 In this respect Rizzo is creating a Legisign in its most general form: his experience is not of this or that car, a dangerous car or another careless taxi, but just a "car." Peirce calls this kind of Legisign a Rhematic Iconic Legisign (V), and in our example, such a sign is a "car" apart from its factual individuality.18

We can think through the next part of this process if we imagine the moment when

Rizzo recognizes the Legisign "car'' to be part of a specific state of things that includes his body. A "car" is now the "car." From Peirce, the Legisign is indexical. However, the

consequences of the "car" are not entirely given, and the interpretation is still rhematic.

What is created is Peirce's Rhematic Indexical Legisign (VI).

Shortly, following the screech of the car and his initial surprise, Rizzo turns to the

"car" and screams at the driver: "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!!" With this utterance,

the Dicent Indexical Legisign (VII) is revealed. Rizzo is shocked by the presence of the

"car," but now he is checking the facts of the situation. He is aware of his relationship to

the "car": of the "car's" properties as something that moves fast and is heavy in

comparison with the slowness and self-conscious fragility of his own body. However he

hasn't yet evaluated this relationship and decided, for example, whether the "car" has

placed him in unnecessary danger. Instead he takes stock of the facts associated with the

17 I have borrowed the term "figure" from Merrell. 18 Peirce's example of the Rhematic Iconic Legisign is "a diagram, apart from its factual individuality" (2.258). Parmentier describes this sign by referring us to architectural orders, like the Doric (low proportions, shaft without base, saucer shaped capital), aside from their implementation in certain buildings (18). "car," and this is suggested by what he yells, and also with what is implied by what he yells; for instance "I'm walking herl' also implies Rizzo's awareness of the car moving thm (as well as other people, other cars, and other facts associated with this particular state of things).

Another stage in Rizzo's representation of the experience occurs when Rizzo isn't simply shocked by the "car," but with his realization that the "car" is a Symbol with certain implications. Yet a Symbol isn't always the object of evaluation, and so in identifying a

Symbol Rizzo isn't necessarily making any claims about it. One aspect of the Symbol in

Peirce's semeiotics is that it can be interpreted thematically, thus giving rise to a Rhematic

Symbolic Legisign (VIII). In Rizzo's case this sign might be evinced had he yelled "Car!", since this utterance refers us to the "car's" symbolic value, but without specific reference to any specific context or implication.19

Rizzo, after being shocked by the presence of the "car" and recognizing that there

are certain generalizations particular to the symbolic value of a "car" negotiates the Symbol

by considering it in relation to the particular situation at hand. With this, Rizzo makes

some claims about the Symbol; however these kinds of claims don't have to be justified,

but can be more like a string of propositions. They are of the nature of Peirce's Dicent

Symbol (IX). Rizzo acknowledges the Symbol when he says to the driver of the taxi: ''You

have no right to treat me that way!"; or when he slurs "Fuck You!"; and even when he

gestures "up-yours" with his hand. Rizzo's expletives and action at this point suggest that

he is making potential judgements about the car-in other words, propositions that interrogate

the symbolic value of the "car."

19 From Peirce an example of the Rhematic Symbol is "a common noun" (2.261), and I have borrowed the example of someone screaming "Car!" from Merrell:

What does this simple sign, a mere noun, mean? [... ] If uncontextualized the sign doesn't mean much at all. If during the night you sit up in bed and scream "Car!," anyone that might be present It is at the very end of Rizzo's near death experience that he makes a judgement about what has happened, evincing the Argument Symbolic Legisign (X). An Argument interrogates the Symbol and then makes some sort of claim. For example, Rizzo may claim that cars should always give way to pedestrians since they are bigger; therefore the taxi driver is in the wrong for nearly running them over. For Peirce, Arguments are often formed through habit, and as I discussed above nothing forces a tendency to habit in the universe. In this respect an Argument is not necessarily predetermined, is always fallible, and can draw any conclusion from what is given. The actual conclusion drawn by Rizzo, as suggested by his final words to Joe on the matter, is that the car's actions may lead to them getting rich from a massive insurance claim. Rizzo sees dollar signs.

There is one problem with my example, however, since it implies that the various

combinations of Qualisign, Sinsign and Legisign-in other words, the various classes of

sign-are subordinate to the Argument, this latter sign being seen as the most completed

sign since it suggests the formation of a judgement as the most evolved state of semeiotics.

I want to conclude by emphasizing that this is not the case, that the ten classes of sign are

present in varying degrees of distinction in various modes of semiotic representation.

There are numerous occasions throughout Midnight Cowboy where Rizzo's representation

of an experience only goes so far as a Qualisign, or where Dicent Symbols dominate. What

is important is how an experience can be represented in a number of ways (in terms of its

Qualisigns, Sinsigns and Legisigns).

In this section I have explicated Peirce's sign. I have explained how, based on his

division of the universe into three categories of Being, he arrives at nine individual sign

elements and ten completed signs of semeiotics. In what follows I will consider this

would certainly give you a puzzling stare, especially if you awoke him or her. What car? Where? When? Why did you say that? (5) Ch:1p,1:r TbrCI' 88

definition of the sign in light of Peirce's ontology and begin my comparison with Deleuze's semiotics.

Some Implications of Peirce's Ontology and Semeiotics for Deleuze's Concept of the Sign

In this final section of the chapter I will draw together my discussion of Peirce's ontology and his theory of the sign in order to hypothesize some possible points of contact between semeiotics and Deleuze's concept of the sign. I will argue a sense in which semeiotics can afford Deleuze a way of conceiving of his concept of the sign as an expression of a semiotic matter. I will make this point based on Deledalle's contention that the principles of Peirce's ontology are paralleled by the principles of semeiotics. Implied by this parallel is an absence of external causality determining the outcome of semeiotics.

Peirce's signs are each concerned with a specific kind of representation of an object for a

subject. With the idea that there is no external causality determining this representation, I argue that Peirce's signs are immanent to the universe (they are not determined by

transcendent structures), and since this is so, they afford a way of conceiving of Deleuze's

conception of the sign as an expression. But, while this point is the outcome of Deledalle's

claim, I nevertheless demonstrate that it is evident in semeiotics Ol!JWt!JI as the outcome of

the underlying continuity of matter and mind in Peirce's philosophy. Based on this

continuity of matter and mind, the principle of immanence in Peirce's philosophy as a

whole is emphasized.

In Charles S. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics,

Deledalle suggests that Peirce's semeiotics is paralleled by his ontology. He makes this

point when he writes that answers formulated in relation to questions posed about

semeiotics are the "corollaries" of answers formulated in relation to questions posed about Peirce's ontology (70-71). As I said above, I want to use this remark as my starting point for making some general claims about Peirce's concept of the sign and how it might appeal to Deleuze.

I will approach Deledalle's remark by stating that the relationship between organism and environment in Peirce's ontology is homologous to the relationship of representation between subject and object in semeiotics, and then by exploring how this might be the case. Based on Peirce's reading of Lamarck's thesis on habit, I argued at the beginning of this chapter that in Peirce's ontology organism and environment are in immanence. In the absence of a mechanistic or finalistic causality, there is no transcendent structure determining the relation of organism and environment in Peirce's ontology. To put this reading of immanence into the context of semeiotics (as Deledalle suggests we

can), we can say that there is no transcendent structure determining the representation of

an object for a subject. In other words, Peirce's concept of the sign does not depend on a

transcendent structure in order to make it meaningful for a subject.

What are some implications associated with this concept of the sign and

representation? If the sign does not depend on a transcendent structure in order to make it

meaningful, the sign, obviously, is something that exists independently in-itself. A sign is

immanent in the sense I described earlier in this chapter. An associated implication is the

following: a subject does not rightfully interpret a sign by adding a new knowledge to that

sign, and this is because the sign does not require anything in order to make it meaningful.

In respect of this kind of interpretation, the subject is not transcendent to the sign, and

subject and sign are in immanence in the sense suggested above by Deledalle.

Since Peirce's signs can be said to have an independent existence, there are

implications for Deleuze's semiotics. In Chapter One I explained that a sign in semiology

is produced when a transcendent structure shapes a semiotic matter. Deleuze's semiotics (J,npt,:r Three 90

stipulates, however, that a sign is the emergent form of a semiotic matter. For Deleuze, matter does not depend on transcendent structure for its formation in signs, and it is on this point that Deleuze's semiotics and semiology are different. Deleuze describes his understanding of the relationship between semiotic matter and the sign with the concept expression, for expression refers to the very process of emergence described above. As an expression, the sign is not a product of a transcendent structure. It rightfully exists independently of anything else. Furthermore, if the sign is an expression and does not depend on anything else for its meaning, then an interpretation of it will be a truly creative act. What is suggested is an idea of the sign and interpretation similar to the idea of creativity in evolution.

Moreover, conceiving Deleuze's sign in this way brings into light some initial points of contact between Deleuze and Peirce's semeiotics. Both Deleuze and Peirce put forward a concept of the sign that is independent of transcendent structure: an immanent conception of the sign and meaning.

Based on Deledalle's contention that Peirce's semeiotics is paralleled by his ontology, I have argued a sense in which Peirce's signs can be conceived of as immanent, and moreover, that this immanence of the sign brings semeiotics in line with Deleuze's concept of the sign outlined in Chapter One and Chapter Two. Now, however, I want to note that Peirce himself suggests a sense in which his signs are immanent when he bases his philosophy as a whole on an idea of continuity in the universe.20

Peirce sometimes emphasizes Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness as phaneroscopic categories of Being rather than phenomenological categories, and this is for a specific reason.

Deledalle tells us that Peirce sometimes calls a phenomenon--or what appears-a phaneron

20 Deledalle originally drew my attention to continuity in Peirce's metaphysics. I am referring to his essays "Peirce ou Saussure" (1976), and "Saussure et Peirce" (1976) reprinted as "Semeiotic and Semiology'' in Charles S. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs" (100-114). Since Deleuze attributes his understanding of Peirce to Deledalle's Charles S. Peirce: Ecrits sur Ies signe (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1978) and Theorie et pratiq,µe du signe: Introduction ala semiotiQUe de Charles S. Peirce (Paris: Payot, 1979), we can assume that Deleuze was aware of the concept of continuity when writing the cinema books~ 287 note 10 and 11). Ch:ipt,:r Thff,, 91

in order to distance himself from Kantian phenomenology. Kant also claims categories of

Being in the universe, but as Deledalle points out, Kantian phenomenology is based on the binary opposition of mind and matter. According to this opposition, the categories are attributed to the universe from an external source (consciousness). Peircian phenomenology

(phaneroscopy), however, is based on the continuity of mind and matter (107). Isabel

Steams makes this clear when she claims that, for Peirce, the "mind is not to be isolated from its place in the whole of nature, and in the behaviour of mind we have the right to find clues as to the nature of the world which surrounds us" (196). Joseph Ransdell consolidates this point with the following comment about Peirce's metaphysics: the mind, he says, is not something independent of the representational process but is "located in the process itself' (20). 21 Consequently, Peirce's categories of Being are present to the senses in exactly the same way they exist in the universe. They are not attributed to the universe as facts of consciousness. Peirce writes that, "Existence[... ] is a special mode of reality

[... ] . Reality in its turn is a special mode of being, the characteristic of which is that things

that are real are whatever they really are, independently of any assertion of them" (6.349

qtd. in Deledalle: 71). I will note this emphasis specifically by saying that Peirce's

conception of the mind and Peirce's conception of the categories are in immanence.

The importance of the continuity of matter and mind is evinced again in Peirce's

criticisms of Saussurean linguistics. Peirce attacks Saussure because of what he identifies as

the prychologism implicit to Saussure's method. Deledalle argues that Peirce sees semiology

as "a chapter of social psychology, and consequently of general psychology" (104).

Furthermore, this is because of the key place assigned the psychological idea in the Course

in General Llng,uistics. In Chapter One I explained how a linguistic sign is based on the

way a system of rules and conventions (language rystem) contrives to determine the

21 I am referring to Ransdell's essay "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" which originally appeared in French as: ''Peirce est-il un phenomenologue?" Trans. Andre DeTienne. Etudes Phenomenologiques 9-10 (1989): relationship between a sound image (signifier) and concept (signified). Peirce is not critical of

Saussure's focus on the language system; but, Peirce's critique of psychologism tells us that he is critical of Saussure's suggestion that a natural inclination guides a subject's relationship to the language system.22 In other words, Peirce is critical of the transcendent place assigned the thinking subject in the semiotic process.

According to Deledalle, the reason Peirce is critical of the psychologism implicit to

Saussure's method is because of his contention that mental facts are the most obscure of facts. Thus Peirce opines that to base a logical analysis of the sign and meaning on these sorts of facts would inevitably riddle one's project with ambiguities. "To explain the proposition in terms of the judgement," he writes, "is to explain the self-intelligible in terms of a psychical act, which is the most obscure of phenomena or facts" (2.309 note qtd. in Deledalle: 101). It is fair, however, to argue that Peirce is critical of psychological ideas because of the implication, for a general semiotic theory, that the sign and meaning depends on something pre-existent and transcendent to the semiotic process. Llke

Deleuze's idea of the sign, then, we can identify the danger of semeiotics being limited by these kinds of presuppositions. Peirce insists, therefore, that matter and mind are continuous. When the relation of matter and mind is established in this way, thought is not external to an encounter, but is the product of an encounter. The subject matter of semeiotics, therefore, is not clouded by obscurities, but is "publicly available."23 Peirce is

51-75. The English-language version has never been published. 22 My understanding of Peirce' s critique ofp.rychologism as a critique of natural inclination is from Jeff Kasser' s essay "Peirce's Supposed Psychologism." 23 Ransdell describes Peirce first and foremost as a logician, whose aim was to establish logic as "a genuine science" (10). He explains that the logician is "not concerned with arguments as actually authored by this or that person but only as considered impersonally" (11). This approach requires that the "subject matter of logic" is "publicly available" (12). The subject matter oflogic is not publicly available if the thoughts generated from the sign are influenced by inaccessible and obscure psychological ideas. It is in respect of this problem that Peirce determines matter and mind as continuous, for the implication is that thought is conceived as the product of an encounter, and in this sense, is clearly analyzable. Furthermore, Peirce reiterates this concept oflogic when he claims semeiotics as a branch ofpragmatics. Pragmatics, for Peirce, holds that "the importance of any phenomenon is determined by the context of the particular undertaking in which it is encountered" (Parker 195). (J,:ip,,:r Tim.·,'. 93

so insistent on the importance of this point that he claims that the subject doesn't have any thoughts at all until their encounter with the sign. In a rather famous footnote Peirce writes that, "Just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us" (5.289 note qtd. in

Deledalle: 101).

The continuity of matter and mind is important for Peirce in differentiating the rigor of his project from the likes of Saussurean linguistics, but for my purposes this metaphysical thesis also brings us back to a point I made earlier; namely, the immanence of

Peirce's signs. Each of Peirce's signs is characteristic of a category of Being. As I explained above, there are three aspects of a sign-the Representamen, Object and lnterpretant-and three kinds of each aspect, creating a total of nine sign elements of semeiotics: in terms of the Representamen, a sign is a quality (Qualisign), an actual event

(Sinsign) or a general type (Legisign); in terms of the Object, a sign can involve a qualitative

sign-object relation (Icon), a genuine sign-object relation (Index), or an abstract sign-object

relation (Symbol); finally in terms of the lnterpretant, a sign-object relation can be interpreted generally as a First (Rheme), specifically as a Second (Dicent), or logically as a

Third (Argument). Since Peirce claims that matter and mind are continuous and the

categories are immanent, we can specify that the ten classes of completed sign produced

from the combination of these sign elements are also immanent. That is, they exist

independent/y, for-themselves. There is nothing transcendent to these signs that they could

presuppose in order to make them meaningful.

In semeiotics interpreting a sign, therefore, means forming an idea based on

whatever is presented by that sign, which rightfully belongs to a Firstness, Secondness or

Thirdness of the universe. This includes thinking about: 1) the qualities of that sign and

how that sign might stand for a possible object; 2) the physical properties of that sign and Ch:ipt•:r Tim,,, 94

how that sign might say something specific about an actual object; and 3) the qualities and actual properties of that sign and how, based on those qualities and actual properties, a sign might be contrived to say something about a general type.

Furthermore, in so far as Peirce's semeiotics is paralleled by his ontology, we can return to my examination of proprioception and hypothesize in slightly more detail as to what might be involved in this kind of interpretation. According to Massumi, proprioceptive sensibility is when an organism translates the properties of an environment into their own varied muscular movements. In this process proprioception makes actual a meaning that was only potential to the environment. We can hypothesize that, since there is no transcendent structure, a similar kind of translation is key to the subject's interpretation of the sign. This means the sign is meaningful based on the subject's re­ organization of the givens of the sign-object relation, and whatever forms this re­ organization process takes (it may be the result of the translation of the sign-object relation into physical sensations or attitudes of the body), the end result is the subject's creation of

mearung.

This final point brings us back to positing some possible points of contact between

semeiotics and Deleuze's semiotics. In Chapter Two I explained Deleuze's conception of

language as a virtual-actual circuit of exchange. A sign is produced when modulation

features from the virtual dimension of a language's semiotic matter-what Deleuze calls

the "symbolic element" of a language-are actualized. This is a process of expression,

meaning that a sign is not rightfully produced as the effect of a transcendent structure on

the symbolic element (even though some signs may be produced in this way). The

implication is that the meaning of the sign resides in the sign itself, not in a transcendent

structure. I have already suggested a sense in which Deleuze's sign, since it does not

depend on a transcendent structure for its meaning, is immanent, and I have already Chnpr,,r Three 95

suggested that semeiotics and Deleuze's concept of the sign might converge on this point.

Now, however, I want to be more specific about how semeiotics might appeal to Deleuze.

I want to put forward the argument that Deleuze could read Peirce's conception of the tangled skein of phanerons ever present in experience as an absolute symbolic element of the universe. Furthermore, Deleuze could read Peirce's three main kinds of sign

(Qualisign, Sinsign and Legisign), since they are immanent to the universe and not formed by transcendent determinants, as the three main signs of semiotic matter in the universe.

This, moreover, would make the embodiment of these signs in Peirce's three kinds of sign­ object relation the three principal ways matter is expressed in Deleuze's semiotics. Finally, the three kinds of interpretation specific to Peirce's sign-object relation, could be read by

Deleuze as the three principal ways the subject of language interprets a sign based on the material properties of its matter. By combining each of these aspects of Peirce's sign,

Deleuze could develop ten potential ways semiotic matter is expressed.

In sum, I am suggesting that Deleuze could find the principle of immanence in semeiotics highly appealing for his concept of the sign. Peirce describes ten classes of completed sign that rightfully exist in the universe. They are immanent to the universe, and

they function to reconfigure the categories of Being that traverse the universe at an infinite

speed and are everywhere diffused.24 For Deleuze, these signs can quite easily be

considered as expressions of the universe, potentially affording him an idea of language

that has its basis not in linguistic determinants, but in the various combinations of Being.

24 I am borrowing this idea of infinite diffusion from Deleuze (Pure Immanence 26). Ch:ipiu Three 96

Conclusion

In this chapter, I started from the premise that Deleuze develops his idea of the sign in the cinema books through a reading of Peirce's semeiotics. At this stage of my discussion my aim was to lay out a detailed explication of Peirce's idea of the sign. But I also wanted to prepare the reader for Deleuze's reading of Peirce, and I did this by working my explication towards some potential points of contact between Peirce's semeiotics and

Deleuze's concept of the sign. In this respect I began by claiming a principle of immanence in Peirce's ontology. Then I examined Peirce's sign with an eye to locating the same principle of immanence in semeiotics. After establishing this principle, I suggested a sense in which Deleuze can develop his concept of the sign as an expression of a semiotic matter.

In the following chapter we will see that this is exactly what Deleuze does. He uses

Peirce to develop a concept of expression in the cinema, and from Peirce's ten completed

signs, he develops a whole taxonomy of semiotic expressions that also take into account

signs of non-chronological time. But, while Deleuze's basic move is to develop semeiotics

in the cinema, we will see that his method of implementation is rather complicated. In

order to implement semeiotics, he first of all equates the cinematic image with Peirce's

conception of the universe by interpreting the image in light of Bergson's theses on

movement. Then, he reveals his understanding of immanence by reading semeiotics

through Spinoza. ba cd on

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apart Chapter Four

Towards a Structure of Immanence: Deleuze and Peirce

Introduction

My aim in this project is to specify the theory of semiotics that underpins Deleuze's concept of the sign in the cinema books. So far, I have suggested a broad idea of the sign based on Deleuze's concept of expression. I have argued that a sign for Deleuze is an expression of a semiotic matter of a language. And I have maintained that all languages have a semiotic matter, and that taken together they are constitutive of what Deleuze calls a plane of immanence. In the previous chapter I made a case for how Deleuze might develop his conception of expression in language through Peirce's semeiotics, but in this chapter I will show how Deleuze undertakes this very task with regard to the cinema. I will argue that

Deleuze identifies that very potential of semeiotics I outlined in Chapter Three, eventually

arriving at (what I will call) a structure ofimmanence of the cinematic sign.

We will see that semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the expression

of the signaletic material of the cinema. It is in terms of the immanence of Peirce's

categories and the associated immanence of Peirce's signs that Deleuze conceives of the

expression of the signaletic material. Deleuze's translation of semeiotics to the cinema,

however, isn't straightforward or simple. Instead, he engages with Peirce's ideas and picks

apart each step of his application of semeiotics. He changes some of Peirce's terminology, Chnpt,:r hrnr 98

and emphasizes some of Peirce's ideas more than Peirce does himself. His reading of semeiotics also detours through Bergson's cosmology and Spinoza's theology ...

In this chapter I first examine the potential of semeiotics, as identified by Deleuze.

Deleuze notes how (in line with Peirce's argument that there are three phenomenological categories of Being) there are three principal categories of sign in semeiotics (Qualisign,

Sinsign and Legisign) that can be subdivided into ten classes of completed sign. Then

Deleuze claims that the potential of semeiotics lies with the fact that these signs are not

"linguistic" signs. I contend that what Deleuze is really addressing here is the sense in which Peirce's signs do not operate like the signs of Saussurean linguistics-in other words, they are not meaningful because of their determination by a transcendent structure.

Moreover, Deleuze is addressing the potential I identified in Chapter Three: that Peirce's signs are meaningful independently of transcendent structures because they are immanent to the universe.

Second, I examine what appears to be a sudden about-face in Deleuze's thesis. For a moment, he seems to turn on Peirce's semeiotics, claiming that the potential of semeiotics risks getting lost because Peirce inadvertently claims the categories as facts of a subject's consciousness. According to Deleuze, Peirce doesn't go to great enough lengths to show how they are immanent to the universe. If the categories were facts of a subject's consciousness, then Peirce's signs would be attributed to the universe by a subject. Their meaning would depend on something transcendent to their existence, and they would be

no different to linguistic signs. For Deleuze, there is not enough logic in Peirce's so-called

logical semeiotic. Deleuze is identifying a danger in semeiotics that needs to be prevented.

Third, I explain how Deleuze sets about doing just that: before he begins using

Peirce's semeiotics in the cinema, he proves definitively that the categories are immanent to

the universe. We will see that his method is to read Peirce's phenomenology through Bergson's ontology. Deleuze describes how subjectivity for Bergson is immanent to the universe and is deduced in the elementary stages of creation when an interval of time breaks apart the primeval soup into distinct packets (.Movement 61-66). Deleuze notes three stages in the production of subjectivity that Bergson calls the "material moments" of subjectivity. First is the function of the interval--or what Bergson calls the brain and

Deleuze calls the "perception-image"-in breaking apart the primeval soup. Second is the discernment of specific actions and reactions in the universe, that Deleuze calls "action­ images"; and third is the discernment of affects (associated with these actions and reactions), that Deleuze calls "affection-images." Moreover, Deleuze calls the whole process of the subjectivity's deduction a "relation-image." Then he brings Bergson, Peirce and the cinema together in two steps. Based on Deleuze's interpretation of the cinematic image's movement, he equates the cinematic image with matter as movement, thus contending that the ontology of the image is the same as the ontology of the universe.

Then, he shifts Bergson's emphasis and calls the moments of subjectivity the phenomenological categories of Being as found in semeiotics. Deleuze identifies affection­ images with Firstness, action-images with Secondness, and the entire process of subjectivity itself, the relation-image, with Thirdness. With this move Deleuze shows how Peirce's

categories are immanent to the cinema, and is all set to develop a Peircian concept of the

sign in the cinema.

In the fourth section of this chapter I explicate how Deleuze specifically does this.

Deleuze states, like Peirce, that a sign belongs to a category of Being. Then, Deleuze

claims two aspects of the sign: what he calls its polarity of Genesis and its polarity of

Composition. I will argue that these two terms have a Spinozistic context, and if we tease

out this context we will see that Deleuze is describing the first and second aspects of

Peirce's sign respectively (Representamen and Object). Deleuze does eventually develop a Ch:ipt,:r l·r,ur 100

third aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's Interpretant (I address this problem in

Chapter Seven), but in terms of his focus on Genesis and Composition the bulk of

Deleuze's semiotics is concerned with the way the signs of the cinema are embodied-­ independently of their interpretation.

The Spinozistic context of Deleuze's terms is important in another way also.

Drawing on Spinoza, the concept genesis refers to a body's existence in-itself. More specifically, it refers to the sense in which the essence of a body is immanent to the universe (or what Spinoza calls substance). Composition refers to the manner by which a body exists in reality as a composite whole of dynamic parts. What is important, however, is that these parts are not determined to exist together by a transcendent force. Deleuze explains that these parts define a body in so far as they express an essence of substance. In the cinema, Deleuze's reference to the concept genesis reveals his understanding of the immanence of the three principal kinds of sign in Peirce's trichotomy of the

Representamen. For Deleuze, the sign in-itself is equivalent to the essence of a body in

Spinoza's theology: it is immanent to the universe. Furthermore, Deleuze's reference to the concept composition reveals his understanding of the immanence of Peirce's signs, and more specifically, his idea that Peirce's signs exist in a semeiotic context like a body in

Spinoza's theology. For Deleuze, the sign-object relations of Peirce's sign are equivalent to the way a composition of parts in Spinoza-a body-expresses an essence of substance.

In Deleuze's understanding, then, Peirce's signs have a rightful existence because, as

compositions of reality, they are expressions of the categories of Being. With Peirce's

Representamen and Object (and drawing from Spinoza), he defines his concept of the

cinematic sign (so far) as a kind ofimage (Genesis) that is embodied in a composition ofparts of realiry

(Composition) that expresses the category ofBeingparticular to that Genesis. Ch:ipt•~r l·,mr 101

Another stage in Deleuze's semiotics is implied. Deleuze's concept of the sign has its basis in Firstness (affection-image), Secondness (action-image) and lbirdness (relation­ image), and in respect of these three categories of experience, Deleuze eventually develops

three principal kinds of Genesis and three principal kinds of Composition in the cinema.

In so far as Deleuze is yet to identify an aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's

Interpretant, I call these kinds of Geneses and Compositions the preliminary sign elements

of Deleuze's semiotics. Important, then, is the idea that Deleuze's semiotics will eventually

hinge on the different combinations potential to the relationships between these elements.

In the fifth section of this chapter I examine the moments when Deleuze begins

fleshing out his semiotics. He doesn't rush into explicating the sign elements of the

affection-image, the action-image, and the relation-image. Instead, he returns to a

discussion of the perception-image. So far, the perception-image has simply been noted as

the interval from which the affection-image, action-image and relation-image are deduced.

Deleuze's return to the perception-image is an ambiguity which is compounded when he

discusses a range of different kinds of Geneses and Compositions particular to the

perception-image. I resolve this ambiguity by clarifying how the categories of the cinema

are forms of a perception-image. Thus, when Deleuze discusses different Geneses and

Compositions of the perception-image, he is in fact discussing a Firstness, Secondness and

lbirdness of these polarities of the sign, developing the preliminary sign elements ofhis semiotics on

a small scale, and introducing the reader to the arguments he will develop in full in the

remainder of the cinema books. Deleuze's discussion of perception also sets the scene for

his identification of an absolute category of Being in the cinema (optical-image), together

with its own sign elements of Genesis and Composition. Ch;iptcr hrnr 102

Deleuze Identifies the Potential of Semeiotics

Towards the beginning of The Movement-Image Deleuze identifies the potential of

Peirce's semeiotics and sets the scene for his development of Peirce's sign in the cinema.

He writes that the strength of semeiotics lies with Peirce's idea that a sign is based on

"images" and their "combinations," and that these combinations are not "linguistically" determined. For Deleuze, an image is a fundamental appearance (Movement 58), and when he identifies three kinds of images in semeiotics, I argue that he is alluding to Peirce's three categories of Being. Furthermore, when he writes that Peirce's sign has its basis in images and their combinations, I argue that he is alluding to the nine sign elements of semeiotics and the fact that Peirce's ten classes of completed sign can be produced from the (hierarchical) combination of these elements. Finally, I explain how a linguistic determinant is any transcendent determinant in a semiotic context. Thus, when Deleuze says that Peirce's signs are not based on linguistic determinants, he is referring to the point I made in Chapter

Three; namely, that Peirce's signs are immanent to the universe.

I examined the principles of semeiotics in detail in Chapter Three; I will only recapitulate them briefly here. For Peirce the sign is the way a subject makes sense of an encounter. Furthermore, Peirce understands how the sign works according to his division of the universe into the three phenomenological categories of Being: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. The categories of Being have a bearing in the sign in two ways. 1) For

Peirce a sign (like everything else in the universe) is divisible into the above three categories

that I have been calling the three aspects of Peirce's sign. First, the sign is something in­

itself, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the Representamen. Second, the sign

represents an object, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the sign-object relation, or

Object. Third, the sign-object relation is interpreted by someone, and Peirce calls this aspect of the sign the lnterpretant. 2) I said above that the sign is the way a subject makes sense of an encounter. The categories of Being suggest that there are three kinds of experience in the universe. This means that there are three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object, and three kinds of lnterpretant in semeiotics. This second point involves a practical consideration of Peirce's sign, as deployed in an actual semeiotic context. In

Chapter Three I explained how I call Peirce's aspects of the sign, when considered from the perspective of their different categorical kinds, the sign elements of semeiotics. There are nine sign elements of semeiotics, and they are represented in the table below:

Table 4.1

A Tri-Square of the Nine Sign Elements of Semeiotics

1 2 3 Representamen Qualisign Sinsign Legisign Object Icon Index Symbol Interpretant Rheme Dicent Ar!!lltnent

Table 4.1 sets out the different kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant potential to Peirce's conception of the universe. I explicated each sign element in detail in Chapter

Three, so I simply note here how each has a character particular to a category of Being.

Peirce's sign has three aspects, and so in a given semeiotic context a sign is a

particular combination of the above sign elements. When referring to the sign from the

perspective of its combination of sign elements, I call it a completed sign. Table 4.1 suggests a

number of ways the sign elements could be combined to form completed signs; however,

the nature of Peirce's categories means that there are restrictions on the combinations

possible. Since Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are hierarchical, it is illogical for a First

to be combined with a Second or a Third, or a Second to be combined with a Third (Liszka Ch:ipt1,r h,ur 104

45). As a result, the sign elements can only be combined to form ten classes of completed sign:

Table 4.2

Ten Classes of Completed Signs of Semeiotics (Deledalle 19)

R 0 I I Rt 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign II R2 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Sinsign III R2 02 12 Rhematic Indexical Sinsign IV R2 02 12 Dicent lndexical Sinsign V R3 01 11 Rhematic Iconic Legisign VI R3 02 11 Rhematic Indexical Legisign VII R3 02 12 Dicent Indexical Legisign VIII R3 03 11 Rhematic Symbolic Legisign IX R3 03 12 Dicent Symbolic Legisign X R3 03 13 Ar~ent Symbolic Legi.sign

* Note: All expressions such as Rt, 02, 13 should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen which is a First, an Object which is a Second, and an lnterpretant which is a Third.

In the cinema books Deleuze explains that semeiotics is based on "images and their combinations" (Iime 30). For Deleuze, the concept "image" refers to a phenomenon, or

"the set of what appears" (Movement 58). Deleuze gets this concept image from Bergson's

Matter and Memocy:. He makes clear that Bergson calls a phenomenon (what is perceived by the senses) an image because of his argument that a phenomenon exists independently of conscious perception-it is luminous independently of its illumination by consciousness

(Movement 60). 1 In his phenomenology, Peirce claims that a phenomenon belongs to the category of Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness. Furthermore, he claims that the mind is

1 I go into Bergson's concept of the image in relation to the cosmology of Matter and Memocy in more detail later in this chapter. Ch:1p1,:r f·,-,m 105

continuous with the universe. In respect of this point I argued in Chapter Three that the categories have a rightful existence and are immanent to the universe. In the context of the present discussion there is a similarity between Bergson's concept "image" and Peirce's concept "Being." Both conceive of a phenomenon as something existing rightfully in the universe. In the cinema books Deleuze makes this similarity obvious when he identifies three categories of image in semeiotics, thus using Bergson to underscore the immanence of

Peirce's categories. He describes these categories of image in the following:

Firstness (something that refers to itself, quality or power, pure possibility; for

example, the red that we find identical to itself in the proposition ''You have not

put on your red dress" or ''You are in red"); secondness (something that refers to

itself only through something else, existence, action-reaction, effort-resistance);

thirdness (something that refers to itself only by comparing one thing to another,

relation, the law, the necessary). (Iime 30)

He then notes the hierarchy of Peirce's categories of Being, identifying the sense in which

Peirce's categories are like a set of Russian dolls: "It will be noted that the three kinds of image are not simply ordinal-first, second, third-but cardinal: there are two in the

second, to the point where there is a firstness in the secondness, and there are three in the

third" (30).

Now Deleuze explains how these categories have a bearing on the way a sign is

defined in semeiotics. First, he explains Peirce's general concept of the sign, how it

correlates with the categories of Being in so far as it is divisible into three "aspects" (Iime

30). Deleuze notes the three aspects of the sign I outlined in Chapter Three when he

writes that: "[1] the sign is an image which [2] stands for another image (its object), through Ch~pt,:r 1:,rnr 106

[3] the relation of a third image which constitutes 'its interpretant"' (30). Second, Deleuze considers Peirce's sign practically, deployed in an actual semeiotic context. In so far as there are three categories of Being and three kinds of experience in the universe, Deleuze notes how there are, in fact, nine "sign elements," and since "all of the combinations of elements are not logically possible," ten "corresponding signs" (30). Deleuze is explaining the principles of Peirce's signs that I outlined earlier, and we can outline a general potential of semeiotics based on what Deledalle describes as the "flexible" and "dynamic" nature of

Peirce's semeiotics (20). In semeiotics a range of different signs can be generated from the different ways three principle kinds of sign (Representamen) are embodied (Object) and interpreted (Interpretant).

Deleuze, however, pinpoints that same potential of semeiotics I identified in

Chapter Three when he states that Peirce's sign is "not[... ] a function of determinants which were already linguistic" (Iime 30). Deleuze's idea of the linguistic determinant here relates to his criticisms of Metz and semiology that I examined in Chapter One. I explained how Deleuze is critical of semiology because of Metz's insistence that the image is a sign only in so far as it is shaped by cinematic codes (transcendent structure). In Film

Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, Metz identifies these codes with the narrative

structures of his eight syntagmatic types (Grand Syntagmatique). For Deleuze, the meaning of Metz's sign is fundamentally limited because it is predetermined by

transcendent structure. Moreover, Deleuze suggests at the beginning of The Time-Image

that Metz emphasizes the role played by the code in the signs of the cinema because of his

understanding of the importance Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics place on the role

of the language system in the formation of signs. For Deleuze, this makes linguistics the

key discipline responsible for the importance attributed to the code in semiology. With his

equation of linguistics with transcendent structures of signification, we can say that a Chnpt,:r Four 107

linguistic determinant for Deleuze is any transcendent structure in a theory of the sign.

Deleuze's statement suggests to me that he praises Peirce because there are no linguistic structures (transcendent determinants) operating in semeiotics. Deleuze draws attention to the fact that Peirce's categories and signs are immanent and exist rightfully in-themselves.

In Chapter Three I explained that Deledalle identifies this principle of immanence in semeiotics when he argues that an organism's evolution is homologous to the process of sign interpretation. Since an organism does not evolve by realizing a mechanistic or finalistic causality (transcendent structure), Deledalle's argument suggests that a sign (a representation of an object for a subject), does not require transcendent structures in order to make it meaningful.

With Deleuze's identification of this potential in semeiotics, we can assume certain things about his understanding of semeiotics. Consider the following elementary semeiotic relation from Peirce: a subject's interpretation of a weathervane as a sign of the wind. We can stipulate this relation as a Sinsign that is embodied in an Index and is interpreted as a

Dicent (Dicent Indexical Sinsign). Based on my discussion above, Deleuze's understanding of this semeiotic relation would be as follows: he would identify how this semeiotic relation is an event that is a sign (Sinsign) that is embodied in the genuine relationship of parts of reality (Index). Deleuze understands that the Index is only one way a sign is embodied, and

furthermore, that a Sinsign could be embodied in a qualitative relationship of parts of reality (Icon). Deleuze also understands that there are three principle ways that a sign is interpreted (Rheme, Dicent, Argument). His interpretation might focus on the qualities of

the sign (Rheme), but it will most likely focus on the existential properties of the object

(Dicent). Most important, however, is Deleuze's understanding of immanence: since the

categories are immanent to the universe, the semeiotic relation described above is also

immanent, existing rightfully in-itself, meaning that the sign does not presuppose a Ch:1ptcr hrnr 108

transcendent structure to make it meaningful. The semeiotic relation, therefore, is not a linguistic sign in the sense described above. Deleuze understands that an interpretation, whether it focuses on the existential properties of the object (Dicent), or its qualitative features (Rheme), is based only on the material properties of the sign itself-in other words, on the way the sign composes and combines the categories of Being.

Let me sum up the points I have made in this section. I have argued that Peirce appeals to Deleuze because his three main kinds of signs are based on combinations of images that are not linguistically determined. Furthermore, Deleuze is well aware that this idea of image and combination in Peirce's semeiotics can lead to a whole range of potential signs. In the face of structural linguistics and Metz's idea of the coded sign, Deleuze sees in semeiotics the potential for what I will call an immanent structure of the sign and language.

Deleuze: There is a Danger of Peirce's Signs Being Confused with Linguistic Signs

Deleuze no sooner addresses the potential of semeiotics than he identifies the

danger of this potential being overlooked because of a lack of rigor in Peirce's

phenomenological argument. Deleuze claims that Peirce is not specific enough about the

immanence of the categories. Thus Deleuze identifies the danger of the categories being

confused with transcendent facts of a subject's consciousness. When this is the case,

Peirce's signs are also facts of a subject's consciousness. This means, moreover, that they

depend for their existence on a subject attributing an idea of a category to the relations of

reality. Consequently, the meaning of a sign would be limited to its already conceptualized

meaning in the transcendent idea. With this criticism of Peirce and the possibility of the Ch:1pr1:r Frrnr 109

categories being conceived as transcendent facts of consciousness, Deleuze is noting the danger that Peirce's signs will be confused with linguistic signs.

In the previous section I suggested that a linguistic sign for Deleuze is a sign that reflects the pre-existent meaning of transcendent structures. Deleuze returns to this concept of the linguistic sign, but this time the transcendent structure he identifies is consciousness. He defines a linguistic sign as one that "absorb[s] and reabsorb[s] the whole content of the image as consciousness or appearance. They do not let any material that cannot be reduced to a [linguistic] utterance survive[ ...]" (Iime 31). Thus an image is a linguistic sign when its content-in other words, its matter-is not interpreted in-itself, but is made reducible to a pre-existent fact of consciousness, thus making the image what

Deleuze describes as a conscious appearance, and furthermore, like a linguistic utterance.

Deleuze says that "Peirce can sometimes find himself as much a linguist as the semiologists" (Iime 31). Deleuze claims that Peirce's signs can be confused with linguistic signs because Peirce claims "the three types of image" (Firstness, Secondness and

Thirdness) as a "fact" of the universe (31). For Deleuze, a thing's factual existence is the

form a thing's existence has come to take in a specific context. As an example, Deleuze

describes the cinematic image, in principle, as a "plastic mass" of modulation features. Yet

the image has, over time, been typically associated with narrative form (25). Over time,

then, the image has assumed its factual existence as what Deleuze calls a "narrative

utterance" (25). In contrast to factual existence, Deleuze explains in his footnotes how

principle existence is a thing's rightful existence: the "Ur-code" of its existence (286 note 8).

To say that Peirce claims the three types of image as a fact, therefore, is the same as saying

that the images do not rightfully exist as categories of Being, but have come to be defined

to exist as such (according to the transcendent ideas of a subject's consciousness). Thus,

when Deleuze writes that Peirce's sign can sometimes be confused with a linguistic sign, in so far as a linguistic sign absorbs and reabsorbs the whole content of the image as

"appearance," he is suggesting a sense in which Peirce seems to define a Firstness,

Secondness and Thirdness of the image based on the determining role played by the transcendent ideas of a subject's consciousness.

I want to make clear, however, that Deleuze is not saying that Peirce intentional/y defines the images as facts of consciousness. I am arguing that in Deleuze's opinion,

Peirce does not go to enough lengths in his phenomenology to prove otherwise. We can assume that Deleuze does not really believe Peirce's categories are transcendent to the sign because he has already equated them with Bergson's ontological image. More significantly, he credits his reading of semeiotics in his footnotes to Deledalle's explication of Peirce's philosophy. Deledalle has pioneered the opinion since the late 1970s in France that there are no transcendent facts of consciousness rightfully operating in semeiotics.2 We must be clear, then, and emphasize that Deleuze is identifying a dangerous potential only of Peirce's phenomenology being interpreted in this way.

If we cite the remark in full where Deleuze makes his criticism of Peirce, then we can see why this problem of interpretation may arise. Deleuze writes that Peirce "claims the three types of image as a fact, instead of deducing them'' (my emphasis Time 31). Based on my assumption that Deleuze would not identify a transcendent element in Peirce's

semeiotics, the above remark can be interpreted to mean that Peirce inadvertently claims

the three types of image as a fact because he does not deduce them. In the following

section we will see that deduction, for Deleuze, is the process by which the categories are

proved to be immanent to the universe. Thus Deleuze's remark can be further interpreted

to mean that, had Peirce gone to enough lengths to prove how the categories are immanent

2 In the footnotes of The Time-Image Deleuze cites as the sources for his interpretation of Peirce, Deledalle's commentary in Ecrits sur les signe (1978) as well as Theorie et prati$le du signe (1979). See also Deledalle's recent translation of this same work from the 1970s: "Semiotics and Semiology: Peirce and Saussure" (1976) in Charles s. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs. Ch:ipt,:r r,-,rnr 111

(through deduction), then his discussion of the categories would not seem like a discussion of fact. But since Peirce hasn't done this, "Peirce can sometimes find himself as much a linguist as the semiologist" (my emphasis Time 31).

It is my argument that in Deleuze's opinion, Peirce's categories are immanent to the universe-meaning that there is nothing transcendent to the sign-but Peirce doesn't make this point perfectly clear in his phenomenology. This is important because we will see in the remainder of this dissertation that in order for Deleuze to implement semeiotics as a viable way of developing a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema, he first clears up any ambiguity about the nature of Peirce's categories by showing how they are immanent to the uruverse.

Deleuze Dispels Any Potential Problems with Peirce's Concept of the Categories

Deleuze begins his implementation of Peirce's semeiotics in the cinema once he shows definitively how the categories of Being are immanent to the universe. I argue that he tackles this problem by reading Peircian phenomenology through Bergson's cosmology.

According to Deleuze, Bergson's cosmology is opposed to the idea that mind and matter are divorced. Deleuze notes how, in Bergson's cosmology, matter and mind exist in jumbled and overlapping form in the primeval soup of the universe. They are both

"images" in the dynamic and temporal flux Deleuze calls the plane of immanence. Deleuze

then explains how subjectivity is deduced from the relations of images. He begins by

presupposing a concept of the interval in the plane of immanence. He notes also how the

interval has the potential to become enlarged, and when this happens images are

definitively separated. Deleuze writes that the effect of the enlarged interval is the

formation of perception and the deduction of action and affection. Furthermore, these three aspects of deduction are what Deleuze calls Bergson's three "material moments" of subjectivity. 1bis is a complex thesis of immanence in evolution, but Deleuze makes it even more complex when he makes it relevant to the cinema. From his understanding of cinematic movement, Deleuze contends that the cinematic image is equated with matter and is luminous in-itself-it has the characteristics of Bergson's concept of the phenomenon as image. With this equation Deleuze claims that cinematographic perception is deduced from Bergson's ontological model in the same way subjectivity is.

But then he makes a terminological shift and reads Peircian phenomenology through

Bergson's thesis on subjectivity. Consequently, he makes a case for Peirce's categories as immanent to the universe, and also, through his equation of the cinematic image with matter, Deleuze shows how Peirce's categories are immanent to the cinema.

In Matter and Memory. Bergson's cosmology is midway between an idealistic and realistic philosophy of the universe.3 He describes the universe as a flowing state of moving matter, and he claims that conscious perception exists as something that evolves from this very fabric of the universe-it is not transcendent to matter.4 As a flowing matter independent of conscious perception, Deleuze notes Bergson's qualification of matter as "image": matter is image in-itse!findependent of its perception as such

(Movement 60). 5 In Matter and Memory Bergson calls the universe an "aggregate" of

3 See for example Chapter One of Matter and Memocy: "Of the Selection of Images for Conscious Presentation: What Our Body Means and Does," in particular pp. 26-28. 4 In relation to this point Bergson describes the brain as nothing more than a "kind of central telephonic exchange" that simply sorts out the stimulations received from the universe (Matter and Memocy 30). 5 With this idea of matter as image, Bergson outlines the philosophical problem he has set himself-in other words, the "problem at issue between realism and idealism":

How i, it that the same images can belong at the same time to two different .rystems: one in which each image varies far itself and in the well-defined measure that it is patient of the real action of surrounding images; and another in which all images change far a single image and in the varying measure that thry reflect the eventual action of this privileged image? (Matter and Memocy 25)

He continues some pages later, and in respect of the above problem he justifies his use of the term "image":

The whole difficulty of the problem that occupies us comes from the fact that we imagine perception to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point by a special Ch:ipt,,r h,ur 113

images (22), and in the cinema books, Deleuze describes this very sense of imagehood by calling the universe "a kind of plane of immanence," whereby "the image exists in-itself on this plane" (Movement 5~59).6

Deleuze describes imagehood---or the plane of immanence of the universe-as a state of "universal variation," and notes several important implications of Bergson's cosmology (Movement 58). Deleuze writes that "there is no moving body which is distinct from executed movement. Every thing, that is to say every image, is indistinguishable from its actions and reactions: this is universal variation" (58). Deleuze is emphasizing the sense in which flowing matter is constitutive of an infinite plane of actions and reactions. Bergson himself makes this point of images: "Indifferent to each other because of the radical mechanism which binds them together, they present each to the others all their sides at once: which means that they act and react mutually by all their elements [... ]"(Matter and

Memory 37). Also important is how the infinity of actions and reactions is constitutive of a certain conception of time. With the idea of the universal variation of images-in other words, when movement is absolute, Deleuze notes that a "bloc of space-time" is constituted, whereby "the time of the movement which is at work within it is part of it every time" (Movement 59). This is a non-chronological conception of time as duration.

The actions and reactions of the plane of immanence raise one final point. Deleuze points

out that, with every action received and reaction executed in the plane of immanence, an

interoal is being crossed.7 Although images are indistinguishable in the aggregate, and

apparatus which is called an organ of perception-a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process of elaboration. But is it not obvious that the photograph, if photograph there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space? (38)

6 I have borrowed the term "imagehood" from Martin's Schwab's essay "Escape from the Image." 7 At this stage of his explication ofBergson's cosmology, Deleuze says he is filling in the "gaps [... ] Bergson has voluntarily left" (Movement 63). although their actions and reactions are so immense that they are constitutive of an absolute plane of "universal variation," Deleuze nevertheless insists that there are an infinity of "micro-intervals" being crossed-"smaller and smaller intervals between more and more rapid movements" (63).

The point about the interval is important for Deleuze's explication of how Bergson deduces consciousness in the universe. Deleuze explains how the interval is responsible for distinguishing different kinds of images from the absolute aggregate of movement­ images. He writes that, "For Bergson, the gap, the interval, will be sufficient to define one type of image among others" (Movement 61). Deleuze points out that because of the temporal nature of the plane of immanence, a micro-interval can become enlarged and break the absolute aggregate of images apart into discernible segments or packets of images. And he makes clear how the "phenomenon of the interval" is something naturally occurring and potential to the plane. The plane is not determined to act in this way and the interval does not mark the introduction of "a factor of another nature" (61).

Deleuze continues and states that the enlarged interval (or what I will call the special interoa~ is, in fact, what Bergson understands as the human brain. Deleuze writes that the brain is not "a centre of images from which one could begin," but is simply "one special image among others" (Movement 62). Deleuze describes the function of the brain in breaking apart the plane of immanence, but he also describes various stages involved in this

process. First, he says that the action of the brain in breaking apart the plane of immanence is the formation of a perception in the universe. Deleuze borrows an analogy

from Bergson and says that this process acts the same as the way the black plate in

photography blocks, stops and reflects other images (61). Second, he says that in

separating actions and reactions in the universal flux, "delayed reactions" achieve

prominence in the universe. Deleuze insists, moreover, that what is really going on at this Chnpt,:r l·rrnr 115

stage of the plane's evolution is the discernment of actions "strictly speaking" (64). Third, at the junction between a perception and the ensuing discernment of action, Deleuze locates what Bergson calls affect. Affects are the qualities and feelings associated with perception.

Important in this discussion is how Deleuze is noting the function of the special interval in the evolution of consciousness, for the above three stages describe Bergson's three "material moments" of subjectivity: first is the brain, a special image that breaks apart the aggregate; second is the discernment of action that accompanies the separation of actions and reactions; and third is the experience of affect, the "coincidence of subject and object, or the way in which the subject perceives itself, or rather experiences itself or feels itself 'from the inside"' (Bergson Matter and Memory: 2-3 qtd. in Deleuze Movement: 65).

More important still is how the subjectivity produced is something that evolves from the very fabric of the universe-from the images themselves. The brain is just a point of difference in the plane of immanence, like "a central telephonic exchange," and perception, action and affection, are simply outgrowths of the images themselves (Bergson Matter and

Memory 30). Subjectivity is definitely not what Deleuze described earlier as a fact of the universe. Deleuze uses Bergson's cosmology to emphasize the contrary: that subjectivity is immanent to the universe and is deduced according to the special function of the interval.

Deleuze gets one step closer to showing how Peirce's categories are immanent to

the cinema when, based on his understanding of cinematic movement, he equates the

cinematic image and matter. At the very beginning of The Movement-Image Deleuze

describes two main ideas of movement from Bergson's theses on movement and time.

The first idea explains a relation between movement and space covered. This theory of

movement holds that real movement is not distinct from the traversal of space, that

movement is produced as a result of the traversal of positions in space and the necessary

addition of an "abstract idea of succession," of a time which is mechanical, homogenous, (J;~pt,:r h,ur 116

universal and copied from space" (Deleuze Movement 1). For Deleuze this idea fundamentally misrepresents movement because "movement cannot be segmented or divided into static sections without changing or eliminating its quality as movement"

(Rodowick 21). With this criticism, Deleuze introduces a second idea of movement. He claims, following Bergson, that real movement occurs in the present "as the act of traversing," and that movements are "singular, heterogeneous and mutually irreducible"

(Rodowick 21). For Deleuze, "each movement will have its own qualitative duration"

(Deleuze Movement 1).

Deleuze introduces these two ideas of movement at the very beginning of the cinema books because he intends to show how cinematic movement is misconceived when it is assumed to accord with the first idea of movement. The second idea of movement is of more importance because, in Deleuze's opinion, it describes the kind of movement particular to the cinematic image. For Deleuze, a reductionist view of cinematic movement holds that the image is a series of individual frames in succession. Deleuze appeals to "the brute empiricism of an image in movement" and states instead that cinema gives us a

"movement-image" (Rodowick 22). Deleuze argues that cinema does not present individual snapshots of reality on the film strip, it presents "an intermediate image, to which movement is not appended or added" but "belongs to the intermediate image as immediate given" (.Movement 2). What this argument about cinematic movement leaves us with is not the idea of the image as a "photogramme" with the addition of movement, but with the idea of the image as matter in movement, as its own qualitative duration.

In equating the image with matter, Deleuze also claims that the movement image is,

in principle, the same as the ontological image of Bergson's cosmology. I explained above

how Bergson's conception of matter as image refers to the idea that matter is luminous in­

itself, independent of its perception as such. Consider this point in relation to Deleuze's Ch:1pr,:r l·our 117

understanding of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's idea of "natural perception." Deleuze explains how natural perception is based on certain "existential coordinates which define an

'anchoring' of the perceiving subject in the world" (Movement 57). From this anchoring and the subjective point of view implied, matter is nothing, a "native darkness" until it is illuminated by an intentional consciousness (60). Bergson's determination of matter as image thus makes his thesis on perception fundamentally opposed to Merleau-Ponty's.

"For Bergson," Deleuze explains, "Things are luminous by themselves without anything illuminating them: all consciousness is something, it is indistinguishable from the thing, that is from the image of light" (60-61). But Deleuze also defines the movement-image in fundamental opposition to natural perception. Referring to the mobility of a cinematic point of view (achieved through a mobile camera), Deleuze explains how the cinema breaks with the conditions of natural perception: "The cinema can, with impunity, bring us close to things or take us away from them and revolve around them, it suppresses both the anchoring of the subject and the horizon of the world" (57). The fact that the camera can take us closer to things and even revolve around them suggests that the object of cinematic perception, the movement-image, is something in-itself independent of whatever form a perception of it takes. What Deleuze is doing, then, is positing an equation between the movement-image and the Bergsonian conception of matter as image. Deleuze is more explicit about this point when he declares that the cinema reveals the world as its own image

(57). 8 Deleuze is stating that the cinematic image, in its most primordial form, is the luminous flowing matter of the Bergsonian aggregate of images in infinite variation. The

"model" of the cinema, he claims, is "a state of things which would constantly change, a

flowing matter in which no point of anchorage nor centre of reference would be

assignable" (57).

8 'With the cinema, it is the world that becomes its own image, and not an image which becomes world" (Deleuze Movement 57). Ch:ipt,:r 1:r)lj;: 118

The predominant implication that arises from the equation of the movement-image and Bergsonian matter is that Bergson's cosmology is directly relevant to the cinema, as cinema's cosmological model. Deleuze writes that this equation "puts us in the place of deducing conscious, natural and cinematographic perception from the model of universal variation" (Movement: 58 qtd. in Rodowick: 32). Consequently, cinema is said to evolve according to the same three moments Deleuze identifies in Bergson's deduction of subjectivity.

Deleuze makes this argument in the cinema books by stating that cinema evolves in the very same way Bergson describes the evolution of the universe. Yet Deleuze shifts the emphasis ofBergson's cosmology and describes his three material moments of subjectivity as the three phenomenological categories of Being found in semeiotics. This shift occurs when Deleuze identifies the special interval as "perception-image"; action as "action­ image"; affect as "affection-image"; and, furthermore, when he labels the whole process of deduction a "relation-image." Deleuze poses a direct correlation between these types of image (or what I will call image-rypes) and Peirce's categories:

As for the question: are there types of image in the movement-image other than the

perception-image?, it is resolved by the various aspects of the interval: the

perception-image received movement on one side, but the affection-image is what

occupies the interval (firstness), the action-image what executes the movement on

the other side (secondness), and the relation-image what reconstitutes the whole of

the movement with all the aspects of the interval (thirdness functioning as closure

of the deduction). (Iime 32) Chnpt,:r hmr 119

It cannot be ignored that Deleuze's interpretation of Peirce through Bergson places a new emphasis on Bergson's material moments of subjectivity. In Deleuze's reading, ajfect

(Firstness), even though it is that which floods between the interval of perception and is constitutive of Bergson's second material aspect of subjectivity, is posited as the category of Being ontologically prior to action (Secondness). And by labelling the entire process of deduction Thirdness, it seems that Deleuze is assuming that Bergson's conception of subjectivity also includes a logical element.

For my purposes in this chapter I want to emphasize that, through his determination of the cinematic image as movement-image, and with his use of Bergson and

Peirce in defining a cosmology of the cinema, Deleuze shows how Peirce's categories are immanent to the cinema because they are deduced from the matter of the image. This is important because with this point at hand Deleuze eventually develops a range of Peircian signs that are also immanent to the cinema.

Deleuze Develops a Version of Peirce's Sign

Having shown how the categories are immanent to the cinema, Deleuze is all set to put the potential of semeiotics into practice and begin developing a Peircian conception of

the cinematic sign. The actual definition of the sign Deleuze puts forward in his semiotics

is in two parts. The first part is most general; Deleuze says that a sign is "a particular image

that represents a type of image" (Movement 69). I argue that "type" here refers to

Deleuze's discussion of Peirce's categories as special types of image: the affection-image,

action-image and relation-image. Deleuze is here stating that his sign, like Peirce's, belongs

to a category of Being. In the second part of his definition, Deleuze is more specific. He

says that a sign represents a type of image "sometimes from the point of view of its genesis" and "sometimes from the point of view of its composition" (69). While these two concepts seem to throw Deleuze's reading of Peirce off-track a little, tracing their significance back to Deleuze's reading of Spinoza some years earlier reveals that Deleuze is, in fact, sticking quite closely to Peirce's concept of the sign. My claim is that Genesis and

Composition are terms Deleuze uses to describe the first two aspects of Peirce's sign, the

Representamen and Object.9 Deleuze does later describe three aspects of his sign which are equivalent to Peirce's Representamen, Object and lnterpretant, but for the bulk of the cinema books he concentrates on developing a concept of the sign from what he calls the above two "polarities." Furthermore, the Spinozistic context of Genesis and Composition is important for another reason. I argue that their usage reveals Deleuze's acknowledgement of that very potential of semeiotics he identified earlier: the immanence of

Peirce's categories and signs.

I explained at the beginning of this Chapter how Deleuze deduces Peirce's phenomenological categories of Being from the primeval soup of matter according to the role played by a special interval (perception-image). He calls Firstness the affection-image,

Secondness the action-image, and Thirdness the relation-image. Deleuze notes the potentiality of other kinds of images too, like time-images (Movement 68), but he begins by

concentrating on the affection-image, action-image and relation-image. Similar to Peirce's

concept of the sign, Deleuze's sign is also grounded in a Firstness, Secondness and

Thirdness of experience.

Deleuze defines his concept of the sign first by stating that it is "a particular image

which represents a type of image [... ]" (Movement 69). In light of Deleuze's qualification

of the cinematic image as a matter that has a rightful existence independently of conscious

perception (equivalent to Bergson's ontological conception of a phenomenon as luminous

9 Note: I use initial capitals for Genesis and Composition when using them specifically in relation to Deleuze's signs. (J;:1pt1:r hrnr 121

in-itself-an image), he calls reality "image." Moreover, we can be a little less general and define the image in the cinema as the "elements" or "data" within the frame (milieus, objects, bodies: sound information and visual information) (Deleuze Movement 12). I would argue that "type of image" refers to the three principal types of image described earlier: affection-image, action-image and relation-image. Deleuze's definition of the sign as a particular image which represents a rype of image suggests that the sign is a chunk of reality (an image, or more specifically an element in the frame) that represents a category of the cinema (an image-type: an affection-image, action-image or relation-image). We will see that this is Deleuze's broadest and most general definition of the sign and is similar to a general idea of Peirce' s sign as a Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness of Being.

Deleuze becomes a bit more specific when he defines the process of representation above according to two key aspects of the sign. His definition of the sign is given in full in

the following: "A sign appears to be a particular image which represents a type of image,

sometimes from the point of view of its composition, sometimes from the point of view of its genesis or formation" (my emphasis Movement 69). My argument is that Genesis and

Composition are Spinozistic terms, and if we tease out their Spinozistic context we will see

that, even though Deleuze does not say so, he is implying that the key components of his

concept of the sign are equivalent to the first two aspects of Peirce's sign: the

Representamen and Object. In terms of his general definition of the sign, Deleuze says

that a sign represents a category of the cinema according to its capacity as something in­

itself, and as something that is embodied in a specific way. Deleuze later describes a third

aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's Interpretant (thus defining the sign's representation

of a category of Being according to its nature as something in-itself, that is embodied in a

specific way, and interpreted in a specific way), but for the time being he is concerned with

the way the signs of the cinema are embodied-independently of their interpretation. But Ch:1pt1:r l•rrn;- 122

there is something more important about the terms Geneses and Composition to Deleuze's semiotics than their straightforward and somewhat literal translation of Peirce's

Representamen and Object. Their Spinozistic context reveals Deleuze's understanding of the immanence of Peirce's signs. In order to argue this point, I need to explicate the relevant aspects of Spinoza's theology.

Moira Gatens describes Spinoza as an "anti-juridical" philosopher (164). She defines the anti-juridical as a perspective opposed to dualisms in philosophy: ''What defines this tradition is a commitment to thinking against a fundamental proposition of humanist philosophy, namely, that sociability requires the organization of an individual's natural affects by a power that transcends the natural condition" (164). Gatens claims that anti.­ juridical philosophy is against humanist philosophy in so far as the latter hinges on a dualism between: 1) a plane of nature, and 2) a transcendent plane "which functions to organize and socialize the first" (165).

Spinoza's philosophy is anti-juridical because of his conception of Being as univocal.

Spinoza rejects all notions of transcendent Being, and with this he also rejects all doctrines of causality and final cause. Instead, Spinoza claims "one immanent substance" in the universe (Gatens 165). He defines substance as "absolutely infinite" being (Ethics ID4), and in this definition he conceives of God as that which is "in-itself and is conceived

through itself' (1D3). Furthermore, human being "is a mode of the attributes of nature,"

and is conceived as "part of a dynamic and interconnected whole" (Gatens 165).

In Deleuze's reading of Spinoza's Ethics and Short Treatise he identifies how, since

Being is univocal, particular things (plants, animals, rocks), are produced as the effect of a

two-fold process of the expression of substance: Chnpt,:r 1•,rnr 123

Substance first expresses itself in its attributes, each attribute expressing an essence.

But then attributes express themselves in their turn: they express themselves in

their subordinate modes, each such mode expressing a modification of the

attribute. As we will see, the first level of expression must be understood as the

very constitution, a genealogy almost, of the essence of substance. The second

must be understood as the very production of particular things. (Expressionism 14)

In the first stage of expression, attributes are constituted. Deleuze points out that attributes are 'Jorms common to God" and contain the essences of substance (47). They are the basic forms from which life is developed, and although they are potentially infinite in number, the two main examples given by Spinoza are the attributes of extension and thought.

The second stage of expression follows from the first and is based on the expression of an essence in the attributes by a particular thing, which Deleuze refers to generally as a body

(a plant, animal and rock are all bodies). For example, a human is a particular thing, the existence of which is based on the body's expression of an essence in the attribute of extension and the attribute of thought. For my purposes I will use Deleuze's understanding of the two stages of expression in Spinoza to interrogate his concept of the

cinematic sign.

I want to start with Deleuze's description of the first stage of expression. He

clarifies the sense in which the attributes do not just appear, but are constituted by

substance and produce substance at the same time. In respect of this point he states that

attributes explicate and involve an essence of substance (Expressionism 16), and describes this

process in the following terms: Ch:iptcr 1-rrnr 124

Essence is reflected and multiplied in attributes, attributes are mirrors, each of

which expresses in its kind the essence of substance: they relate necessarily to an

understanding, as mirrors to an eye which sees in them an image. But what is

expressed is at the same time involved in its expression, as a tree in its seed: the

essence of substance is not so much reflected in the attributes as constituted by the

attributes that express it; attributes are not so much mirrors as dynamic or genetic

elements. (Deleuze Expressionism 80)

Deleuze calls an attribute a genetic element of substance to show how the attribute is related to substance, but, in so far as it grows and develops of its own accord, Deleuze is also making clear how the attribute is different from substance, and more importantly, how the attribute is an expression of substance.

As with Spinoza's attributes, Peirce also describes a fundamental concept of Being in the universe. His categories of Being are implicit and underlying in the universe, which means that his three fundamental kinds of sign (Representamen) are also implicit and underlying in the universe. With this understanding of Peirce's Representamen, I contend

that when Deleuze uses "genesis" in his development of Peirce's semeiotics, he is referring

to his reading of Spinoza's genetic element and describing the sign from the perspective of its most fundamental existence-in other words, he is describing Peirce's Representamen

and the sign in-itself as a category of Being. But more importantly, Deleuze's reading of

Peirce's Representamen as a Genesis of the sign reveals his understanding of the principle

of immanence in semeiotics. In Spinoza the attributes, as genetic elements, are expressions

of substance. Thus, when Deleuze reads Peirce's Representamen as a Genesis of

semeiotics, he is revealing his own understanding of how Peirce's signs, in-themselves, are

immanent to the universe in the same way as Spinoza's attributes. (:hnpr,:r l•rrnr 125

Above I noted that Deleuze identifies a second stage of expression specific to the existence of particular things, or what Spinoza calls modes. Deleuze describes modes as bodies, and in a seminar on Spinoza (1978) he defines a body as "a certain composite or complex relation[... ] of movement and rest" (6). With this definition of a body, modal existence is a process of expression since a mode exists when the relations of movement and rest that comprise its matter explicate and involve an essence of substance contained in the attributes (Deleuze Spinoza 123). To put this another way, a body does not exist because a transcendent God breathes life into its parts. A body exists because the Composite whole of its parts express an essence of univocal substance (God).

I argue that when Deleuze uses "composition" in the context of his development of semeiotics, he is referring to his reading of Spinoza and the concept of the composite whole (body), and he is describing the sign-object relations in Peirce's trichotomy of the

Object as different kinds of composite wholes. But more importantly, Deleuze's reading of

Peirce's Object as a "composition" reveals his understanding of how there is no transcendent element in semeiotics and that Peirce's signs are immanent. In the same way that a body in Spinoza's theology is not determined to exist by a transcendent God, a sign in semeiotics exists rightfully and is immanent because the sign-object relations that embody it are not determined to exist by something transcendent to those relations.

Let me recapitulate my analysis of Genesis and Composition in Deleuze's semiotics. Genesis is a version of Peirce's Representamen. The Representamen is the first aspect of Peirce's concept of the sign and refers to the sign in-itself. The Spinozistic context of Genesis reveals Deleuze's understanding of the immanence of Peirce's sign in-itself. Genesis also reveals Deleuze's own determination of the sign as an essence of his semiotics. Composition is a version of Peirce's Object. The Object is the second aspect of

Peirce's concept of the sign and refers to the way a sign is embodied in a sign-object (J,:ipt•:r f ·,rnr 126

relation. The Spinozistic context of Composition reveals Deleuze's understanding of the sign-object relation as a composite whole of images (or the elements/data within the frame) and his understanding of how a sign, in its embodied form, is immanent: it is immanent in the same way as a body is in Spinoza's theology. Indeed, a body for Spinoza is immanent because the composite whole of its parts expresses an essence of substance.

Thus, we can specify that a sign exists in Deleuze's semiotics when a Composition of elements expresses a category of Being characteristic of a Genesis. It is in this sense that semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the sign independently of semiology's insistence on the necessary role played by transcendent structures in shaping the matter of the sign.

Deleuze isn't changing anything about semeiotics with his use of Genesis and

Composition in place of Peirce's Representamen and Object. My argument is that the difference between the two theorists is terminological only: Deleuze's use of Genesis and

Composition as terms for the first two aspects of the sign reveals his understanding of immanence in semeiotics, or what was described above as the anti-juridical element of semeiotics. The relationship between Deleuze, Peirce and Spinoza shown above suggests that the most important thing about Peirce's semeiotics that Deleuze is about to develop is his reading of its immanent structure.

Through this understanding of Genesis and Composition and in terms of Deleuze's

definition of the sign in relation to Peirce's categories of Being (or what Deleuze calls the

"types" of images of the cinema), we can also make explicit how there are three kinds of

Genesis and three kinds of Composition in Deleuze's semiotics. In the same way that we

can describe Peirce's concept of the sign, when deployed practically in an actual semeiotic

context, according to nine sign elements of semeiotics, we can describe Deleuze's sign,

practically, according to six sign elements so far. These are only the preliminary sign Ch:1ptcr 1.-rmr 127

elements of Deleuze's semiotics, for he is yet to discuss a third aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's Interpretant. Here is a version of Peirce's Tri-Square used to represent

Deleuze's semiotics:

Table 4.2

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Schematic)

Type oflmage

1: affection-image 2: action-image 3: relation-image Genesis Genesis Genesis Polarity Composition Composition Composition

To recap my argument about Deleuze's development of Peirce's signs in the cinema: Deleuze uses semeiotics to describe three principal kinds of sign (Geneses) that are expressed in three principal kinds of composite wholes (Compositions). What we will see in the chapters that follow is how Deleuze relies on the hierarchy of Peirce's categories, and in turn, the hierarchy of his own sign elements, to claim a range of signs that are immanent to the cinema.

Deleuze Uses the Perception-Image to Develop the Preliminary Sign Elements of his

Semiotics on a Smaller Scale

Deleuze spends the remainder of the cinema books describing the sign elements of his semiotics, and even extends Peirce's phenomenology to describe the sign elements of

an absolute category of the cinema, a Zeroness of Being, or what Deleuze calls the optical­

image of the cinema. Before embarking on this journey, he spends a chapter describing

some different Geneses and Compositions of the perception-image. This seems to be an Chnpr,:r l·rmr 128

about-face, for the perception-image up until now has simply been described as the interval from which the other image-types are deduced-in other words, the perception-image seems to be without an identity of its own. I resolve this ambiguity by clarifying how the image-types of the cinema are farms of a perception-image, and when Deleuze discusses different Geneses and Compositions of the perception-image, he is in fact discussing a

Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness of these polarities of the sign. Moreover, I argue that with the perception-image, Deleuze is developing the preliminary sign elements of his semiotics on a small scale, thereby introducing the reader to the arguments he will develop in full in the remainder of the cinema books. I will discuss these elements in what follows, but for now

I have represented them in the following table:

Table 4.3

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Described in Terms of the

Perception-image)

1: liquid 2: solid 3:subjective-objective

Genesis Liquid Terrestrial Semi-Subjective Composition Reume Solid Dicisign

Deleuze's analysis of the perception-image makes it quite clear how the sign elements he eventually develops are similar to Peirce's. Deleuze discusses three kinds of perception­ image: liquid perception, solid perception and subjective-objective perception. I will start with Deleuze's discussion of subjective-objective perception and argue that his Semi­

Subjective is a version of Peirce's Legisign. I will unpack Deleuze's Didsign (a term he borrows from Peirce) and argue that he is describing a version of Peirce's Symbol. Then, I will move to Deleuze's discussion of solid perception and argue that the Temstrial is a version of Peirce's Sinsign. I will further suggest that his discussion of solid perception reveals a Solid Composition, or a version of Peirce's Index. Finally, I will consider how

Deleuze contrasts a solid to a liquid perception, and assert that in the latter case Deleuze is describing Firstness in the cinema, the sign of which is a Liquid and is a version of Peirce's

Qualisign. I will then interrogate his modification of Peirce's Rheme and note Deleuze's

Reume as a version of the Icon of semeiotics. Each of these preliminary sign elements 1) foreshadows Deleuze's thesis on the preliminary sign elements in the remainder of the cinema books, and 2) foreshadows the eventual similarity of these sign elements to Peirce's.

Deleuze begins by addressing a most straightforward idea of perception. This is the idea of perception as a point of view on bodies or things in a milieu. Although this is a common and everyday idea of perception, Deleuze is quick to point out that he is describing the most evolved state of a perception. The implication, therefore, is that a perception can perhaps be a little less developed. But for the moment Deleuze notes two variations of the most evolved state of perception: the suf?jective perception of things in a milieu (what Deleuze also calls parts in a set), and the objective perception of things in a milieu. Perception, he says, can be subjective or objective.

It could be said that the subjective-image is the thing seen by someone "qualified",

or the set as it is seen by someone who forms part of that set. [... ]We should be

able to say, in fact, that the image is objective when the thing or the set are seen

from the viewpoint of someone who remains external to that set. (Movement 71)

We can understand this difference if we refer to the example of a teacher in a classroom. A

student's perspective of their own classmates is a subjective perception and the teacher's

perception of the students is an objective perception. Ch:1ptu· l'our 130

But Deleuze continues and claims that the idea of perception he is describing takes into account mon: than the problems of subjectivity and objectivity. He cites a scene from

Albert Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951). He describes how

the film opens with the long shot of the beach where groups are running towards a

point; the beach is seen from a distance and from a height, through a telescope on

the promontory of a house. But very quickly we learn that the house is inhabited,

and the telescope used, by people who are very much part of the set under

consideration: the beach, the point which attracts the groups, the event taking place

there, the people mixed up in it ... (Movement 71)

With this example Deleuze suggests that a perception takes more than the subjective and objective into account because an objective perception is easily confused with a subjective perception, and vice-versa. For Deleuze the subjective and objective are different degrees of a more fundamental idea of perception. Deleuze suggests that to perceive the relation of objects in a milieu is, in essence, to perceive these objects from a perspective that is both subjective and objective at the same time. To make this point Deleuze borrows from Jean

Mitry's Esthetiq,ue et psychologie du cinema II and introduces a "semi-subjective" idea of perception. A semi-subjective perception is "an anonymous viewpoint of someone unidentified amongst objects or characters in a milieu" (J2). 10 Deleuze explains how this is neither a subjective nor an objective viewpoint, but "a case of going beyond the subjective

10 Deleuze also describes the same idea of semi-subjectivity in literary terms with :Michael Bakhtin's notion of the "free-indirect":

The linguist Bakhtin [... ] states the problem clearly: there is not a simple combination of two fully­ constituted subjects of enunciation, one of which would be the reporter, the other reported. It is rather a case on an assemblage of enunciation, carrying out two inseparable acts of subjectivation simultaneously[ ...] There is no mixture or average of two subjects, each belonging to a system, but a differentiation of two correlative subjects in a system which is itself heterogeneous. (M:ovement 73) Ch~pt,:r hrnr 131

and the objective towards a pure Form which sets itself up as an autonomous vision of the content" (74).

It is my contention that with this discussion of perception Deleuze is foreshadowing his analysis of Thirdness in the cinema. I explained earlier how Thirdness for Peirce is the category of logical relations. The sign elements of Thirdness are the

Legisign: a general type that is a sign; the Symbol: an abstract sign-object relation; and the

Argument: a logical interpretation or judgement. Deleuze's discussion of perception is essentially a discussion of the relations of things in a milieu-in other words, it delineates the universe of Thirdness. And when he arrives at the idea that the essence of this kind of perception is a semi-subjective perception, I would argue that he is describing a pure idea of relation-in other words, what relation is in-itself. Moreover, in the context of his discussion of the sign specifically, Deleuze's identification of relation in-itself is a description of the Genesis of Thirdness: in the same way that the sign of Thirdness in semeiotics is a general type, I would contend that the sign of Thirdness for Deleuze is a relation that is a sign, a Semi-Subjective.

Deleuze continues his discussion of subjective-objective perception and asserts the

Dicisign as a sign of Composition (Movement 76). For Peirce, the Dicisign (or Dicent), is the Interpretant of Secondness, and refers to an idea of thought without judgement-what

Peirce calls a proposition. Deleuze, however, uses the Dicent to describe a certain kind of

Composition-in other words, he takes a sign element from Peirce's third aspect of the

sign (Interpretant) and turns it into a sign element from the second aspect of the sign

(Peirce's Object or Deleuze's Composition).

Deleuze writes that his idea of the Dicent is not simply what Peirce defines as a proposition, but it is a special kind of proposition: a semi-suf?jective proposition. In Chapter Three

I explained how a Dicent is like a proposition in so far as it involves a statement of fact about an object's existential qualities. For example, a weathervane is a Dicent Indexical

Sinsign. It involves a Dicent in so far as a subject, based on the direction of the weathervane, makes some statement about the direction and strength of the wind at that present moment. For my purposes I want to emphasize that in stating something like, "It's a strong southerly today," the subject is placed in relation to the object of the sign. This point will help us in understanding a semi-suijective proposition. Taken literally, we can define a semi-subjective proposition as a proposition formed about an object from an ano'!Ymous viewpoint-one that is neither subjective nor objective, but is totally abstract. This implies, moreover, that the subject is placed in an abstract relation to the object. I would argue that translating this problematic of the semi-subjective proposition to Deleuze's concept of a sign's Composition means focusing on the abstract relation of subject and object (not the interpretive process associated with this abstract relation), and thus positing a composite whole that is based on the abstract relation of elements-that is, a composite whole that is not based on the genuine relation of elements (Secondness and Peirce's Index) or qualitative relation of elements (Firstness and Peirce's Icon). With his discussion of the semi-subjective proposition (Dicisign), Deleuze is in fact discussing Thirdness and foreshadowing how his semiotics will involve a version of Peirce's Symbol.

Having discussed the most common and evolved idea of perception, the next step of Deleuze's discussion is concerned with a less evolved state of perception. His approach now is to think about an idea of perception that is without a "privileged centre"-in other words, one that is concerned with the brute confrontation of things. Deleuze calls this idea

of perception a mechanics, and more specifically, a "mechanics of solids" (.Movement 79).

With this kind of perception, an object is not perceived as part of a set. There is no set to

speak of, but an assemblage of movements and forces in the visual field. Consequently, CJ,:1pt,,r l•trnr 133

Deleuze describes perceptions of abe"ant and clumsy movements, "an other-worldly grace"

(19).

I want to put forward the suggestion that the mechanics of solids Deleuze is describing is Secondness in the cinema. Secondness is the category of actual Being, or

Being in relation to something else. Furthermore, we can call these relations brute because they are not mediated by a Third, as in the category of Thirdness. In semeiotics the sign elements of Secondness are an event that is a sign (Sinsign), a genuine sign-object relation

(Index), and an interpretation of the object's existential properties (Dicent). In Deleuze's discussion of the mechanics of solids and his idea that the kinds of movements he is describing are the most rudimentary movements of the earth's elementary existence, it is clear that he is referring us to Peirce's category of Secondness. And in the explication of the preliminary sign elements of the perception-image, I contend that an idea of the event that is a sign-in other words, a version of Peirce's Sinsign--can also be gleaned from

Deleuze's discussion. I will locate this sign element specifically as the Genesis of a

Secondness of perception, a solid state of perception, and from Deleuze I will call this sign element a Terrestrial: it is an illogical movement that is a sign, a pure event that is a sign.

If we continue our interpretation of solid perception we can glean an idea of a

Secondness of Composition from Deleuze's examples. For instance Deleuze describes a

mechanics of solids in Epstein's La belle Nivernaise (1923), where objects are not in logical

relations: the "links" binding the objects have been "broken" (Movement 78). What

results, for Deleuze, is a "confrontation" of objects in a milieu: "The limit of the earth and

waters becomes the scene of a drama where there is a confrontation between, on the one

hand, the land moorings and, on the other, the mooring-ropes, the tow-ropes and free

floating cords" (78). Deleuze is describing how a solid state of perception (Terrestrial) is

expressed in the brute confrontation of objects. In light of my contention that Deleuze's discussion of perception is geared towards introducing us to the preliminary sign elements of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, it can be said that he is describing a version· of

Peirce's Index and the idea of genuine relation particular to the sign-object relation of

Secondness. Unlike the abstract Composition described above (Deleuze's Dicent), I will call this kind of Composition a Solid Composition. On the point of the comparison of the

Solid and the Dicent, Deleuze calls the latter "a kind of solid state of perception"-in other words, it is a special, more evolved state of solid Composition that is concerned with abstract compositions of solid objects (Iime 32).

Deleuze eventually goes one step further than positing a perception of solids, and describes an idea of perception that doesn't involve distinct objects at all. Such a perception is one of "universal variation" (Movement 79). This is a "more delicate and vaster perception, a molecular perception" (80). Deleuze describes this state of perception as a "mechanics of fluids," a perception of "flowing matter" (79). Since his descriptions depict this state of universal or molecular variation as a state presupposed by the perceptions of solids, it is quite clear that the mechanics of liquids is the universe of Firstness.

As we will see, however, there appears to be a difference between the preliminary sign elements of Firstness described here by Deleuze, and the sign elements of Firstness in semeiotics. Deleuze's discussion of perception initially seems to suggest that the sign of

Firstness (Genesis) is a liquid flow, or what I will call a Liquid; while for Peirce the sign of

Firstness (Representamen) is a pure quality, a Qualisign. This apparent discrepancy is cleared up when we unpack Deleuze's sign element of Composition and it becomes clear

that liquid perception does, in fact, refer us to qualities in the universe.

In his discussion of liquid perception, Deleuze notes a sign element of

Composition that is not concerned with the relations of solid objects (Solid), or what he

also calls a molar perception. Based on Peirce' s Rheme he describes a fluid Composition Ch:1pt1'.r f·,,ur 135

called a Reume. Deleuze says he adapted this term from Peirce because of the concept of

"flow" (suggested by Pier Paolo Pasolini) associated with the etymology of Rheme.11

Deleuze writes that, ''While the dicisign set up a frame which isolated and solidified the image, the reume referred to an image in the process of becoming liquid" (80).

Deleuze notes cases of the Reume in the "inversion" of the movement of solids

(Movement 79) and he uses the lovers' embrace at the conclusion of Jean Vigo's

L' A talante (1934) as an example of the Reume. He writes that "the entwined bodies of the two lovers has no end" (79). What is constituted with this particular embrace is not the actions of two bodies in a definitive space-time. Another way of describing this

Composition is to say that the bodies appear liquid because they are not moving against each other in a state of things (Solid Composition), but appear to be moving into each other, folding together. With this idea of liquidity Deleuze is describing a Composition of qualities, and describing the embrace as a shifting material of shapes, sounds and textures.

This Composition of qualities is similar to the end result of Peirce's Icon, for in the same way that an Icon is a quality that is a sign that stands for some possible object, what is most important about Deleuze's Liquid is the significance of the qualities themselves, not the existential properties of the objects.

I will end my analysis with the sign elements of liquid perception. My argument has been that the sign elements gleaned from Deleuze's discussion of the perception-image introduce us to the sign elements of the affection-image (Firstness), the action-image

(Secondness) and the relation-image (Thirdness) that Deleuze later develops in full. Since I

have identified liquid perception with Firstness, my discussion of the Liquid (Genesis) and

Reume (Composition) brings to a close this section of the chapter. Each of the sign

elements I have discussed are represented in the table below:

11 Deleuze points out, however, that Pasolini should have spelled "rheme" according to the Greek as "reume": thus Deleuze maintains the use of the latter in the cinema books (:Movement 229 note 13). (J,npr,:r Four 136

Table 4.3

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Described in Terms of the

Perception-image)

1: liquid 2: solid 3:subjective-objective

Genesis Liquid Terres trial Semi-Subjective Composition Reume Solid Dicisign

To recapitulate: I have argued that the sign elements of the perception-image, as well as introducing us to the sign elements of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image that Deleuze later develops in full, are versions of the six kinds of Representamen and six kinds of Object of semeiotics. Liquid perception describes flowing, molecular Being in the cinema. It refers us to Peirce's category of Firstness. The sign elements of liquid perception are the quality that is a sign (Liquid), and the qualitative Composition of elements (Reume). Solid perception describes aberrant and clumsy molar Being in the cinema. It refers us to Peirce's category of Secondness. The sign elements of solid perception are the brute movement that is a sign-in other words, the pure event

(Terrestrial), and the "confrontation" of elements in a milieu-in other words, a genuine

Composition of elements (Solid). Subjective-objective perception describes the abstract relations of Being in the cinema. It refers to Peirce's category ofThirdness. The sign elements of subjective-objective perception are the pure relation that is a sign (Semi­

Subjective) and the abstract Composition of elements (Dicisign). Gaseous Perception and Its Sign Elements

I have explained Deleuze's concept of the sign, and how he divides it into two aspects: Genesis and Composition. And I have used his discussion of the perception­ image to foreshadow the different kinds of Geneses and Compositions characteristic of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image. Now I want to return to a point I made above. It is that Deleuze eventually extends his reading of Peirce's phenomenology to describe the sign elements of an absolute category of Being which Deleuze calls the optical­ image of the cinema. In respect of this absolute category, there is one more thing Deleuze says about perception. At the very end of his discussion of the perception-image, Deleuze describes a state of gaseous perception. In what follows I will argue that this is an absolute category of perception, and that Deleuze is using it to foreshadow his discussion of the optical-image and the signs of non-chronological time (real Time) examined in The Time­

Image.12

Deleuze describes a kind of perception that is the "genetic element of all perception" (Movement 85). It is not a perception based on the mechanics of solid objects

(solid perception), or the flowing state of matter (liquid perception); Deleuze describes it as a perception that is in matter. Deleuze explains that when the eye is in matter in this way, the absolute particle of matter is apparent-in other words, the very state of universal variation and universal modulation described by Bergson in the first chapter of Matter and

Memoty is perceived (81). Characteristic of this state also is "'the negative of time' which

knows no other whole than the material universe and its extension" (81). In my

interpretation, the negative of time is the negative of chronological time, and this state,

moreover, is the state of non-chronological time. Non-chronological time is non-linear

12 This idea of "real Time" is a concept Deleuze uses to describe non-chronological time (1-.fovement 68). Ch:ipt,:r l•(rnr 138

time; implied is less a passage of time, and more a swelling of time. Furthermore, non­ chronological time is the time of the "birth of the world" (Iime 36).

Continwng his discussion, Deleuze defines another Genesis of perception with the

Gramme (Movement 84). "Gramme" translates to "gram" in English, and the New

Shorter Oxford Dictionary tells us that it is from the Latin grain, as in the seed or fruit of pulse. With this term we can assume Deleuze is referring us to the most fundamental element of a perception: the grain of perception. Deleuze himself makes this clear when he locates the grain of perception in the "intervals of matter" (Movement 81). Deleuze isn't referring to the special interoal I discussed earlier that separates out the categories of Being, but the micro-intervals of infinitesimally close images. Consequently, the grain of perception is a perspective from which all the rapid-fire movements of the cosmos are perceived, and furthermore, it is the perspective "which reaches the 'negative of time"'

(81). With this description, therefore, the Genesis of gaseous perception is a scrap of non­ chronological time that is a sign. This is an idea of the sign Deleuze returns to in great detail later in The Time-Image.

What is the Composition characteristic of gaseous perception? In the Glossary at the end of The Movement-Image Deleuze defines the Gramme as "the gaseous state of a molecular perception." Earlier I explained how molecular perception involves a liquid

Composition, and so this definition implies that a Gramme involves a gaseous

Composition. This kind of Composition is evident in the following discussion of a

Secondness of the perception-image (solid perception) and a Firstness of the perception­ image (liquid perception): Chnpt,,r hrnr 139

If we start out from a solid state, where molecules are not free to move about[ ...]

we move next to a liquid state, where the molecules move about and merge into

one another, but we finally reach a gaseous state, defined by the free movement of

each molecule. (Deleuze Movement 84)

According to Deleuze, the "hyper-rapid montage" in Dziga Vertov's Man With a

Movie Camera (1929) is a good example of a Gaseous Composition. Consider Deleuze's description of just one moment of the montage that continues for the entire eighty minutes of the film:

We go from an image of a peasant woman to a series of its photogrammes, or else

we move from a series of photogrammes of children to images of these children in

movement. By extending this procedure, we contrast the image of a cyclist cycling,

and the same image, re-filmed, reflected, presented as though projected on a screen.

(Movement 82-83)

When Deleuze analyzes this technique, he claims that rapid-fire montage is connecting images which are "incommensurable from the viewpoint of our human perception" (82).

What rapid-fire montage is doing, in Deleuze's opinion, is forging connections between what is ordinarily not perceived as connected. In the context of gaseous perception,

Vertov's technique is important for Deleuze because, in connecting anything and

everything, montage is constructing the absolute point of view on matter described earlier,

and in turn, is expressing non-chronological time (Gramme).13

13 For an analysis of the historical significance of Vertov's montage as a response to rapid industrialization in Russia, see Graham Roberts' chapter "The Historical Context" in The Man with the Movie Camera. Chnprcr l·,rnr 140

Deleuze describes the same kind of Composition later in the cinema books with his idea of the indiscernible relations of cinematic elements. He explains that an indiscernible

Composition is when elements are distinct, but their difference is "unattributable" ('.Iime

69). For example, when a character in a film looks at himself in a mirror, if it is not entirely clear which image is the character's actual image and which is his virtual image, the difference between these two images would not be suppressed-they would be distinct­ but their difference would be unattributable (70). Deleuze states that the Composition created expresses non-chronological time. The hyper-rapid montage of gaseous perception is much the same: by bringing incommensurable elements of the universe together and presenting sequences of images from no particular point of view (but an all-embracing or absolute point of view: what Vertov describes as "the essence of 'I see"'),14 it can be said that matter is presented as a plane of indiscernible differences.

Deleuze's discussion of gaseous perception is a discussion of the most elementary and absolute state of perception. This is the perception of the particle of matter. For

Deleuze, the Genesis of gaseous perception is a scrap of non-chronological time (Gramme) that is a sign, which is expressed in what we can describe as an indiscernible Composition

(Gaseous). Furthermore, Deleuze's discussion of the Gramme and Gaseous foreshadows his analysis later in the cinema books of signs that are expressive of an absolute category of

Being. We can note the following representation of Deleuze's semiotics so far:

14 I am referring to Vertov's statement in "Kinoki, perevorot" (Pziga Vertov: Stat i dnevniki zamysli. Ed. S. Drobashenko. Moscow, 1966: 110-111 qtd. in Roberts "The Historical Context": 34. Chnpt,:r 1,,rnr 141

Table 4.5

Four Principle Categories and Two Polarities of the Sign in Deleuze's Semiotic (Described

In Terms of the Perception-Image)

0: gaseous 1: liquid 2: solid 3: subjective- objective Genesis Gramme Liquid Terres trial Semi-Subjective Composition Gaseous Reume Solid Dicisign

The preliminary sign elements of the perception-image stand for the preliminary

sign elements of Deleuze's principal image-types that he develops in full in the remainder

of the cinema books (optical-image, affection-image, action-image and relation-image).

Moreover, what will become evident when Deleuze fleshes out his principal image-types in

more detail is how, based on the combination of these sign elements (according to the

hierarchy of Peirce's categories), a range of different signs underlie his semiotics.

Conclusion

My approach in this chapter has been to claim that Deleuze develops his concept

of the sign in relation to Peirce's semeiotics. The principle of non-linguistic combination in

semeiotics appeals to Deleuze as the rightful alternative to semiology's emphasis on

structuring forms. This is the rightful alternative because, as we have seen in Chapters Two

and Three, Deleuze claims that a language does not presuppose transcendent structure for

its articulation. Yet, this is also a sticking point of semeiotics for Deleuze. Deleuze seems

to think that there is the danger of semeiotics being confused with semiology. This danger

hinges on whether or not Peirce's categories of Being are considered the transcendent

forms of an lnterpretant's consciousness. Such a determination of the categories would (J,npt,:r hrnr 142

mean that the sign is not an expression of the universe of Being, but a reflection of the categories as they appear intuitively in consciousness. This said, Deleuze's first step in developing semeiotics in the cinema is to show how the categories are not facts of consciousness, but are immanent to the universe. Then, by equating the image with matter in the universe, he posits these categories in the cinema.

Next, he develops a notion of the sign based on two polarities: Genesis and

Composition. This gives Deleuze two aspects of the sign similar to Peirce's trichotomy of the Representamen and Object. My argument has been that Genesis and Composition reveal Deleuze's understanding of semeiotics in light of Spinoza's theology. Based on the three categories of the image (or what I call the image-types of the cinema), Deleuze uses the aspect of Genesis to posit three principal kinds of sign that are immanent to the cinema. Furthermore, Composition posits three ways these kinds of sign exist as three different kinds of composite wholes in the cinema. But most importantly, Deleuze's

Spinozistic terminology emphasizes his understanding that a sign exists in so far as a

Composition expresses a Genesis of the cinema. Thus Deleuze's reading of Peirce through

Spinoza makes clear how these kinds of Compositions are not determined by anything transcendent to the images themselves. In other words, the Spinozistic context of

Composition makes clear how Peirce's signs do not exist by virtue of some transcendent determinant.

As a way of putting Deleuze' s reading of Peirce into practice, I considered

Deleuze's explication of the perception-image as a small-scale model of his semiotics. I

noted Deleuze's discussion of the different kinds of Genesis he eventually develops in full:

qualities that are signs, actions and events that are signs, and logical relations that are signs.

Furthermore, I noted Deleuze's discussion of the different ways these Geneses are

expressed in different kinds of Compositions: qualitative, genuine and logical Chnpr,:r Four 143

Compositions. Also, I used Deleuze's discussion of perception to foreshadow his development of the sign elements of an absolute category of Being presupposed by

Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.

In the following chapters of this project I will develop what I am calling the immanent structure of the cinematic sign in more detail. In Chapter Five I will look specifically at the sign elements of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image, and I will analyze their combination in Deleuze's semiotics. In Chapter Six I will look specifically at the sign elements of an absolute category of Being in the cinema: the optical­ unage. 0

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11 Chapter Five

Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema. Part I: The Movement-Image

Introduction

I have established the principle of Deleuze's semiotic theory and analysed how he develops this principle in the cinema by using Peirce's semeiotics to define his concept of the sign. For Deleuze, a sign is an expression of a semiotic matter, or what he calls the signaletic material of the cinema. I argued that semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the process of expression because of the sense in which Peirce's phenomenological categories of Being and classes of sign are immanent to the universe.

Another way of describing this potential of semeiotics is to argue that Peirce's signs do not require transcendent structures in order to make them meaningful. They are not the same as the signs of semiology.

Let me recapitulate in more detail. I explained how semeiotics hinges on Peirce's division of the universe into three categories of Being. In accordance with these categories,

Peirce divides the sign into three aspects-. its nature in-itself (Representamen); its relation to

an object (Object); and its relation to an interpreter (Interpretant). Since there are three

categories of Being and three kinds of experience in the universe, I also explained how

there are three kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant. Considered in its

practical application, then, Peirce's concept of the sign involves nine individual sign elements.

Since a sign is a Representamen, Object and Interpretant, the range of sign elements suggests a number of different kinds of sign in semeiotics. Something that I pointed out, however, is that Peirce's categories are ordinal and hierarchical, meaning that a

Representamen can only combine with an Object that is equal to or lower than its phenomenological kind; and similarly, an Object can only combine with an Interpretant that is equal to or lower than its phenomenological kind. I outlined how there are only ten possible combinations of Representamen, Object and Interpretant in semeiotics, and when considered from the perspective of these combinations in a practical semeiotic context, I called Peirce's sign a completed sign. There are ten completed signs of semeiotics.

In terms of the potential of semeiotics for Deleuze's semiotic theory, I noted

Deleuze's qualification of Peirce's completed signs as non-linguistic in nature. I explained that a linguistic sign is a sign that depends for its meaning on the role played by a transcendent structure in shaping its matter. For Deleuze, Peirce's signs are non-linguistic because the semeiotic relations implicit to Peirce's signs exist rightfully in the universe, meaning that the sign does not presuppose a transcendent structure to make it meaningful.

Consequently, an interpretation is based only on the material properties of the sign itself­ in other words, on the way the sign composes and combines the categories of Being.

Deleuze acknowledges this potential when he defines his own concept of the

Peircian sign in the cinema. Deleuze claims three semeiotic categories of Being, but identifies them as three principal image-types of the cinema: the affection-image (Firstness),

action-image (Secondness), and relation-image (fhirdness). Whereas Peirce describes three

aspects of the sign (Representamen, Object and Interpretant), Deleuze begins by only

noting two aspects of the cinematic sign (Genesis and Composition). At this stage Deleuze

sticks quite closely to Peirce's Representamen and Object when he determines the sign

according to its polarities of Genesis and Composition. It is the Spinozistic context of

Genesis and Composition that reveals Deleuze's understanding of immanence in (J,:1pt1,r 1-i·,-,::, 146

semeiotics. Genesis is the concept Deleuze uses to conceive of the sign in-itself

(Representamen), but this concept also reveals his understanding of how the sign, in-itself, is equivalent to the essence (genetic element) of a body in Spinoza's theology. In respect of this equivalence, the sign (in-itself) is an essence of a category of Being and is immanent to the cinema. Composition is the concept Deleuze uses to conceive of the sign's embodiment in a sign-object relation (Object), but this concept also reveals Deleuze's understanding of how the sign-object relations of semeiotics are equivalent to the way a body in Spinoza exists. For Spinoza, a body exists because the composite whole of its parts expresses an essence of substance, not because a transcendent God breathes life into its matter. In the same way, Deleuze claims a sign is embodied when a Composition of elements in the cinematic frame express a category of Being characteristic of a Genesis.

Deleuze does eventually develop a third aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's lnterpretant, but in terms of his focus on Genesis and Composition, his concern for the bulk of the cinema books lies with the way the signs of the cinema are embodied­ independently of their interpretation.

Deleuze also describes three categories of Being in the cinema (affection-images, action-images and relation-images), and in this respect I noted that there are three principal kinds of Genesis and three principal kinds of Composition implied so far in his semiotics.

Since Deleuze has yet to discuss a third aspect of the sign and the different kinds of interpretation potential to the cinema, I called the different kinds of Genesis and

Composition the preliminary sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics. I call them preliminary sign

elements in order to emphasize that there are more sign elements in Deleuze's semiotics yet

to be discussed: the sign elements of the third aspect of his sign (Noosign). Furthermore, I

argued that Deleuze introduces us to the preliminary sign elements through an analysis of

the cinematic perception-image. Important also is how Deleuze's discussion of the 147

perception-image foreshadows the similarity of his sign elements and the sign elements of semeiotics. Finally, I suggested a sense in which Deleuze eventually conceives of a range of signs that are immanent to the cinema based on the combination of these sign elements.

Now, in this chapter, I examine specifically Deleuze's analysis of the preliminary sign elements of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image as noted in chapters six through twelve of The Movement-Image. As I mentioned above, we will see that the preliminary sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics are quite faithful to the structure he borrows from semeiotics. What I mean is that even though the Spinozistic terminology of

Deleuze's concept of the sign emphasizes the principle of immanence in his understanding of semeiotics, the kinds of signs Deleuze describes (Genesis) and the way these signs are embodied (Composition) are very similar to the kinds of signs in semeiotics

(Representamen) and the ways these signs are embodied in different sign-object relations

(Object).

The following table outlines these preliminary sign elements as they will appear in my analysis that follows:

Table 5.1

A Tri-Square of Six Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics

1 2 3 affection-ima action-ima e relation-ima Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/ Index Mark/Demark

Like Peirce, we will see that Firstness for Deleuze (affection-image) is the category of Being

in-itself. He borrows directly from semeiotics when he describes its Genesis as the quality

in-itself, or Qualisign, and describes a qualitative Composition based on Peirce's iconic sign­

object relation, or Icon. Yet Deleuze does identify a special potential for the Icon in the Ch:1pt1:r l·i-,-e 148

cinema based on the process of editing. Deleuze's conception of Secondness (action­ image) is similarly Peircian in that it refers to the category of actual (or brute) existence.

Deleuze, however, changes Peirce's conception of the event (or what Peirce calls the

Sinsign) to focus on the various relations possible between a situation and an action, and he calls the Genesis of the action-image the Imprint. Furthermore, Deleuze has the same idea of Peirce's genuine relation of sign and object in mind, but he describes two kinds of

Composition particular to the action-image: a Synsign and an Index. Thirdness is the last of

Peirce's categories analyzed by Deleuze. For Deleuze, like Peirce, Thirdness (relation­ image) is the category of logical relations. Deleuze's Genesis of the relation-image is based on Peirce's Legisign, but Deleuze prefers to borrow another term from semeiotics and call it a Symbol. Deleuze and Peirce both insist that the logical relation of sign and object is not rightfully predetermined. Deleuze, however, uses two sign elements of Composition to make this point: the Mark and Demark.

I have stated that Deleuze's focus on the Genesis and Composition of the sign suggests that his initial concern in developing a semiotic theory lies with the way the signs of the cinema are embodied-independently of their interpretation. In this chapter I will be more specific and say that the combination of Genesis and Composition amounts to a notion of the completed sign of semeiotics. For Peirce, a completed sign is a certain kind of sign (Representamen) embodied in a certain kind of sign-object relation (Object) that is interpreted in a certain way (Interpretant). The difference is that Deleuze's semiotics has not yet identified a third aspect of the sign equivalent to Peirce's lnterpretant. In respect of this difference, I identify the combination of Genesis and Composition as an embodied sign.

An embodied sign is a certain kind of essence of Being (Genesis) that is expressed in a

certain kind of composite whole of cinematic elements (Composition). Furthermore, the

structure of Deleuze's preliminary sign elements and the fact that this structure is taken from semeiotics suggests a range of embodied signs potential to Deleuze's semiotics based on the hierarchical combination of the different Geneses and Compositions noted in table 5.1. In this chapter I examine all the embodied signs underlying Deleuze's semiotics, and they are represented below:

Table 5.2

Six Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics

G C I G1 Cl Icon Qualisign II G2 Cl Icon Imprint III G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint IV G3 Cl Icon Symbol V G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol VI G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis which is a First and a Composition which is a Second.

Deleuze is most explicit in describing the embodied signs characteristic of a particular image-type (the Icon Qualisign of the affection-image; the Synsign/Index Imprint of the action-image, and the Mark/Demark Symbol of the relation-image). I unpack the embodied signs that are clearly implied by Deleuze's discussion, although he doesn't himself name them. These are the embodied signs produced through the combination of preliminary sign elements of different image-types. For example: Deleuze refers to Robert

Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) and notes an event that is expressed qualitatively,

and I identify this embodied sign as an Icon Imprint; also, he refers to Ernst Lubitsch's

Design for a Living (1933) and notes a circumstance of relation that is expressed in a

genuine relation of images, which I identify as an Index Symbol. Chnpt1'.r Fi,-,::. 150

There is another important point that I examine in this chapter. It is that Deleuze also extends the structure of semeiotics and examines the preliminary sign elements of two degenerate categories of Being in the cinema. The first is between the affection-image and action-image, which Deleuze calls the impulse-image. The second is between the action­ image and relation-image, which Deleuze calls the reflection-image. In reference to these degenerate categories of Being, I will call the affection-image, action-image and relation­ image the principal image-types of Deleuze's semiotics, and the impulse-image and reflection-image the degenerate image-types of Deleuze's semiotics. Consider the following expanded version of table 5.1:

Table 5.3

A Tri-Square of Ten Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Six Principal Sign Elements

(bold type) and Four Degenerate Sign Elements)

1 I 2 I 3 (affection) (impulse) (action) (reflection) (relation) Genesis Qualisign Symptom Imprint Discursive Symbol

Composition Icon Fetish Synsign/ Figure Mark/ Index Demark

Deleuze's analysis of the impulse-image and reflection-image are faithful to the structure he borrows from semeiotics because their sign elements fit into the continuum of

Being outlined so far in the cinema. The impulse-image occurs midway between the affection-image and the action-image, and as such its Genesis is neither a quality in-itself

(Qualisign) or an action (Imprint), but something in-between: a Symptom. Deleuze describes the Composition of the impulse-image in much the same way. It involves neither a qualitative Composition (Icon) nor a genuine Composition (Synsign/Index), but something between the two: the partial action of images on each other, or what Deleuze calls a Fetish. For Deleuze the reflection-image occurs midway between the action-image and the relation-image. As such, it does not refer to the category of actions or logical relations, but what Deleuze describes as the question. He calls the Genesis of the reflection­ image the Discursive, and using the idea of the linguistic trope, he describes the Composition of the reflection-image with the Figure. The Figure is not a genuine relation of images

(Synsign/Index), or a logical relation (Mark/Demark), but the reflection or inversion of a genuine relationship by means of a substitution. A typical example of the Figure is a hero's vision: it can be said that the vision is more than a reaction to a milieu (action-image), and less than a totally logical response (relation-image).

In terms of the sign elements of the degenerate image-types, we will see how the list of the embodied signs of Deleuze's semiotics is expanded: Ch:1ptcr l'i·,cc 152

Table 5.4

Fifteen Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics (Six Principal Embodied Signs (bold type)

And Nine Degenerate Embodied Signs)

G C I Gt Cl Icon Qualisign II Gta Cl Icon Symptom III Gta Cta Fetish Symptom IV G2 Cl Icon Imprint V G2 Cta Fetish Imprint VI G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint VII G2a Cl Icon Discursive VIII G2a Cla Fetish Discursive IX G2a C2 Synsign/Index Discursive X G2a C2a Figure Discursive XI G3 Cl Icon Symbol XII G3 Cla Fetish Symbol XIII G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol XIV G3 C2a Figure Symbol xv G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: The sign elements of the affection-image (in accordance with Peirce's categories of Being) are represented as 1, the sign elements of the action-image are represented as 2, and the sign elements of the relation-image are represented as 3. For the sake of this table, the sign elements of the impulse-image are represented as la, and the sign elements of the reflection-image are represented as 2a. All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis of the affection-image that is expressed in a Composition of the action-image.

While Deleuze is quite clear about examining the embodied signs characteristic of the two degenerate image-types, there are other embodied signs (based on the combination of the sign elements of the degenerate image-types with the principal image-types), that are implied by Deleuze's discussion by that he is not explicit about. I examine all of these; for

example, I refer to Luis Buii.uel's The Exterminating Angel (1962) and I flesh out the

differences Deleuze suggests between a Symptom expressed in a Fetish (Fetish Symptom)

and an Imprint expressed in a Fetish (Fetish Imprint). The Affection-Image

In what follows I will show that Deleuze, like Peirce, describes Firstness as the category of Being in-itself: the category of qualities independent of their actualization in a state of things. It is in respect of these kinds of qualities, or what Deleuze calls affects, that he calls Firstness in the cinema the category of the affection-image. Similarly, Deleuze borrows from Peirce and calls the sign of Firstness the Qualisign, the quality in-itself

(affect). In semeiotics Peirce stipulates that a quality in-itself can only be embodied by a sign that stands for its object, an Icon. And he is clear that the Icon stands completefy for its object, for otherwise the quality would not be experienced in-itself, but would be experienced as the quality of a particular object. But Peirce also explains that this is a special function of the Icon, since it is only in fleeting moments of lost consciousness that the Icon is so pure. In the cinema books Deleuze describes the same function of the Icon noting the first embodied sign of his semiotics: the Icon Qualisign. But most importantly, he notes the potential of the cinema to readily construct the special kinds of Icons described above. He describes this construction according to a process he calls

"faceification" [visageification] (Movement 88). Faceification is the abstraction of an image

from its spatio-temporal coordinates, and gets its name because the process involved is

similar to the way a face is abstracted by a close-up.

I explained in Chapter Three that Firstness in semeiotics is the category of Being

prior to actual Being (Secondness). Actual Being is given when one thing (an object, a

body-in other words, extended matter) delimits another thing (Deledalle 15). In Firstness,

matter is not delimited, and so matter exists in-itself: "The first is that whose being is

simply in-itself" (1.356). This makes Firstness what Charles Deledalle calls "a unique sheet

of assertion" (15). Peirce gives us an idea of the universe of Firstness with the following metaphorical description: ''What the world was to Adam on the day he opened his eyes to it, before he had drawn any distinctions [... ]that is first'' (1.357).

Deleuze describes the same category of Being in the cinema. He cites the following passage from Bela Balazs-in which Balazs analyzes Joris Iven's impressionist films-as a way of describing the kind of universe prior to actual Being. Consider this passage as it appears in The Movement-Image:

Rain is not a determined, concrete rain which has fallen somewhere. These visual

impressions are not unified by spatial or temporal representations. What is

perceived here with the most delicate sensibility, is not what rain really is, but the

way in which it appears when, silent and continuous, it drips from leaf to leaf[ ... ].

(110-111)1

This passage describes the rain. Important, however, is the way in which the rain is not falling somewhere. In this example the rain is not spatio-temporal. Deleuze is using this passage to describe a certain kind of environment, one in which the rain is not perceived in terms of what it "really is"-in terms of its effect as a weather pattern in a state of things.

Instead, the rain is constitutive of a visual impression only, an impression that Balazs goes on to describe as "a curious series of optical effects." Described by this environment is the category of Firstness, where matter (in this case, the rain) exists in-itself, not as a real thing

(a delimited thing in the universe, a Second), but as a quality, a visual impression, an optical

effect only.

1 Deleuze is quoting the French translation of Balazs' text Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art (Le cinema. Payot, 167). Seep. 176 of Edith Bone's English translation (Dover, 1970). From the perspective of its signs, the Representamen of Firstness is the Qualisign.

A Qualisign is a sign of Being in-itself. Being in-itself can only be a quality independent of actual existence, and so a Qualisign is a quality in-itself that is a sign. The most often cited

Qualisign given by Peirce is his example, "a feeling of red" (2.254). Similarly, there is, as

Floyd Merrell suggests, the feeling of blueness I get when I stare at a painting, say Giotto's

Padua Frescoes in the Arena Chapel ( 104).

Deleuze borrows from semeiotics when he calls the Genesis of the affection-image

the Qualisign (Movement 11 O; Time 33). He states that the sign of the affection-image, in­ itself, is a quality that is a sign. Furthermore, in his Glossary to The Movement-Image, he

describes the Qualisign as an "affect." For Deleuze, the affective charge of an image, like

the effect Merrell describes in relation to a painting, is a Qualisign.

Particular to Firstness, Peirce tells us, is that a sign represents its object by standing far its object. For Peirce the Icon is the sign element that stands for its object. I explained

in Chapter Three that it "correlates with its object because the sign's qualities are similar to

the object's characteristics" (Liszka 37). Consequently, a Qualisign (like the feeling of

blueness described above) is embodied by an Icon that stands for the blueness of some

object.

Particular to Firstness, however, is the following condition. The above example is

only a Qualisign when the blueness is expressed in-itself, as a quality in-itself. This means,

moreover, that the Icon involved stands completefy for its object. If this was not the case

then the blueness described above would not be experienced as a blueness in-itself, but a

blueness associated with the blue sky, as depicted by Giotto. Peirce maintains that such

experiences of qualities in-themselves only occur in moments of forgetfulness or lost

consciousness. This constitutes a problem for him because it is only in these moments that

an Icon stands completely for its object. For instance, in staring at a painting it is impossible to think the effect of a Qualisign: one must lose sight of the painting itself and get lost in the effect of the pigment. Peirce gives an example:

In contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose the consciousness

that it is not the thing[ ...] and it is for this moment a pure dream-not any

particular existence, and not yet general. At that moment we are contemplating [a

pure] icon. (3.362 qtd. in Merrell: 102)

Merrell identifies the same moment in an adolescent's experience of a horror film. For instance, suppose a boy screams when a monster appears on the screen. For Merrell, the scream suggests that the child is "spontaneously" reacting to the monster "as if it were actually a 'real' object," not a fictional object standing for something in the diegetic reality of the narrative" (104).

Deleuze borrows from semeiotics when he uses the Icon to describe the way a sign is embodied particular to the affection-image (Iime 32). For Deleuze, the Icon is the

Composition of Firstness in the cinema. He uses an actor's face as his predominant

example of the Icon, stating that a facial expression can stand for the qualities of some

object. Consequently, when Deleuze notes that a certain affective charge (Qualisign) is

expressed in the qualitative relationship (Icon) of the characteristics of a particular facial

expression and an object, he is identifying the first embodied sign of his semiotics: an Icon

Qualisign.

Similar to semeiotics also, Deleuze stipulates that the affective charge is a Qualisign

only when it is expressed in-itself-that is, when the Icon is pure. In terms of his example

of the face, he makes this point when he explains that a face (Icon) is expressive of an

affect (Qualisign) when the facial expression is not considered as an expression of a character's emotions specifically (Movement 97). If this was the case, the quality expressed would be inextricably tied to an actual spatio-temporal location motivating the character's emotions. In other words, the spatio-temporal location is the object of the Icon (face), and the Icon itself is not pure because it does not stand completely for its object.

On this point it would seem that Deleuze runs into the same difficulties as Peirce, for when is an Icon ever pure in cinema? Is the Icon pure only when, like young children, we forget we are watching a film and experience the image spontaneously? For Deleuze this is not the case because his discussion suggests that Icon Qualisigns can easily and readily be constructed in the cinema. In this respect it is through what Deleuze calls the process of "faceification" that I will argue a pure Icon is constructed. Faceification is the abstraction of an image from its spatial temporal coordinates. From Merrell's example above, faceification is something like removing my experience of blueness from the context of the painting and Giotto's intentions. The concept gets its name because the most common example is the close-up of an actor's face. It is through the close-up that a facial expression, like a grimace, is severed from the actor and the state of things, and functions as a pure Icon. In the following Deleuze describes several cinematic techniques of faceification. He calls these "affective framing" techniques, and refers us to the close-up of

Joan of Arc's face in Carl Th. Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc (1928):

Affective framing proceeds by cutting dose-ups. Sometime the frame cuts a face

horizontally, vertically or aslant, obliquely. And movements are cut in their course,

the continuity shot [is] systematically false[ ... ]. Also,Joan's face is often pushed

back to the lower part of the image, so that the close-up carries with it a fragment

of white decor, an empty zone[ ... ]. (Movement 107) Faceification might be achieved through the close-up, or through the manipulation of framing (oblique framing, for example), the false-continuity edit, and even through depth of field and the positioning of the object in an "empty zone."

Deleuze describes another kind of faceification with a concept he borrows from

Pascal Auge: the a'!Y-space-whatever (Movement 109). The any-space-whatever is really a faceified landscape (rural or urban), or any faceified context for that matter: whether it be a room in a house, a cinema, a hallway, or even a backyard. The image functions like a face in close-up when space is not determined. As an example, consider the effect of the driving rain at the beginning of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). The dense rain and the camera angle flatten the image, making the landscape less a determinate spatio­ temporal location and more an optical effect.2 A similar result is achieved with Deleuze's idea of the empty interior. In Yasujiro Ozu's films, Deleuze notes "empty spaces, without characters or movement [... ] interiors emptied of their occupants, deserted exteriors or landscapes in nature" (Iime 16). Also, colour is an important technique of faceification.

The "colour-image" is faceified, like Joan's face in close-up, when "it does not refer to a particular object, but absorbs all that it can: it is the power which seizes all that happens within its range, or the quality common to completely different objects." Deleuze writes that colour in Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur (1965) functions in this way: it is constitutive of a

"mysterious space" that absorbs the characters (Movement 118).

For both Peirce and Deleuze a Qualisign is embodied by an Icon, but this is a

special Icon that stands completely for its object. In Deleuze's semiotics specifically, and in

terms of his emphasis on immanence that I identified in Chapter Four, we can say that the

2 This description is from Deleuze (Movement 188). Icon Qualisign is the first embodied sign of his semiotics and points towards the first way the signaletic material is expressed. Furthermore, Deleuze suggests that cinema is unique because this kind of sign can be readily constructed through editing.

The Action-Image

Deleuze describes Secondness in the cinema with the action-image. Although he uses different names than Peirce, we will see that Deleuze's Genesis and Composition of the action-image are much the same as Peirce's Representamen and Object of semeiotics.

For Peirce, the Representamen of Secondness is the actual event constituted by the relation of two things, the Sinsign. For Deleuze, the essence of the sign of the action-image is much the same, the only difference being that he conceives of an event in terms of the relation of a situation and an action. To mark this emphasis, Deleuze calls the sign of the action-image the Imprint. Peirce describes the sign-object relation particular to

Secondness with the Index. Deleuze's Composition of the action-image is a version of the above category of sign-object relation in semeiotics: he describes the expression of

Secondness in a genuine relation of cinematic elements. Deleuze, however, uses two main

scenarios to describe this category of Composition. First, Deleuze focuses on the relation between a situation and an action; for example, when a character responds to a crisis in the

community and restores a sense of order. With this scenario Deleuze explains the first

kind of genuine relation as a binomial, and modifying Peirce's terminology slightly he states

that the first kind of Composition of the action-image is a Synsign. Second, Deleuze

focuses on the relations of actions themselves. Furthermore, in so far as Deleuze claims

that actions typically disclose some kind of situation, he describes a version of Peirce's

Index and states that the second kind of Composition of the action-image is an Index. In what follows I will explicate these sign elements of the action-image and how they combine to form another embodied sign of Deleuze's semiotics: the Synsign/Index Imprint. And, although Deleuze is not entirely clear about this point, I will examine another embodied sign that stems from the hierarchical structure of the image-types and the combination of sign elements from the action-image and relation-image: the expression of an event in a qualitative Composition: an Icon Imprint.

For Peirce, Secondness is the category of actual existence. If we remember

Deledalle's description of Firstness as "a unique sheet of assertion," consider now how he compares Firstness with Secondness:

What can we say of "1"? Nothing-and, of course, as it is "unique," nobody is

there to say anything. So to speak, "1" is not even there[ ... ]. To conceive of "1,"

"1" has to have a limit and consequently we cannot have "1" without "2" which

delimits "1" on the sheet of assertion. (15)

Deledalle tells us that to conceive of something as an actual thing, this first thing must be delimited by a second thing.

Merrell gives us a useful way of imagining what the category of Firstness and the

category of Secondness take into account (or what they don't take into account) (Semiosis

103). He conjures the following situation: imagine the sensation of a swatch of cloth, A.

This swatch is sensed to "be the same as"-in other words, "undifferentiated from"­

another swatch, B, "though they are slightly different." Now, "that second swatch is

reported to be 'the same as' C, which is in its turn 'the same as' D." Based on this

relationship, Merrell describes the category of Firstness: what we have is "a continuum of

sorts where everything simply is as it is." Next, however, Merrell describes the kind of differences that would describe the category of Secondness. He writes that if A was no longer simply sensed, but "placed alongside D," a "marked difference" between A and D would be evident. Important is that this difference suggested is not a mediate difference involving a third term weighing up the two swatches, but it is (as Merrell notes) a "marked difference" only. It is relations like this that are particular to Secondness in the universe.

Deleuze gives a concrete example of Secondness with the action-image. He says the action-image is the domain of real objects in real spaces: it is the domain of Realism

(.Movement 141). In Chapter Four I explained Deleuze's ontology of the movement­ image, noting how action (as a category), is deduced when the interval of time separates an action and a reaction in the plane of movement-images. Action, "strictly speaking," is the

"delayed reaction" from the interval as "centre of indetermination" in the plane of movement-images (64). With this separation, images are distinguished by 1) the potential

(or virtual) action of other images; 2) by their own potential action on other images; and, 3) the determination of a real spatio-temporal location in which this occurs.

In comparison to Firstness, Deleuze writes that "qualities and powers are no longer displayed in any-space-whatevers [... ]but are actualized directly in determinate, geographical, historical and social space-times" (.Movement 141). He develops this difference further when he claims that actual things and determinate spatio-temporal locations (milieus) are essentially constitutive of a "vectorial" space, which Deleuze later

tells us is a zigzagging space of brute relation. In it, "heterogeneous elements [... ]jump

from one to the other, or[... ] interconnect directly" (168).

Deleuze's description of Charlie Chaplin serves as a good example (comparable to

Merrell's example of the swatches) of what the action-image takes into account. In this, the

zigzagging actions of Secondness appear in Ch:1ptcr 1-i,-e 162

the broken stroke which makes itself felt even in the angular swerves of his walk,

which only finally brings its segments and directions together by aligning them on

the long road, where Charlie, seen from the rear, plunges between telegraph poles

and leafless trees; or else zigzagging along the frontier[ ... ]. (Movement 170)

This description suggests that Charlie's actions are not logical or reasoned. His movement is a "broken stroke," and the only sense of unity suggested by these movements is given by the fact that they occur in a certain context: "the long road." The actions of vectorial space are the actions of delimited bodies in a state of things (and nothing more).

For Peirce, the Representamen of Secondness is the Sinsign. From the universe of

Firstness (Being in-itself), he describes a quality as a sign-a Qualisign; now we have an

"individual object, act or event" that is a sign-a Sinsign (Merrell Semiosis 93). This is a sign that is an existent fact (Daniel 37). It is not something that doesn't exist in the

"semiotically real world" like a sensation or feeling (Merrell Sensing Semiosis 21). Some examples include a diagram, an utterance, as well as a sound, a taste or a smell (21).

Deleuze writes that everything in Secondness takes place between a situation and an action. He writes that, ''What constitutes realism is simply this: milieux and modes of behaviour, milieux which actualize and modes of behaviour which embody. The action­ image is the relation between the two and all the varieties of the relation" (Movement 141).

For Deleuze, the Genesis of Secondness is the sign of this empirical relation: "The

situation, and the character or the action, are like two terms which are simultaneously

correlative and antagonistic" (142). Thus we can say that, similar to Secondness in

semeiotics, the action-image has as its sign the event, but the difference is that Deleuze

insists that this event is comprised of the relation between a situation and an action. Ch:.ptcr Fi,·c 163

This difference is also apparent in the fact that Deleuze doesn't label his sign of

Genesis with Peirce's Sinsign, but calls it (in the Glossary of The Movement-Image) an

Impression or (in The Time-Image) an Imprint: "The internal link between situation and action, in any case, constitutes the genetic element or imprint" (Iime 33). Both Deleuze's terms refer to an event that is a sign, but an event that involves the relation of a situation and an action specifically. Some examples Deleuze gives of this kind of sign (that I will discuss shortly) are a feint, a trap, a crisis, or an equivocation. Violence is also an Imprint, as is passion, alcoholism and some forms of perversity.

We have seen that Peirce describes different kinds of Sinsigns based on the different kind of sign-object relation involved. An Indexical Sinsign is an event that is a sign which involves an indexical relation of sign and object. Richard J. Parmentier notes that when I drop a handful of grass (sign), and this grass is blown by the wind (object), an elementary Sinsign is created. In this case the sign and object are in a genuine relationship, meaning that the sign points to some definitive object. But the same event can also be embodied in a First, in terms of an iconic relation of sign and object. Peirce calls this sign an Iconic Sinsign. In this case the wind stands for its object by resembling its object. The

Icon stands for a possible wind condition based on the direction of the grass's fall

(Parmentier 7); and since there is no causal connection, the Icon cannot tell us anything about the strength or direction of the wind (13-14). It must be pointed out also how an

Icon of this kind is not what Peirce would call pure. What this means is that, even though

I know I can't say anything specific about the object, the idea I form based on the direction

of the grass's fall is nevertheless relative to the wind.

Based on the kind of sign-object specific to Secondness in semeiotics, Deleuze

describes a genuine Composition of images particular to the action-image. First of all he

describes this kind of Composition by calling it a Synsign. In his Glossary Deleuze notes a correspondence between this term and Peirce's Sinsign. We have seen that the Sinsign for

Peirce is an event that is a sign. Deleuze uses it slightly differently here to refer to the idea of an event (a Second), but also, the sense in which an event (as a Second) is made up of a flux of objects in a spatio-temporal location. (These objects are in flux because they are not yet mediated by a Third). With this change in emphasis, Deleuze uses Peirce's Sinsign to describe a Composition of elements in the cinema. Furthermore, he marks his difference from Peirce by changing the prefix of Peirce's term from sin to ryn, thus emphasizing an idea of plurality and relation rather than individuation.3 The Synsign refers to a "set of power-qualities as actualized in a milieu, in a state of things or a determinate space-time"

(Movement 142).

Deleuze gets a little more specific when he identifies how the kind of Composition particular to the Synsign is a binomial of elements (Movement 142). In this respect he says

that the Synsign is a sign of Composition that, in fact, functions like a binomial. The binomial designates "what is properly active in the action-image" (142). Deleuze claims

that the binomial, in its most simple form, is a pair of forces in relation. He writes that

"there is a binomial as soon as the state of a force relates back to an antagonistic force

[... ]"(Movement 142). In sum, Secondness is expressed in a Synsign which functions as a

binomial because two or more elements in the frame relate as a pair of forces.

Typically, these forces are manifest in the relationship between a situation and an

action. Deleuze notes how, "The situation, and the character and the action, are like two

terms which are simultaneously correlative and antagonistic" (142). He continues, "The

action[... ] is a duel of forces, a series of duels: duel with the milieu, with the others, with

itself' (Movement 142). Deleuze also points out that what is most important about the

3 In a footnote Deleuze notes Peirce's use of the prefix sin, used to "emphasize the individuality of the state of things" (Movement 236 note 2). Merrell explains the same point, claiming that sin, in its derivation from singularity, is a haecceity, referring to the "this-ness" of a thing by which something exists (Semiosis 93): it thus suggests "a principle of individuation" (Deledalle 11). binomial is how one or both of the forces "involves in its very exercise an effort to foresee the action of the other force" (142). Tbis tells us that the function of the binomial is to go beyond the simple intersection of forces. Deleuze uses some examples to make this clearer, noting the relation between a situation (S) and a character or action (A) according to three formulas: SAS, SAS' and SAS".

In my explication Deleuze's description of these three relations is focussed on the ways an Imprint is expressed in a Synsign. First and foremost, then, Deleuze is identifying another embodied sign in his semiotics (Synsign Imprint), and describing the subtle variations involved in its manifestation. The first formula of the Synsign Imprint is the

SAS formula, and Deleuze illustrates this embodied sign with the example of the parry

(Movement 142). He explains a particular kind of crisis that results in what he calls a

"civilization of survival" (143). In it a character or community engages in an act of parrying with the milieu. The parry marks a response to a particularly strong situation-a situation so strong that the best a character can do is try to avert it or ward it off through a counter action. The act of parrying does not involve the logical relations of elements and is best described as a counter action only, and so the parry is clearly characteristic of the action-image. Deleuze unpacks the SAS formula of the Synsign Imprint further when he

describes the binomial in some of Robert Flaherty's anthropological documentaries.

Rather than weigh up the dynamics of a milieu (in terms of political problems, for

example), Deleuze notes that Flaherty has been criticized as a "Rousseauist" for presenting

a binomial only-in other words, for presenting Synsign Imprints and simply capturing in

the raw a character's "tete-a-tete with the milieu" (143). A similar example of the SAS

formula is suggested when Deleuze describes a character who doesn't know how to act in a

given situation. He gives the example of King Vidor's The Crowd (1928), describing an individual who "no longer knows what to do and at best finds himself in the same situation once more" (144).

The two other variations of the Synsign Imprint (SAS' and SAS") explain how a character, through some sort of counter action, does more than maintain a situation's equilibrium. Deleuze describes the SAS' formula when a "leader" responds to "the challenges of the milieu" and "the difficulties of a situation," thus modifying the original situation. Finally, Deleuze writes that the SAS" formula is particular to what he calls "a pathology of the milieu" (Movement 144-145). In this case a character behaves in a

"cracked way" with a milieu, and some examples of this kind of binomial are alcoholism, violence and perversity. This kind of binomial occurs when the leader has been replaced by "born loser," gangster/hustler or alcoholic (147). The character and situation eventually combust, leading to failure or even death.

After describing the Imprint and alluding to the three variations of the Synsign

Imprint, Deleuze describes another kind of Composition characteristic of the action-image by looking specifically at the actions of characters. His approach to elucidating this kind of

Composition is to consider how actions often disclose a situation. In this respect, Deleuze notes also that he is describing the inverse of the binomial relation of situation and action

(Synsign)-in other words, he is describing an ASA formula of the action-image.

Deleuze describes how a Composition of elements can disclose a situation. He writes that, "From action to action, the situation gradually emerges, varies, and finally either becomes clear or retains its mystery" (Movement 160). But also, he is quick to point out that the situation is not infemd from the actions, for this would be to imply a third element in the Composition (a mental element characteristic of the relation-image). Instead,

Deleuze claims that the situation is the result of a "differential law" (166). My analysis of

Deleuze's concept of the differential in Chapter Two tells us the following: that the situation described is the product of what is intrinsic to the elements of the Composition. Furthermore, the differential process is similar to what Deleuze describes as a "functional permutation"

(166). In mathematics a permutation is an act of changing the order of elements in a particular function. This idea of rearranging elements makes clear how, in the context of the cinematic action-image, the situation is disclosed strictly from the properties of the elements themselves.

Because of the relationship between actions and situations, Deleuze uses Peirce's indexical sign-object relation and calls this second kind of Composition of the action­ image an Index. I explained earlier that in semeiotics the Index is concerned with a genuine sign-object relation; for example, a handful of grass blowing across the putting green (sign) is an Index of the wind (object). Deleuze uses Peirce's Index to describe the differential because of the sense in which the Index designates "the link of an action" (the wind blowing in the above example) to "a situation which is not given" (a windy day). 4 In the cinema this kind of Composition is similar to the Synsign because both involve the relationship between a situation and an action; but, in the former a situation calls for an action, and in the latter an action discloses a situation.

As an example of the Index in Deleuze's semiotics we might note Mildred's actions in Michael Curtiz's Mildred Peirce (1945). When Mildred invites Wally back to her beach

house for a late night drink, it is her actions and gestures that disclose a situation of

seduction. But also, there is something about her actions that hint at something fishy

about the situation-that the seduction is tinged with malice. This is suggested by the

provocative way she sits crossed legged opposite Wally while he pours a drink; her smirk

while she takes a sip of her Scotch; and most of all, the uncertainty in her eyes betrayed by

the close-up of her fixed gaze on Wally.

4 I am referring to Deleuze's definition of the Index in the Glossary of The Movement-Image. I have noted two kinds of Composition characteristic of the action-image: the

Synsign and Index. I noted how the Synsign is suggestive of an embodied sign of the action-image: a Synsign Imprint. In Deleuze's semiotics a Synsign Imprint is an event that is a sign, expressed in the binomial of a situation and an action. Now I want to clarify a second embodied sign underlying Deleuze's analysis of the action-image: an Index Imprint.

Deleuze doesn't actually address this sign per se, but from his discussion we can define it as an event that is a sign expressed in the way an action discloses a situation.

Furthermore, I will return to Deleuze's discussion of the Icon and examine another embodied sign implicit to Deleuze's semiotics: an Icon Imprint. Deleuze hints at how an event can also be expressed in a qualitative Composition, but isn't crystal clear on specifying how this kind of sign fits with his semiotics as a whole. By examining this embodied sign I will make clear my argument that Deleuze relies on the hierarchical structure of Peirce's categories, according to which a sign element can be combined with the sign elements of the other categories of Being, in order to develop a rich and flexible taxonomy of signs in the cinema.

At the end of Chapter Six of The Movement-Image, Deleuze recapitulates what I called the Icon Qualisign. This is a quality in-itself that is a sign, expressed in a pure Icon, or what Deleuze calls a faceified image. In this respect he notes how the Icon expresses a quality "completely distinct" from its object, but not independent of its object (97). For instance Deleuze writes that "the affection-image, for its part, is abstracted from the spatio­ temporal co-ordinates which would relate it to a state of things, and abstracts the face from the person to which it belongs" (97).

Then, he describes another kind of quality that is a sign, this time one that is not

expressed in-itself. He writes that "it is clear that powers and qualities can also exist in a

completely different way: as actualized, embodied in states of things" (Movement 97). He continues, calling a quality a quale of an object or situation, and an affect a passionate action:

"In a state of things which actualizes them the quality becomes the 'quale' of an object, power becomes action or passion, affect becomes sensation[... ]" (97). With this difference between quality and quale, affect and passion, it is my argument that Deleuze is describing an Icon that is not pure. Moreover, this is another way of describing how an

Imprint is expressed. With his idea of the quale it can be said that Deleuze is describing an event that is expressed qualitative!J, through an Icon. A situation or an action is, therefore, expressed qualitatively, and since the Icon remains tied to a state of things, the sign is an

Imprint not a Qualisign.

As an example Deleuze describes another kind of close-up. This is the most conventional kind of close-up, according to which a character "is usually talking or reacting to one person or more" (Lumet 118). Consider some close-ups of Joan's face, this time in

Robert Bresson's Trial of Joan of Arc (1962). Deleuze tells us that the close-ups make the face an Icon, but the Icon is not faceified: ''Joan is perceived at her trial rather than in her

Passion, as a prisoner who resists rather than as a victim and a martyr" (108). The close­ ups contain fragments of other images, of a situation, and as such are Imprints. The

Imprints are expressed in Icons, but these Icons are not pure. These are Icon Imprints.

There is a more contemporary example of the Icon Imprint in Barry Levinson's

Sleepers (1996). Towards the end of the plot, Lorenzo visits his local priest, Father Bobby,

to ask him a favour. Lorenzo needs Father Bobby as a witness in court, but in order to seal

the fate of the men on trial for molesting Lorenzo when he was a child, Father Bobby

needs to lie in his testimony. Father Bobby is caught, therefore, in a difficult situation, and

the camera zooms in to a close-up of his face while he thinks about this predicament.

Father Bobby's face is to the left of the frame and the close-up neutralizes the background

of the scene. The camera remains fixed, and the duration of the shot (about forty seconds) seems to go on for ever. The empty-zone surrounding the face and the extended duration of the shot emphasize the qualiry of Father Bobby's expression, almost making his face what Peirce would call a pure Icon. The face remains grounded in a state of things, however, because both the non-diegetic atmospheric music of the previous shot (the establishing shot of Lorenzo and Father Barry's conversation), and Lorenzo's dialogue, continue in the soundtrack of the close-up. Even though the dialogue is mumbled and almost inaudible, the qualities expressed by the face are inextricably linked to the film's narrative situation (Father Barry's dilemma). Father Bobby's face is an Icon, an example of what Deleuze calls an iconic Composition of elements. But this Icon does not express a quality in-itself, but a quality of a state of things, and in this respect the embodied sign given is an Icon Imprint. It is not until the very end of the close-up, when the dialogue fades out completely and the music lulls, that the face is abstracted from the state of things and functions as an Icon Qualisign.

Let me sum up the points I have made in this section. Deleuze's sign of

Secondness is the Imprint of the action-image. According to Deleuze, an Imprint is

expressed in a Synsign or an Index. I have shown also how Deleuze relies on the flexibility

of the structure he borrows from Peirce and describes a third kind of Imprint, expressed

through the Icon. Thus, with these three modes of Composition, we can be specific about

Deleuze's signs of Secondness and list from Table 5.5 the Synsign Imprint, the Index

Imprint, and the Icon Imprint.

The Relation-Image

In Deleuze's semiotics, the relation-image is based on Peirce's category of

Thirdness. Furthermore, Deleuze's preliminary sign elements function in the same way as Ch:1pt,,r l·i·,i: 171

Peirce's Legisign and Symbol. Deleuze, however, doesn't label the sign of the relation­ image with Peirce's Legisign. Instead, he borrows Peirce's concept of the Symbol and uses it as his sign of Genesis in order to emphasize the plurality of relations potential to the relation-image. Deleuze describes two kinds of Composition equivalent to the abstract sign-object relation characteristic of Thirdness, and he calls these the Mark and Demark.

The Mark is an abstract relation of elements based on their common properties, and the

Demark is an abstract relation of elements based on their differences. I argue that the

Mark and Demark give two embodied signs characteristic of the relation-image: the Mark

Symbol and the Demark Symbol. But also, we will see that Deleuze describes the expression of a Symbol in Compositions other than the Mark and Demark. He is not explicit in naming these other kinds of Symbol, but they are nevertheless evident. I will uncover these variations, and in so doing I will once again show that Deleuze's semiotics depends on the flexibility of semeiotics. Using his discussion of Ernst Lubitsch's Design

for a Living (1933), I will note an Index Symbol; and, using Deleuze's discussion of the hero in the Western, I will note a Synsign Symbol.

For Peirce, Thirdness is the category of logical relations. I noted earlier that

Merrell describes the category of Firstness to be like "the sensation of a swatch of cloth, A, which is sensed to be the same as (undifferentiated from) another swatch, B, though they

are slightly different." In the undifferentiated form of these swatches (A, B as well as an

infinite number of others: C, D, E ... ), Merrell claims that Firstness, for Peirce, is "a

continuum of sorts where everything simply is as it is." Now, supposing the swatches are

placed along side each other, Merrell claims that the "marked difference" manifested by

this process (and the space-time presupposed), is suggestive of the category of Secondness.

Finally, as to the category of Thirdness, Merrell notes the following developments of the

continuum and its distinctions: "If an observer, X, notes that A is distinct from C and D [... ] and that there is a discontinuous spectrum before her, the relation becomes triadic. It involves an agent (mind) for whom the distinction between A and D is made manifest''

(Semiosis 103). Merrell tells us that the category of Thirdness involves an agent according to which the marked difference is considered a manifest difference.

For Deleuze, Thirdness in the cinema is also concerned with logical relations, and so it follows that he describes this category as the "relation" or "mental-image." Consider

Deleuze's own summation of the difference between Secondness and Thirdness in semeiotics:

The point of Thirdness was a term that referred to a second term through the

intermediary of another term or terms. The third instance appeared in signification,

law or relation. This may seem to be already included in action, but this is not so.

An action, that is to say a duel or a pair of forces, obey laws which make it possible,

but it is never its law which makes it act. An action does have a signification, but

this is not what constitutes its end; the end and the means do not include

signification. An action relates two terms, but this spatio-temporal relation (for

example, opposition) must not be confused with a logical relation. (.Movement 197)

In this passage Deleuze points out that Thirdness involves a logical relation of images, and

as such it implies a necessary Third according to which images are related. This is unlike

Secondness, for Secondness is the "spatio-temporal relation" of two terms only. Images

do not relate logical!J in Secondness, but are either oppositional or differential. If we think

back to the criticisms Deleuze says are aimed at Flaherty's documentaries, then the

difference between Secondness and Thirdness is clear. These criticisms suggests that

Flaherty's images are characteristic of Secondness because he simply presents, "in the raw," a "tete-a-tete" with the milieu (143). Had he unpacked the relations of images and made some claims about politics, or the caste system of primitive environments, or anything ethnological for that matter, then his images would be characteristic of Thirdness.

Deleuze describes his own understanding of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness in the cinema with the Marx Brothers films of the 1930s. He claims that these films show the three distinctions of Being in the universe: First, qualities; Second, actual events; and finally, Third, logical relations. Deleuze writes of the three brothers that Harpo is the 1 and is representative of "celestial affects" and "infernal impulses"; Chico is 2 since he takes on the "action" and "initiative"; and finally, Groucho is 3, "the man of interpretations [... ] symbolic acts and abstract relations":

Harpo proposes to Chico the enigma of a language of gestures, in a series of mimes

[Firstness] that Chico must constantly guess in order to extract a proposition from

them [Secondness]. But Groucho pushes the art of interpretation to its final

degree, because he is the master of reasoning [fhirdness] [... ].(.Movement 199)

For Peirce, the Representamen of Thirdness is the Legisign, defined as a "general type, law, convention or habit" (Merrell Semiosis 93). In this respect we can be clearer and say that the Representamen is not a quality that is a sign (Qualisign) or an event that is a

sign (Sinsign), but something else. A Legisign is a kind of event, but an event that is general.

Consider Peirce's explanation: "A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually

established by men. Every conventional sign is a legisign. It is not a single object, but a

general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant" (2.246). A Legisign, then, is

manifest when a Sinsign is taken as a general type. E. Valentine Daniel sums up the relation between Peirce's three kinds of

Representamen (Qualisigns, Sinsigns and Legisigns). He writes that a Qualisign

is a sign whose representative capacity lies in its quality. [... ]When redness

becomes embodied in a sari, it is a sinsign, a representamenal Second. But as soon

as it is thus embodied, it calls forth or invokes a more general order or general

possibility of representation[ ... ] . This is a legisign. (31).

While a Legisign is a Second that calls forth a "more general order," all Seconds are not necessarily Legisigns. Also, in invoking a more general order of the sign, the Legisign does not necessarily appeal to already established conventions. Parker makes this point clear for us when she insists that nothing forces "habit" and the creation of "types" in semeiotics.

Some examples of Peirce's Legisign are, a type of shout, like "hello!"; a shout directing our attention to something, like "beer here!"; a noun, like book; a proposition; and a syllogism

(Parmentier 19).

For Deleuze, the Symbol of the relation-image is equivalent to Peirce's Legisign. In relation to Peirce's conception of the characteristics of the Representamen ofThirdness,

Deleuze's Symbol seems fitting and straightforward, for he defines it as "the circumstance

through which we are able to compare two images, even arbitrarily united" (Iime 33). The

Symbol is the sign of mediation in the cinema. Deleuze makes the same point in his

Glossary to The Movement-Image when he writes that the Symbol "designate[s] the

support of abstract relations, that is to say of a comparison of terms independently of their

natural relations." Again, this definition makes clear the underlying principle of mediation

in Thirdness in the cinema: it is manifest when elements are compared independently of

their natural relation-in other words, their Secondness. Thus the Symbol seems Ch:1ptcr h,:c 175

comparable to Peirce's definition of the Legisign in that it refers to a circumstance of comparison that is a sign.

An ambiguity arises in Deleuze's thesis, however, when we remember that the

Symbol in semeiotics is a sign element that is representative of a certain kind of sign-object relation-in other words, the Symbol is specific to Peirce's second aspect of the sign (the nature of its embodiment), while Deleuze is using it in his semiotics to describe a version of

Peirce's first aspect of the sign (the sign in-itself). Deleuze is using the Symbol to describe the Genesis of the relation-image: the most essential element of the sign of the relation­ image. I want to maintain that the reason Deleuze uses the Symbol to describe the first aspect of the sign is because he considers the Symbol more appropriate than the Legisign.

In semeiotics, the Symbol is identified with an abstract sign-object relation. The Symbol refers to the plurality of relations potential to sign and object in the category of Thirdness. In

Deleuze's semiotics, the Genesis of the relation-image is a logical relation that is a sign, but by calling this sign element a Symbol, Deleuze makes clear that a logical relation, in fact, takes into account a plurality of potential relations. Deleuze highlights this emphasis when he defines the Symbol in his semiotics as "a concrete object which is a bearer of various relations, or of variations of a single relation, of character with others and with himself'

(Movement 204).5

I explained in Chapter Three that a Legisign in semeiotics is embodied in three kinds of sign-object relation. It can be embodied in a Symbol when sign and object are in an abstract relation-in other words, when some kind of convention Oaw or habit) contrives a sign to represent its object. A Legisign can be embodied in an Index when the

type is directly applicable to a singular thing in an actual instance of communication.

5 It could also be said that Deleuze uses the Symbol in the cinema books in reference to his idea of the Symbolic (the fundamental Thirdness in the Universe), in "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?". See Chapter Two of this dissertation. Parmentier gives the example of the second-person singular personal pronoun you. This is a Legisign, but one that does not refer to its object by mere convention only. He explains:

"You refers to whomever the speaker is addressing, an object which by this rule must be co-present in every successful referring act of uttering a replica ofyou." Thus there is "a built-in indexical dimension of the meaning ofyotl' (9). Finally, a Symbol can be embodied in an Icon. In this case Peirce notes the example of a diagram "apart from its factual individuality" (2.258).

Deleuze is explicit about describing a kind of Composition characteristic of the relation-image, and when he suggests that it involves an abstract Composition of elements, it is clear that he is basing it on the symbolic sign-object relation of semeiotics. In Chapter

Twelve of The Movement-Image Deleuze refers to Alfred Hitchcock's films and describes an abstract Composition of elements. He says that in Hitchcock it is "the chain of relations which constitutes the mental-image" (200). Here he is saying that the mental­ image (reflection-image) is constituted when images are linked in a chain. He continues and is a little more specific when he writes that Hitchcock "makes relation itself the object of the image" (203). It is my argument that this description of relation itself identifies a specific kind of relation of elements in the frame, one that is more abstract and general than a qualitative relation (Icon) or genuine relation (Synsign/Index): an entirely abstract

Composition characteristic of the relation-image.

Deleuze describes an abstract Composition most generally with the Mark, but also, he notes a slight variation of the Mark with the Demark. Together, the Mark/Demark is

Deleuze's Composition of the relation-image. He defines the Mark as "the circumstance

[... ]through which two images are united, according to a habit" (Iime 33). With the Mark,

images are compared according to what Deleuze calls a "natural" relation. He writes that

"in accordance with the natural relation, a term refers back to other terms in a customary series such that each can be 'interpreted' by the others" (Movement 203). The Mark, then, suggests an abstract Composition according to which elements are compared based on their common properties. As an example, Deleuze describes the effect of the single shot in

Hitchcock: "The Rope is made up of a single shot in so far as the images are only the winding path of a single reasoning process" (200). He defines the Demark as the

"circumstance through which an image finds itself tom from its natural relation or series"

(Iime 33). The Demark suggests an abstract Composition according to which elements are compared based on their difference from each other in a series. Deleuze writes that the image "leap[s] outside the web" and "appear[s] in conditions which takes it out of its series" (203). Deleuze gives some more examples from Hitchcock:

Certain of Hitchcock's demarks are famous, like the windmill in Foreign

Correspondent whose sails tum in the opposite direction to the wind, or the crop

spraying plane in North by Northwest which appears when there are no crops to

spray. Similarly, the glass of milk made suspect by its internal luminosity in

Suspicion, or the key which does not fit the lock in Dial M for Murder. (203).

Each example describes an abstract Composition that has its basis in the apparent dissimilarity of elements: the windmill and the wind; the crop spraying plane and the crops;

the milk and its luminosity; the key and its lock.

With Deleuze's discussion of the relation-image, we can identify some more

embodied signs in his semiotics. Generally, we can note a Mark/Demark Symbol. This is

a circumstance of relation expressed in an abstract Composition of elements. More

specifically, we can identify a Mark Symbol: a circumstance of relation expressed in an abstract Composition of similarity; and, a Demark Symbol: a circumstance of relation expressed in an abstract Composition of difference.

Similar to his discussion of the action-image, Deleuze's discussion of the relation­ image implies further embodied signs based on the expression of a Symbol in

Compositions characteristic of the action-image. Consider his identification of the Index with an ellipsis (Movement 160). An ellipsis is "the omission of a normal part of a structure," and the ellipted part can be understood from the situational or textual context

(Greenbaum 623). From the linguistic definition given I would argue that an ellipsis implies a mental element (Third). Consequently, Deleuze is identifying the Index with the relation-image. Deleuze makes this clear when he describes a special case of the Index when

an action (or an equivalent of action, a simple gesture) discloses a situation which is

not given. The situation is thus deduced from the action by immediate inference or by

relatively complex reasoning. Since the situation is not given for itself, the index here

is an index of lack, it implies a gap in the narrative, and corresponds to the first

sense of the French word 'ellipse.' (my emphasis Movement 160)

Deleuze's reference to the concepts deduction, inference and reasoning posit the Index in respect

of the relation-image and the category of logical relations. Consider also some of Deleuze's

examples. He states that there is an elliptical Index in Chaplin's Public Opinion (1923)

because we can infer, based on the heroine's new behaviour and clothes, that she has

become "a rich man's mistress" (161). Deleuze gives another example of the Index, this

time from Lubitsch's Design for Living. In this film a woman has two lovers, and one of

these lovers sees the other early in the morning wearing a dinner jacket. This situation is an Ch:1ptcr l·i"s-c 179

Index, but one that evokes a general idea or concept (Symbol) for the lover concludes from what he sees that his friend has spent the night with the young woman. Deleuze labels this kind of Index a "reasoning-image" (161), but I want to be clearer and identify the following embodied sign: an Index Symbol.

We can also uncover a Synsign Symbol in Deleuze's discussion of the hero in

Westerns. Deleuze describes how the hero is often "representative" of a "collectivity"

(Movement 146). Similarly, he writes that "the hero becomes equal to the milieu via the intermediary of the community." This suggests some cases where the hero acts as a result of the wishes of the community and, according to what these wishes may involve, we can assume they include the community's desire for justice, and perhaps even vengeance. It can be argued, then, that the binomial implied by the hero's action is expressive of a

Symbol.

Based on Deleuze's discussion of the relation-image, I have revealed cases of the

Mark/Demark Symbol, the Index Symbol and the Synsign Symbol. But what about the affection-image and the Icon Symbol? I cannot find any cases where Deleuze refers specifically to what might be an Icon Symbol, but it's not hard to suggest what could be involved based on his other signs. I have noted that a Symbol for Deleuze is a sign of

Thirdness, and suggests a circumstance of comparison. To note an Icon Symbol is not to note a circumstance of comparison expressed in a genuine Composition (Synsign/Index), but a circumstance of comparison expressed through an image that stands far a state of things or object based on some quality (Icon). If we consider Bruce Lee's The Game of Death

(1972) as an example of a martial arts film, we can note the warrior's grunts and cries which punctuate his karate moves (in this case Han Tien's-played by Lee), as Icons expressive of his heroic action (Symbols). Chnpt,:r h,·c 180

In this section of Chapter Five I have unpacked Deleuze's examination of the relation-image. I have shown how its Genesis is the Symbol. A Symbol is the circumstance of an image's relation. Deleuze is quite clear about a Symbol's expression in a

Composition of images that is not unlike Peirce's Symbol. This is a Composition purely abstract and defined as such, and Deleuze labels it with the Mark and Demark. I have also returned to Deleuze's chapters on the action-image and affection-image and suggested some other points at which he appears to be referring to the expression of a Symbol in other kinds of Composition. This has extended the list of embodied signs uncovered in

Deleuze's semiotics to include Mark/Demark Symbols, Synsign/lndex Symbols, and Icon

Symbols.

The Impulse-Image

Deleuze extends the capabilities of Peirce's semeiotics by noting a degenerate category of Being, midway between Firstness and Secondness, with its own characteristic sign elements. For Deleuze, this category is midway between affection-images and action­ images, and he calls this category of Being in the cinema the impulse-image. Its Genesis is midway between an affect and an action, and Deleuze calls it a Symptom. Similarly, the

Composition of the impulse-image isn't qualitative like an Icon, or genuine like a

Synsign/Index. It is somewhere between the two: a partial action. Deleuze labels this

Composition with the term Fetish. From Deleuze's discussion of the impulse-image I identify the embodied sign characteristic of this image-type: the Fetish Imprint. But also, I

go further than Deleuze and explain how it is an indiscernible Fetish that is expressive of a

Symptom.6 This becomes more evident when I explain how a Fetish that is not

6 We will see that this is a slightly different idea of indiscernibility than the indiscernibility I later describe in relation to the Composition characteristic of optical-images. indiscernible is expressive of Imprints and Symbols. Thus I extend the list of embodied signs in Deleuze's semiotics to include the Fetish Imprint and Fetish Symbol.

Furthermore, I continue this line of reasoning when I show how a Symptom can also be expressed in an Icon, producing an Icon Symptom.

For Deleuze, the impulse-image is not "a mere intermediary" between affection and action, but is a category in its own right (Movement 123). Deleuze's thesis suggests that he is considering the image-types of the movement-image as a continuum of Being. And, his examination of the impulse-image makes clear a sense in which this continuum can be considered from the point of view of what lies between the category of Being in-itself

(affection-image), and the category of actual Being (action-image). Since Deleuze borrows from Peirce's concept of Secondness and determines the action-image according to the actions of one object on another, Deleuze claims that prior to actual Being is something else: "'embryonic' action" (123). He describes these embryonic actions, moreover, as

"elementary impulses," writing that they take place in an "originary world" (122). For

Deleuze, the originary world is the universe of "unformed matter" (123). It is not composed of fully formed bodies that have been made abstract, but abstractions in the process of becoming fully formed.

In terms of his semiotics Deleuze defines a Symptom as a sign in-itself that is midway between a quality (Qualisign) and an event that is a sign (Imprint), and so he calls the Symptom the Genesis of the impulse-image. In respect of its intermediary position between the affection-image and the action-image, a Symptom for Deleuze is an

"embryonic action," and by the same token, an embryonic event that is a sign (Movement

123).

We can understand this concept of the Symptom better if we refer to the practice

of "symptomatology" outlined by Deleuze in "Coldness and Cruelty." In his Introduction Ch:1ptcr h,-,: 182

to Essays Critical and Clinical, Daniel W. Smith tells us that in "Coldness and Cruelty''

Deleuze describes symptomatology as the practice whereby a doctor constructs a "clinical concept'' for a disease based on the "convergence" or "point of coincidence" of certain symptoms (xvi). This practice, in so far as symptomatology is concerned with diagnosing diseased bodies, defines the symptom as a mutated component of a body. I want to put this another way and define the symptom as the embryonic action of a body. It is because of these embryonic actions that the body is not complete and is diseased and sick.

Consequently in the cinema, a Symptom is an embryonic action or incomplete event that is a sign.

Since the impulse-image is a degenerate category of Being in the cinema (a degenerate image-type), we know that the Composition characteristic of it is midway between a qualitative (Icon) and genuine (Synsign/Index) Composition. The Composition of the Symptom, therefore, does not involve an image standingfor another image (Icon), or standing with another image (as a pair of forces: Synsign/Index). For Deleuze this kind of

Composition is given with his idea of the Fetish.

We can be clearer about what the Fetish implies for a Composition of images if we unpack Deleuze's definition in relation to some of his examples. In the Glossary of The

Movement-Image Deleuze defines a fetish, in general terms, as a fragment torn awqyfrom a real milieu. Deleuze notes a Fetish as a Composition in the cinema when an object simultaneously belongs to the derived milieu and the originary world (.Movement 128).

Accordingly, he writes that this kind of object is a "partial object." Such an object might be "a woman's briefs": on the one hand it is an object in a milieu, but on the other hand it may be an object of sexual desire and is deeply embedded in the originary world of impulses. This object is a partial object, then, in so far as it is not quite an object proper, but a sexual object, an impulsive object-in other words, a Symptom. And in this respect we can say that the object isn't really a functional object acting dynamically with other objects in a milieu. We can be clearer and say that since a Fetish, in general terms, is an object that isn't really an actual, functional, dynamic object (it's a partial object), a Fetish, as a

Composition of the cinema specifically, involves the partial actions of elements in the frame. For instance, the Fetish is a Composition when characters don't quite act and react

(Synsign/Index), but partial!) act and react. Deleuze describes this kind of action as animalistic behaviour (123-124), which we can extend to include perverse, anxious, emotiona~ masochistic and sadistic actions.

What are the embodied signs implied by Deleuze's discussion of the sign elements of the impulse-image? According to the hierarchy of Deleuze's image-types and the nature of the impulse-image as a category of Being in the cinema, a Symptom is a partial action (of a body in the course of its formation) that is a sign. It is not the partial action of an actual body (a Second), since according to the hierarchy of the image-types, there are no actual bodies characteristic of this category of Being. Similar to the sense in which a Qualisign is a quality in-itself (independent of its actualization by a body/ spatio-temporal location) expressed in a pure Icon, a Symptom is necessarily a partial action in-itself. From this comparison we can note that a Symptom is expressed in (what I will call) a pure Fetish: a

Fetish that is independent of its actualization by a body/ spatio-temporal location.

Moreover, I would argue that this occurs when the partial actions are indiscernible from a character/ spatio-temporal location-in other words, when the partial actions are distinct from a body/ spatio-temporal location, but their difference from a body/ spatio-temporal location is unattributable.7 When a partial action is expressed in this way, a Fetish Symptom is created; but, when the partial actions are grounded in a body/ spatio-temporal location, a

Fetish Imprint is created.

7 I have borrowed this understanding of indiscemibility from Deleuze ~ 69). Chnpt,,r h,-c 184

I will unpack the Fetish Symptom through an analysis of Buftuel's The

Exterminating Angel. In this film Senor Nobile's guests are unable to leave the drawing room of his house. As they are stuck for several days, still in their tuxedos and frocks from

Nobile's dinner party, we note a gradual regression in their behaviour. For example,

Nobile's guests grope like animals towards the only source of water in the room; the sexual tension becomes more and more explicit with the fondling and adulterous promises that fill the darkness of cupboards. The originary world is never so apparent as when the guests begin to defecate and urinate in the closet; and, the evidence of their regression is complete when one guest dies, and the others don't even seem to care. I will call each of these modes of behaviour Fetish Symptoms because of the logic implied by the following circuit: the guests seem to realize their inability to leave the room, and in tum, they seem to realize the increasing regression of their demeanours, but they don't do anything about it, and further still, they don't seem to notice that they are not doing anything about it. For the guests, their regressive behaviour (partial action) is indiscernible from their actual existence in the drawing room.

For example, at one stage we see a group of the female guests standing together talking. The camera moves closer and all of a sudden one of the women rudely declares:

"Enough of this chit-chat! It's time to go home." Then, as the camera tracks backwards,

she walks briskly to the other side of the room and begins chatting again, as if the thought

of leaving had never crossed her mind. The fact that a character's behaviour is regressing,

and furthermore, the fact that a character is aware of their behaviour (of their partial

actions), but doesn't seem to notice that they are not taking steps to counteract this

regression, is key here: we are not seeing the partial actions of characters, but partial actions

themselves-Fetish Symptoms. Ch:ipt,,r h,-c 185

I want to continue looking at Deleuze's impulse-image and consider one final embodied sign. It is the Icon Symptom. We know from the hierarchy of the image-types that a Symptom can be expressed in a Fetish or an Icon. Again, Deleuze does not go into the specifics of this problem, but based on the structure laid out so far, the Icon Symptom becomes a potential of his semiotics. We can determine the Icon Symbol as a partial action that is a sign expressed in a qualitative Composition of elements. As an example I will suggest the close-up of a face. There is more to be said about this close-up, however, since the Icon Symptom is not the expression of a quality in-itself (Icon Qualisign) or quale

(Icon Imprint), but the quality of a partial action. This means that the close-up must be a particular kind of close-up of a particular kind of face. I would contend that it must be a close-up that makes a face abstract, deforming the face.

A good example of the Icon Symptom can be found in Martin Scorsese's Mean

Streets (1973). At one point in the narrative we see Charlie's face in close-up as he dances around the bar, drunk and obviously about to pass out. The camera is fixed to Charlie's chest and moves with him as he ambles around on the dance-floor. The camera ambles too, making the image of Charlie's already bloated and swollen red face seem even more deformed and abstract. It is the deformed face that stands for the originary world of partial actions, creating an Icon Symptom.

My discussion of the Icon Symptom completes my analysis of the impulse-image: the first of Deleuze's two degenerate image-types noted in The Movement-Image. I have

explicated Deleuze's sign elements of Genesis and Composition characteristic of this image-type, but I have tried to be a little more specific than Deleuze about how these sign

elements fit with the other image-types of the cinema according to the structure of the sign

afforded by semeiotics. Now I will conclude this chapter by considering the second

degenerate image-type. Ch:ipter l·i,.-c 186

The Reflection-Image

Deleuze describes another degenerate image-type, this time coming between the action-image and relation-image. Deleuze identifies it as the reflection-image in the cinema, and as this name suggests, reflections are midway between events and logical relations. Deleuze calls the Genesis of the reflection-image a Discursive, and he describes a

Discursive as a sign that is grounded in the material link of a situation and an action-in other words, it is not totally abstract like a Symbol-yet it is more developed than an

Imprint in that it unravels something ordinarily hidden in the event. The Discursive unravels what Deleuze calls the question hidden in the event. The Composition of the reflection-image also fits into the continuum of Being which Deleuze borrows from semeiotics. He names the Composition of the reflection-image the Figure. Rather than being a genuine or logical Composition, what is involved with the Figure is a substitution or inversion of elements. In terms of the embodied sign of the reflection-image, we can define a Figure Discursive as a question (about an event) that is a sign, expressed in a substitution/inversion of elements in the frame. And, in the same way that there are three variations of the Synsign Imprint (SAS, SAS', SAS"), Deleuze describes three variations of the Figure Discursive. These are based on his identification of three broad kinds of substitution/inversion in the cinema. Similar to my analysis of the impulse-image, I will conclude by considering the impact of the reflection-image on the embodied signs of

Deleuze's semiotics.

Towards the end of The Movement-Image, Deleuze describes a sense in which the binomial of the action-image is transformed or transmutated (178). Party to this, we can

assume, is a category of the movement-image not quite like the action-image. Deleuze seems to have a particular kind of action in mind when he writes that the Genesis of the reflection-image is "discursive," that is, it refers us to, "a situation or an action of discourse, independent of the question: is the discourse itself realized in a language?" (Iime 33). With the Discursive as the Genesis of the reflection-image, Deleuze is suggesting that the reflection-image is the category of discursive relations-it refers to a situation of discourse-but it is not a logical universe since this discourse is not realized in a language.

In short, he is saying that the reflection-image is more developed than the action-image since it involves more than events and binomials; but by the same token, it is not quite as developed as the relation-image. The reflection-image, therefore, refers to a category of what I will call embryonic relations. Its Genesis is the embryonic relation that is a sign, a

Discursive.

Deleuze defines the Composition of the impulse-image by explaining how it can

"no longer be purely material" (Movement 181). He writes that it "should become formal and pass from one image to a quite different mode of image," which most importantly,

"has only an indirect reflexive relationship with the initial image." This Composition goes beyond the "material" conditions of the elements of the image, but Deleuze specifies how it is an "indirect reflexive relationship of elements only," thus suggesting that the

Composition is not completely abstract either-in other words, it is not a Composition characteristic of the relation-image. He calls this Composition a Figure.

Unpacking Deleuze's concept of the "question" will shed some more light on how

the Figure works as a sign element of Composition. Deleuze claims, for example, that

Kurosawa's films often progress according to the development of a question. He writes that

Kurosawa's heroes typically respond to a situation by unravelling a question or problem

"hidden in the situation, wrapped up in the situation[... ] that the situation was not (J,nptcr h, c 188

sufficient to disclose" (189). Deleuze gives us an example from Kurosawa's Red Beard

(1964):

Red Beard's deputy understands the situation of sick people and the givens of

madness scientifically; he prepares to leave his master whose practices seem

authoritarian, archaic, and barely scientific. But he meets a madwoman and in her

complaint apprehends what was nevertheless already present in all the other

madwomen, the echo of an insane, unfathomable question. (190)

For Deleuze, locating a question means unpacking what is hidden in a situation and the actions of its objects (an event), and this might involve uncovering "the dreams and nightmares [... ] impetuses and actions of the subjects involved" (190). Thus unravelling a question is more than responding to a situation from the point of view of its "causes and effects"-in other words, its Secondness. The question unpacks something deeper in the situation. The Figure reveals this very process of the question, whereby an element (an object, a body) functions to unravel something hidden in another (a situation). But at the same time, the Figure remains grounded in the material conditions of the event, and this is because it proceeds according to the very process of uncovering something that is hidden.

Since the Figure is not characteristic of the relation-image, the question doesn't discover anything that is not in a position to be discovered already. Another way of putting this process, as Deleuze does in his Glossary, is to define the Figure as a Composition "which reflects its own object [... ] by inverting it."

Deleuze describes the same idea of Composition particular to the Figure by stating

that it involves a substitution of elements. Furthermore, he describes this process of

substitution based on Pierre Fontanier's conception of the linguistic "figures of discourse." Ch~ptcr Fi,-e 189

At this stage of his thesis, Deleuze draws our attention to three kinds of figures of discourse:

In the first case, tropes strictly speaking, a word taken in a figurative sense replaces

another word (metaphors, metonymies, synecdoches); in the second case, imperfect

tropes, it is a group of words, a proposition that has the figurative sense (allegory,

personification, etc.); in the third sense, there is substitution, but it is in their strictly

literal sense that the words are subjected to exchanges and transformations (reversal

is one of these procedures). (Movement 183)

Each case implies a process of substitution: of one word with a single word (first case), group of words (second case), or literally (third case). Thus, Fontanier provides Deleuze with three ways of conceiving of the process of substitution particular to the Figure: in the first case, there might be a one-for-one substitution of elements; in the second case, a one­ for-many substitution of elements; and in the third case, a substitution of elements based on a reversal. I want to make perfectly clear, however, that in each case the substitution suggested is not like the iconic substitution characteristic of the affection-image. In each case the Figure is based on a reflection or inversion of images, but the Icon stands for its object based on a qualitative resemblance.

Now that I have examined how the Figure works, let me identify another embodied

sign of Deleuze's semiotics: a Figure Discursive. A Figure Discursive is an embryonic

relation that is a sign, expressed in a substitution/inversion of elements which functions to

unravel something hidden in the material conditions of the event. There are three main

varieties of the Figure Discursive (based on Fontanier's linguistic figures of discourse). Chnpt1:r I ·i,-e 190

Deleuze gives several examples of the Figure Discursive. He writes that Figures equivalent to Fontanier's first and second kinds of linguistic tropes are common in

Eisenstein's films. Deleuze refers to these examples as Eisenstein's "plastic" and

"theatrical" representations respectively. For instance:

Eisenstein's sculptural or plastic representations are images which represent

another image, and have a value one by one even when they are taken in a series.

But theatrical representations proceed in sequence, and it is the sequence of images

which have the figural role. (.Movement 183)

Plastic representation involves a one-for-one substitution, and theatrical representation a one-for-many substitution.

Deleuze also describes other more general examples of the Figure Discursive in the narrative of some of Herzog's films. He identifies the Figure Discursive as most significant in a character's vision or hallucination. The visionary is a typical character in Herzog's films: "A man who is larger than life frequents a milieu which is itself larger than life, and dreams up an action as great as the milieu[ ... ] the action, in effect, is not required by the situation, it is a crazy enterprise, born in the head of the visionary[ ... ] (.Movement 184).

Deleuze notes how the vision "partially opens" the image by inserting "vast hallucinatory visions of flight, ascent or passage. In The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser the moment of the vision occurs in one of the final scenes after Kaspar has been stabbed and lies dying in bed.

Kaspar's vision unravels something about the situation of the film, but it remains grounded

in the situation, and in so far as it offers up something that has not been disclosed by the

action, the vision is like a question. And even though the vision unravels the situation, it is

never explained and justified in the action of the film: it is "not required by the situation" (184). Thus the vision, in so far as it is not required by the situation, is not characteristic of the relation-image. It is more than an action-image and less than a relation-image.

From my discussion of the vision as a Figure Discursive, we can reveal another embodied sign in Deleuze's semiotics: a Figure Symbol. This is a circumstance of comparison that is a sign (Symbol), expressed in a substitution (reflection or inversion, a

Figure). This kind of sign is exactly the opposite of Deleuze's reading of the vision in

Herzog's films. This sign is characteristic of the relation-image, meaning that (if we continue the above example) a vision is required by the situation in some sense. Such would be the vision of a lunatic or psychotic.

Furthermore, Deleuze's description of Eisenstein's The General Llne (1929) suggests a case of the Icon Discursive (Movement 181). At one point in the film the workers wait in anticipation to see if a creamer machine works. Rather than show the scene from a distance, Eisenstein builds it up from minute details by alternating between close-up shots of the workers' faces and the creamer's dials, knobs and other mechanical bits and pieces. As the scene progresses, the alternation of these shots increases in pace, marking the rising tension of the situation. Finally, the milk begins to flow. At this point

Eisenstein cuts from an image of the milk flowing, to an image of water streaming from a fountain. Deleuze explains: "A drop falls, then a flood of milk, to be extended in images of streaming water and substitutive streams of fire (a fountain of milk, an explosion of water)"

(181). For the farmers in the historical context of Eisenstein's films (Russia in the grips of accelerated industrialization), we can say that the idea of making milk from a machine is a crazy enterprise born in the head of a visionary (Discursive). In this particular sequence, however, this vision (or embryonic relation) is expressed in the qualitative relation of the

flow of milk from the machine, and the flow of water from an ornate water fountain-in

other words, through the iconic relation of creamer and fountain. Finally, although Deleuze isn't specific, he appears to give some other examples of the Discursive from Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1973). Deleuze notes how Aguirre is a visionary: he has a plan to "found a pure race in an incestuous union with his daughter, in which History will become the 'opera' of nature" (Movement 184). Deleuze also suggests how Aguirre's decline in sanity is the consequence of his vision. Aguirre seems to be on a steady path to convergence with the originary world of the impulse-image, and

Deleuze says as much when he sums up the film's conclusion: "The visionary's sublime plane failed[ ... ] and his whole reality was enfeebled: Aguirre ended alone on his slimy raft, with only a colony of monkeys as his race; as his final performance" (185). It seems quite clear that Deleuze is describing the expression of the Discursive through the Fetish, and so we can be more explicit than Deleuze and reveal the Fetish Discursive in his semiotics. At the same time, though, aspects of Aguirre's vision are also expressed in Synsigns, revealing a Synsign Discursive in Deleuze's semiotics. This is evident in the sense that Aguirre's sublime plan is expressed in a battle-a binomial.

My analysis of the reflection-image ends my explication of Deleuze's image-types, sign elements, and embodied signs of The Movement-Image. Each of the embodied signs

I have revealed in this chapter are produced from Deleuze's reading of the ordinal and hierarchical flexibility of Peirce' s categories of Being in the cinema. All of Deleuze' s embodied signs fit neatly into a continuum of Being and its Composition. The reflection­ image is one such example: its Genesis is the Discursive and is midway between the

Imprint and the Symbol, and its Composition is the Figure: an embryonic relation of

elements midway between a Synsign/Index and a Mark/Demark. Ch:iptcr l·i,:c 193

Conclusion

In this project I argue that Deleuze develops his semiotics in light of the relationship Peirce sets up between Being on the one hand, and the sign on the other. I want to recall the argument I put forward in Chapter Four, however, that Peirce's semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the process of expression in language.

In this respect I must be clearer and say that while using Peirce's division of the universe into three phenomenological categories of Being (or what Deleuze calls the image-types of the movement-image), and furthermore, while describing a range of embodied signs specific to these categories, the sense in which these image-types and embodied signs are immanent to the cinema is of vital importance.

In the next chapter I will explain how Deleuze extends his reading of Peirce even further and reveals a category of Zeroness (or what he calls the optical-image) essential to the cinema. The sign elements of this image-type extend the range of embodied signs in

Deleuze's semiotics beyond the expression of qualities in-themselves (Qualisign) to reach

"a difference that, if there was no such thing as art, would remain the eternal secret of each man." (Proust, M. A la Recherche du temps perdu III. Trans. Richard Howard.

Bibliotheque de la Pleiade: 895 qtd. in Deleuze Proust: 41). C:h~pt,'r ::i: 194

Chapter Six

Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema. Part II: The Time-Image

There is every reason to believe that many other kinds of images can exist.

[... ]The plane of movement-images is a bloc of space-time, a temporal

perspective, but, in this respect, it is a perspective on real Time which is not

at all the same as the plane or the movement. We are therefore justified in

thinking that there are time-images which are themselves capable of having

all kinds of varieties. (Deleuze Movement 68)

Introduction

I have been arguing that Deleuze uses Peirce's semeiotics in order to conceive of the process of expression in the language of the cinema. In Chapter Five I explained how

Peirce's three categories of Being afford Deleuze three perspectives on the signaletic material of the image. And I explained how Deleuze conceives of the expression of this

signaletic material by developing a concept of the cinematic sign based on Peirce' first and

second aspect of the sign (Representamen and Object). Deleuze divides the sign into two

aspects (or what Deleuze calls polarities): its Genesis and Composition. Similar to Peirce's

Representamen and Object, Genesis refers to the sign in-itself, and Composition refers to the

sign's embodiment in a specific context. Specific about these terms in Deleuze's semiotics,

however, is their Spinozistic connotations. Genesis reveals Deleuze's understanding of how a sign in-itself is equivalent to an essence of a body in Spinoza's theology. In respect of this equivalence the sign in-itself is an essence of his semiotics and is immanent to the cinema. Composition reveals Deleuze's understanding of how the sign-object relations of semeiotics are equivalent to the way a body exists in Spinoza's theology. A body exists because its parts express an essence of substance (not because a transcendent God breathes life into it). In respect of this equivalence a sign is embodied in Deleuze's semiotics when a

Composition of elements expresses a category of Being characteristic of a Genesis. In

Chapter Five I identified this relationship of Genesis and Composition as an embodied sign of Deleuze's semiotics.

Deleuze describes his concept of the sign in relation to three principal categories of the cinema, or what he calls the three principal image-types of the cinema: the affection­ image, action-image and relation-image. Similar to Peirce's claim that the categories of

Being imply three kinds of Representamen, Object and lnterpretant, Deleuze analyzes three kinds of Genesis and three kinds of Composition, which I call the preliminary sign elements of his semiotics. And similar to the hierarchical combination of sign elements in semeiotics, I noted how the different kinds of Genesis and Composition reveal six principal embodied signs underlying Deleuze's semiotics. Most importantly, these signs are conceived by Deleuze as immanent to the cinema, and in this respect each embodied sign represents a different way the signaletic material is expressed.

I also noted that Deleuze moves beyond Peirce in some senses. I argued that he does this by expanding his semiotics to include two degenerate image-types in the cinema: the impulse-image, which is midway between the affection-image and the action-image; and the reflection-image, which is midway between the action-image and the relation-image. These

image-types have sign elements particular to them and serve to extend the range of embodied signs potential to Deleuze's semiotic by breaking down the continuum of Being and its signs into more specific differences.

In the second volume of the cinema books Deleuze discusses signs of non­ chronological time (real Time) in the cinema, which he calls time-images. In this chapter I explain that Deleuze is addressing another princ_ipal category of the cinema, a Zeroness, or what Deleuze calls specifically, the optical-image of the cinema.

First of all, I argue that Deleuze's identification of the optical-image puts into practice a certain potential of Peirce's phenomenology. Peirce notes an absolute ground of the categories, a zero degree of Being, and he explains how this zero degree is a swelling state of non-chronological time. He doesn't, however, hypothesize how such a dimension of existence might possibly be harnessed by the sign. Deleuze, on the other hand, does.

Second of all, I analyze Deleuze's method. I state that he extends his semiotics by adding a Genesis and Composition of the optical-image to the semiotic structure of sign elements laid out so far:

Table 6.1

A Tri-Square of Twelve Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Eight Principal Sign

Elements (bold type) and Four Degenerate Sign Elements)

0 1 I 2 I 3 (optical) (affection) (impulse) (action) (reflection) (relation) Genesis Hyalosign Qualisign Symptom Imprint Discursive Symbol

Composition Chronosign Icon Fetish Synsign/ Figure Mark/ Index Demark

From Bergson, Deleuze calls the Genesis of the optical-image a scrap of non-chronological time (or real Time) that is a sign, a Hyalosign. Furthermore, he describes an indiscernible

Composition of elements characteristic of the optical-image, and he calls this Composition a Chronosign. These two sign elements refer us to the most elementary category of Being presupposed by all the other sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics. Taking these two aspects of the sign together gives us the embodied sign of the optical-image, a Chronosign

Hya/osign, which is a scrap of non-chronological time expressed in an indiscernible

Composition of images.

Third, I unpack some of Deleuze's examples. Deleuze focuses on what he calls time-images, and based on his analysis of films such as Luis Buiiuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), as well as Orson

Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad

(1962), he identifies four main kinds: Peaks, Sheets, Genesigns, and Lectosigns. I clarify how these time-images are examples of the Chronosign Hyalosign.

Moreover, I show how Deleuze's thesis on the expression of non-chronological time is an extension of the structure of sign elements from his first volume on the cinema because his time-images are produced from the combination of the sign elements of the optical-image with the sign elements of the other image-types. I specify how Chronosign

Hyalosigns are, in fact, indiscernible qualities that are signs (Chronosign Qualisigns), indiscernible partial actions that are signs (Chronosign Symptoms), indiscernible events

(Chronosign Imprints), indiscernible questions (Chronosign Discursives) and indiscernible logical relations (Chronosign Symbols). What I arrive at in Chapter Six is the following extended list of embodied signs of Deleuze's semiotics: (],:-iptcr '.:i:- 198

Table 6.2

Twenty Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semioticsa

G C I G1 co Chronosign Qualisign II G1 Cl Icon Qualisign III Gta co Chronosign Symptom IV Gta Cl Icon Symptom V G1a Cta Fetish Symptom VI G2 co Chronosign Imprint VII G2 Cl Icon Imprint VIII G2 C1a Fetish Imprint IX G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint X G2a co Chronosign Discursive XI G2a Cl Icon Discursive XII G2a Cta Fetish Discursive XIII G2a C2 Synsign/Index Discursive XIV G2a C2a Figure Discursive xv G3 co Chronosign Symbol XVI G3 Cl Icon Symbol XVII G3 Cta Fetish Symbol XVIII G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol XVIV G3 C2a Figure Symbol XX G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: The sign elements of the affection-image (in accordance with Peirce's categories of Being) are represented as 1, the sign elements of the action-image are represented as 2, and the sign elements of the relation-image are represented as 3. The sign elements of the optical-image are represented as 0, and for the sake of this table, the sign elements of the impulse-image are represented as la, and the sign elements of the reflection-image are represented as 2a. All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis of the affection-image that is expressed in a Composition of the action-image.

In the last section of this chapter I analyze two final examples given by Deleuze. I use these in order to emphasize the importance of an indiscernible Composition

(Chronosign) in the expression of what Deleuze calls a time-image. Deleuze describes two

kinds of sign that seem like expressions of non-chronological time but are not. They are

signs concerned with memories and recollections, Mnemosigns, and signs concerned with

• Regarding my claim that a Chronosign Hyalosign is given when a Genesis from the image-types of the cinema is expressed in an indiscernible Composition (Chronosign), the reader will note that I have not listed the Chronosign Hyalosign per se, but its five variations (in italics). dreams and dreaming, Onirosigns. For Deleuze, these examples are not time-images because, although they portray aspects of time, they do not present "a little time in its pure state." I take Deleuze's Mnemosigns and Onirosigns and show how they are names given two special kinds of Icon Qualisigns, Icon Imprints, Synsign/Index Imprints, Icon

Symbols, Synsign/Index Symbols and Mark/Demark Symbols that are concerned explicitly with a character's recollections and dreams; and, I argue that the failure of these images to function as time-images is based on the fact that they are not expressed in a Chronosign.

Zeroness or Deleuze's Optical-Image: Another Principal Category in the Cinema

Laura U. Marks, in her essay "Signs of the Time: Deleuze, Peirce and the

Documentary Image," identifies what she calls a zero degree in Peirce's metaphysics. From

Marks' description we can suggest that this zero degree implies a state of Being prior to

Firstness, and since the Categories are ordinal and hierarchical, the zero state is the absolute ground of all three Categories. We can call it the Zeroness in Peirce's phenomenological conception of the universe.

Marks quotes Peirce's description of Zeroness:

The present pure zero is prior to every first[ ... ]. It is the germinal nothing, in

which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely

undefined and unlimited possibility-boundless possibility. There is no

compulsion and law. It is boundless freedom. (Peirce 6.217 qtd. in Marks: 196) This passage describes an absolute dimension of Being. Peirce describes it as a field of possibility, and in so far as he stipulates that this possibility is undefined and unlimited, we can assume that Zeroness is a dimension of absolute immanence. With Zeroness, Peirce is not describing a state of lack, but an immanent emptiness:

This is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a

synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present

pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death,

which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure zero is the nothing of not

having been born. (6.217)

Peirce emphasizes that these primordial moments of the universe are prior to

"organized" time:

Metaphysics has to account for the whole universe of being. It has, therefore, to

do something like supposing a state of things in which the universe did not exist,

and consider how it could have arisen. However, this statement needs amendment.

For time is itself an organized something, having its law or regularity; so that time

itself is a part of that universe whose origin is to be considered. We have therefore

to suppose a state of things before time was organized. (6.214)

Zeroness is anterior to the idea of time as regularity, as succession-in other words, it is

anterior to what is commonly known in philosophy as chronological time. Peirce

continues and explains how Zeroness brings with it a different conception of time: When we speak of the universe as "arising" we do not mean that literally. We

mean to speak of some kind of sequence, say an objective logical sequence; but we

do not mean of speaking of the first stages of creation before time was organized,

to use "before," "after," and such words in the temporal sense. (6.214)

The key point here is that, although Peirce is describing a kind of sequence, this is not a temporal sequence in the sense of an organized before and after-in other words, in the sense of a chronology. What is it then? Peirce describes "the first stages of creation" below:

You may[ ... ] state that all evolution began at this instant, which you might call the

infinite past, and comes to a close at that other instant, which you might call the

infinite future. But all this is quite extrinsic to time itself. Let it be [... ] that

evolutionary time, our section of time, is contained between those limits.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that time itself[ ... ] stretches on beyond those

limits, infinite though they may be, returns into itself, and begins again. (6.210)

"Evolutionary time" is neither a past nor future of time. Evolutionary time is more a kind

of spreading: it stretches out, returns to itself, and begins again-like an infinite opening.

Thus we can say that Zeroness is a field of possibility that swells in non-chronological time.

On the very first page of his second volume on the cinema Deleuze also digs deep

into the problems of Being and reality. He describes the potential of the cinematic sign to

reach a reality other than the kind typically presented in the cinema. He says that cinema, up

until the war, was dominated by sensory-motor situations whereby "the characters

themselves reacted to situations; even when one of them found himself reduced to helplessness, bound and gagged as a result of the ups and downs of the action" (2-3). As we continue reading the first chapter of The Time-Image it becomes clear that the different kind of reality Deleuze is describing is other than the reality of the affection-image, action­ image, relation-image and the degenerate image-types of the cinema. I would argue that

Deleuze is describing the potential of the cinematic sign to express absolute Being in the cinema: Peirce's Zeroness.

For Deleuze, at the ultimate depth of a milieu is a pure optical and sound situation, or what Deleuze calls the optical-image (Iime 2-3). Deleuze describes this level of existence according to the "identity of the mental and physical, the real and imaginary, the subject and the object, the world and I" (16). This is the "birth of the world," the

"aberrant movement" of existence. Deleuze tells us that aberrant movement is not

"normal" movement, the latter being a conception of movement based on certain conventions (like the existence of centres or reference points, like gravity) (36). Aberrant movement, therefore, is a kind of movement that is prior to organized movement: it is what Deleuze describes as the profound movement of the image (36).

Also, Deleuze describes how the optical-image is identified with a particular conception of time. He writes that "aberrant movement calls into question the status of time as indirect representation" (Iime 36). For Deleuze, an "indirect representation" of time is chronological time, and so Deleuze is saying that aberrant movement does not imply a concept of chronological time. Chronological time is a concept of time according to which the present becomes past only when it is replaced by a new present. In The Logic of

Sense Deleuze writes that, "Only the present fills time, whereas past and future are two dimensions relative to the present in time" (162). The implication of the relativity of past and future to a present moment is that existence itself is measured according to the

significance given the present. Deleuze explains that the present "measures out the action of bodies and causes[... ]. It pertains to the present to delimit, and to be the limit or measure of the actions of bodies" (163). It follows, then, that aberrant movement is not equated with chronological time because in the state of aberrant movement (optical-image) there is no measure according to which matter is delimited. Aberrant movement is equated with non-chronological, direct, or "real Time" (Deleuze Movement 68). This is a chaotic time of infinite splitting: "A future and past divide the present at every instant and subdivide it ad infinitum into past and future, in both directions at once" (Deleuze

Logic 164).

Peirce doesn't describe the embodiment of Zeroness in signs, but Deleuze does.

Since aberrant movement and non-chronological time are equated and aberrant movement/ non-chronological time is characteristic of the optical-image, an implication is that the Being characteristic of the optical-image can be expressed semiotically with every presentation of aberrant movement/ non-chronological time. This is exactly the line of reasoning adopted by Deleuze, who claims that one of cinema's greatest potentials is its ability to present aberrant movement/non-chronological time. For Deleuze, cinema is

Proustian in its capacity to capture "a little time in its pure state" (Iime 17). Generally, he calls the signs of the optical-image time-images, and says of the time-image that "there are many possible ways of proceeding," and this is because "there are varieties of the time­ image just as there were types of the movement-image" (39).

Deleuze gets a little more specific about the problem of optical-images and non­

chronological time in his semiotics when he returns to his previous reading of Peirce and

describes the optical-image in relation to the two aspects of the sign I described in Chapter

Five (Genesis and Composition), which Deleuze calls in his second volume of the cinema

the "orders" of 1) "Genesis" and 2) "structure" (Iime 69). In Deleuze's semiotics, Genesis

is a variation of Peirce's Representamen and refers to the sign, in-itself, as the sign characteristic of a particular category of Being. But also, the specificity of the concept genesis reveals Deleuze's understanding of how a sign, in-itself, is like an essence of his semiotics and is immanent to the cinema. Composition is a version of Peirce's second aspect of the sign, the Object, and refers to the way a sign is embodied in a semiotic context. Particular about this process in Deleuze's semiotics is the sense in which a sign is embodied when a Composition of elements express a category of Being-in other words, when a Composition of elements express an essence. In what follows I will explain how

Deleuze uses these two polarities to posit the semiotic expression of the optical-image in the cinema. Since he refers to Bergson in order to describe both the Genesis and

Composition of the optical-image, I will first of all briefly outline Bergson's thesis on non­ chronological time.

Bergson argues that time, in principle, is non-chronological.1 He says that every moment of time is continually split between a present and a past at the same time. This is a logical assertion for Bergson, because if the present was not both past and present at the same time, it would not pass on (Iime 78-79). Thus, the past does not follow the present that it was (chronologically), but coexists with the present (79). Based on this point, Deleuze explains that according to Bergson's thesis every moment in time is comprised of two dimensions: an actual moment of the present, and a virtual shred of the past. Deleuze points out also that things get more complicated when Bergson insists that the virtual past,

although glued to the heel of every present moment, is not relative to the present. The past,

then, is not like a flashback in the cinema. The past is more what Bergson calls the "past in

general" (Bergson Mind-Energy. Trans. H. Wildon Carr. London: Macmillan, 1920: 135

qtd. in Deleuze Time: 79). In so far as the past is the virtual dimension of the present

moment, Deleuze calls it a "pure virtuality" of memory and time (79).

1 I am referring here to Deleuze's explication ofBergson in Chapter Four of The Time-lmag,e. "The Crystals of Time" (78-83). Deleuze, noting Bergson's idea of non-chronological time as the continual splitting of a present moment into an actual present and virtual past, describes how time is rightfully

"crystalline":

What we see in the crystal is no longer the empirical progression of time as

succession of presents [... ] it is its direct presentation, its constitutive dividing in

two into a contemporaneity of the present with the past that it will be, of the past

with the present that it has been. (Iime 27 4)

A crystal is ordinarily thought of as a solid body, the structure of which is made up of symmetrically arranged planar surfaces. Deleuze claims that these planar surfaces are indiscernible, and he sees in this conception of the crystal a way of understanding Bergson's thesis on the splitting present. The plane surfaces of a crystal are distinct, but it is impossible to say what is different about them. They are indiscernible. For Deleuze, this is exactly the case for non-chronological time: past and present are indiscernible because, although there is a "distinction" between past and present, this distinction is at the same time "unattributable."2

Since the optical-image is the elementary category of aberrant movement/ non­ chronological time, Deleuze defines its "true genetic element" as a crystal (Iime 69). From a semiotic perspective, the sign of the optical-image, in-itself (or most essentially), is a

crystal of time. And, from the Greek for glass, Deleuze calls the Genesis of the optical­ image a hyalo-sign (Hyalosign). He reiterates the relationship he is posing between the

crystal and time with the following definition that appears in the Glossary of The Time-

2 I am basing my understanding ofDeleuze's conception of indiscernibility on two passages in The Time­ ~- In the first, Deleuze writes that "indiscernibility constitutes an objective illusion; it does not suppress the distinction between the two sides [of time: the actual and virtual], but makes it unattributable" (69). In Image: "CRYSTAL-IMAGE OR HYALOSIGN: the uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished."

A Hyalosign is an image that is neither past nor present, but involves the

"coalescence" of the actual present and virtual past (Time 69). With this idea of scrap of non-chronological time/ crystal that is a sign, Deleuze is also referring to an aesthetic theory of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is a theory of description, and a key text in the context of Deleuze's development of this idea of the sign is Alain Robbe-Grillet's

Snapshots and Towards a New Novel.3

Robbe-Grillet describes a certain style of literary description, the aim of which is not to set the scene and define the limits of the action (Snapshots 144), nor to define a whole, but rather simply to move from description to description:

It doesn't begin by giving the reader a general picture, it seems to spring from a

minute and unimportant detail, which is more like a geometrical point than

anything else-a starting point-from which it invents lines, planes, and a whole

architecture, and our impression that these are being invented in the course of the

description is reinforced by the fact that it suddenly contradicts itself, repeats itself,

thinks better of it, branches off in a different direction, etc. (145)

The interest of this kind of description is not in the thing described, but the movement of

the description itself (146). One is reminded of novels like Raymond Roussell's Lucus

Solus, or even Don DeLillo's Americana. In the latter, the story begins at a party. An

overview of the party is not given, nor is one given of the characters themselves-the

the second, he writes: "So long as the conditions are not made precise there is a definite distinction between the two sides, but they are indiscernible" (70). 3 Important also is that Deleuze claims Robbe-Grillet's thesis on description in Snapshots and Towards a New Novel "extends Bergson's [theory of descriptions) and is related to it" (Iime 289 note 3). effect is something like omitting an establishing shot at the beginning of a scene in a film.

For Robbe-Grillet, the effect of this kind of description is that chronological time ceases to flow, and so time is no longer "the agent of a development'' (151). Thus every object, body, milieu described is an event in-itself, its own past, present and future.

I have noted what the Genesis of Zeroness is, but how is a Hyalosign embodied in the cinema? In other words, how is non-chronological time expressed in a Composition of elements in the frame? Deleuze considers this problem when he asks what the

"consolidates" are of the Hyalosign (Time 69). I have explained how non-chronological time is the time of the splitting present. Non-chronological time is the dividing of the present into a present which is past and present at the same time. In the cinema Deleuze describes non-chronological time when the past and future are not relative to the present, and this is when one image does not appear to be either before or after another. For

Deleuze, moreover, this is another way of saying that images are indiscernible. He says that

"we are no longer in the situation of a relationship between the actual image and other virtual images [... ] we are in the situation of an actual image and its own virtual image [... ]

[the] indiscernibiliry of the two, a perpetual exchange" (273). And in respect of this idea of indiscernibility, Deleuze again uses Bergson's concept of the crystal to describe the

Composition specifically. Images that are neither actual nor virtual, but past, present and future all at once, Deleuze argues, are constitutive of a crystalline structure of images.

Consequently, the kind of Composition characteristic of the optical-image is given with the indiscernible relations of a crystalline structure of images. Deleuze, however, never seems to get around to giving this special kind of Composition a particular name, and since it is not a

Composition of qualities (Icon), actual relations (Synsign/Index), or abstract relations

(Mark/Demark), but a Composition of time, I will borrow his reference to the Greek for Chnpt1:r '.~i; 208

time, and call the Composition characteristic of the optical-image a chrono-sign

(Chronosign).

In terms of the above ideas of Genesis and Composition I will define the embodied sign of the optical-image as a Chronosign Hyalosign: a little time in its pure state expressed in an indiscernible Composition of elements. Deleuze alludes to some general cases of indiscernible Composition in the cinema (Chronosign Hyalosign); for example, when a protagonist doesn't have a definitive character, but seems to move through a series of roles, each one being indifferent to the role before and the role after.4 At one moment the protagonist may be a hero, at the next, a villain O:ime 71-72). A similar case occurs when an action is less an element in a chain of events, and more an event in-itself: every action is its own past, present and future; or, when a milieu is less a milieu in relation to another (the milieu of the hero versus the milieu of the criminal; the milieu of the poor versus the milieu of the rich), and just another milieu (72-74).

To recapitulate: I have argued so far that Deleuze uses Peirce's sign to develop a concept of expression in the cinema, and in this chapter my claim is that Deleuze extends the phenomenological structure of semeiotics in order to posit the potential of the semiotic expression of non-chronological time. In Chapter Five I examined how Deleuze uses semeiotics to divide the cinema into three principal categories of Being (image-types) and two degenerate categories. Characteristic of each category is a certain kind of sign

(Genesis), which is embodied or presented in the cinema according to the particular way a

composite whole (Composition) of cinematic elements (milieus, objects, bodies: sound

information and visual information) express the essence of a category of Being. Important

4 Deleuze notes that such an effect is commonly created through a particular use of the mirror. Sometimes the mirror can be used to make it difficult to distinguish between a character and his/her reflection. When this is the case, the character is less a character proper (for example, a hero in a definitive space-time), and more what Robbe-Grillet would call a description. In the following Deleuze describes how the idea of character is obliterated in the climactic scene of Welles' The Lad,v from Shanghai (1947) (it takes place in a carnival, in a palace of mirrors): "The mirror image is virtual in relation to the actual character that the mirror catches, but it is actual in the mirror which now leaves the character with only a virtuality" (Iime 70). for Deleuze's semiotics is the sense in which the sign is a meaningful entity because of this process of expression. I have been arguing that the categories of Being are the signaletic material of the cinema, and that the process of expression underlying the sign's embodiment points towards a conception of the sign that contrasts with what Deleuze calls the linguistic signs of semiology. In semiology, a sign is formed when a transcendent structure shapes the signaletic material. In this chapter I am examining Deleuze's discussion of an absolute category in the cinema, the optical-image. Similar to his analysis of the affection-image, impulse-image, action-image, reflection-image and relation-image, I have noted a Genesis and Composition of the optical-image. Its Genesis is a scrap of non­ chronological time/crystal that is a sign, and its Composition is a crystalline (indiscernible) relation of elements. Adding these sign elements of the optical-image to the structure of

Deleuze's semiotics gives us the following table:

Table 6.1

A Tri-Square of Twelve Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics (Eight Principal Sign

Elements (bold type) and Four Degenerate Sign Elements)

0 1 I 2 I 3 (optical) (affection) (impulse) (action) (reflection) (relation) Genesis Hyalosign Qualisign Symptom Imprint Discursive Symbol

Composition Chronosign Icon Fetish Synsign/ Figure Mark/ Index Demark

In the following section of this chapter I will examine the embodied signs created when the sign elements of the optical-image are combined with the sign elements of the other image- types. Time-Images/Chronosign Hyalosigns and the Special Kinds of Embodied Signs of

Deleuze's Semiotics

Having including the optical-image in his semiotics, Deleuze examines what he calls four time-images of the cinema: the Peak, Sheet, Genesign and Lectosign. The first thing I do in this section is make clear how these time-images are simply different ways of conceiving of the indiscernible Composition characteristic of the Chronosign Hyalosign (and subsequent expression of non-chronological time). Then, I argue that the above examples are different kinds of Chronosign Hyalosigns in so far as they are qualities,partial actions, events, questions and logical relations expressed in indiscernible Compositions. I am arguing that a Chronosign

Hyalosign is, in fact, an indiscernible Qualisign, Symptom, Imprint, Discursive and Symbol.

This reveals something of great importance, and it is that the embodied signs created when a Qualisign, Symptom, Imprint, Discursive and Symbol are combined with a Chronosign are very .ipecialkinds of embodied signs because they are all time-images. Let me explain this further. Prior to my analysis of the optical-image I noted three kinds of Imprints: an

Imprint expressed in a genuine relation of elements (the embodied sign of which is the

Synsign/Index Imprint); an Imprint expressed in a partial action (Fetish Imprint); and an

Imprint expressed in a qualitative relation of elements (Icon Imprint). Now, with the addition of the optical-image I will posit an Imprint expressed in an indiscernible relation

of elements (the embodied sign of which is the Chronosign Imprint), but this last kind of

embodied sign is not an Imprint per se. I argue that the indiscernible relation of elements in

this case makes for a Hyalosign, and so this embodied sign is a special kind of Chronosign

Hyalosign: it is a little time in its pure state manifest as an indiscernible event that is a sign.

Consequently, in so far as a time-image is an indiscernible Qualisign, Symptom, Imprint,

Discursive and/ or Symbol, it is clear how all of the signs in both volumes of Deleuze's Ch:1pt1,r '.:i: 211

cinema books are related to each other and are produced from a single (Peircian) structure of immanence.

Deleuze's first time-images are the Peak and the Sheet. Both are perspectives on the crystalline structure of time I described above. As a concept, the Peak refers to the idea that time, for it to be split between a past and present at every moment, can also be thought as a succession of simultaneous peaks of the present: a present of the past, a present of the present, and a present of the future. As a concept the Sheet is a way of thinking about the pure virtuality of the past. In so far as the past is the "past in general," the Sheet refers to the idea of memory not as a series of chronological events, but as a series of coexisting and jumbled strata or sheets.

Deleuze gets his concept of the Peak from Bergson, Bernhard Groethuysen, and

Charles Peguy and it is based on the following logic (Iime 297 note 3). On the one hand we have seen how the present moment can be considered in relation to a past and future moment. This is a chronological model of time, a model of succession Deleuze describes as linear and "longitudinal" (100). On the other hand, we know that time is not necessarily chronological-for Deleuze, time is rightfully a swelling state of duration. In comparison to the chronological model described above, Deleuze calls the latter perspective on time an

"optical" or "vertical" perspective-one that is in "depth" (100). The concept of the

splitting present, then, is a perspective on time as depth.

The idea of depth allows Deleuze to make another claim. In depth, there is no

succession, and this is a perfect way of describing how the actual present and virtual past

are simultaneous. Deleuze goes further: he says that in respect of this idea of depth (in so

far as the past and present are simultaneous), there really is no past and present to speak of.

He borrows a formula from St. Augustine and says that it is better to speak of "A present of

the future, a present of the present and a present of the past, all implicated in the event, rolled up in the event, and thus simultaneous and inexplicable" (Time 100). Rather than a present moment split between a past and present, Deleuze is saying that we can think of the present moment as an event comprised of a present of the future, present, and past. In short,

Deleuze is arguing that it is possible to think of the present moment as an event made up of simultaneous peaks of present. For instance, "A time is revealed inside the event, which is made from the simultaneity of these three implicated presents, from these de-actualized peaks ofpresent' (Deleuze Time 100).

Based on this description, a Peak is a semiotic concept when cinematic elements do not relate to a chronology of time, but present time as simultaneity of present moments. I want to argue that the Peak, most generally, is one 'Yay Deleuze conceives of the embodied sign of the optical-image (Chronosign Hyalosign), for the simultaneity of present moments in the image is one way of thinking about the indiscernible Composition characteristic of this image-type. If actions, for example, are neither past nor present nor future, then the difference between these actions is unattributable-. they are indiscernible.

Deleuze often describes the Peak with regard to certain kinds of action in the cinema (Time 101). A typical scenario might involve the distribution of different presents to different characters, "so that each forms a combination that is plausible and possible in itself, but where all of them together are 'incompossible"' (101). With this distribution, each character's action is not relative to another's, but each occupies its own absolute moment in time. For example, Deleuze describes the Peak in Buiiuel's The Discreet

Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). The plot of this film centres on the repetition of a

dinner party held by a small group of characters. Particular to this repetition is an

ambiguity of time: it is never clear whether the meetings succeed each other in time, and

thus whether or not the characters have actually met before. Deleuze writes that the film Ch;1pt,,r '.~i: 213

shows "less a cycle of interrupted meals than different version of the same meal in irreducible modes and worlds" (102).

Deleuze also describes a case of the Peak in Bunuel's That Obscure Object of

Desire (1977). This film is about a bourgeoisie, Mathieu, and his affair with a young woman, Conchita. The plot is concerned with Mathieu's desire to consummate his love for

Conchita, and her continued refusal to allow him to do so. Conchita, however, doesn't just say no to sex: she leads Mathieu along with claims of undying love and affection, and then surprises him at the last minute by sternly refusing any degree of intimacy. For Deleuze, this film abounds with the Peak and is an example of the Chronosign Hyalosign because

Mathieu's actions seem to take place in a perpetual present. This is partly because, despite his efforts, Mathieu never manages to have sex with Conchita, and so the plot doesn't seem to progress. Furthermore, this feeling of timelessness is compounded by Bunuel's use of repetition: characters often say certain phrases more than once; and similarly, complete strangers always seem familiar to each other. Most important to his manipulation of time, however, is Bunuel's use of two actresses to play Conchita. Bunuel often changes between these actresses without any apparent motivation, sometimes even in the middle of a scene.

Consider Deleuze's synopsis:

In That Obscure Object of Desire[... ] blossoms one of Bunuel's finest inventions:

instead of having one character play different roles, casting two characters and two

actresses as one person. It is as if Bunuel's naturalist cosmology[ ... ] gives way to a

plurality of simultaneous worlds; to a similarity of presents in different worlds.

These are not subjective (imaginary) points of view in one and the same world, but

one and the same event in different objective worlds. (103) According to Deleuze, this film appears something like an arrangement of simultaneous

Peaks of the present because Buiiuel's use of two actresses to play one character suggests two simultaneous points of view-in other words, present moments---on one and the same world. The Peak is manifest when characters and actions take place in non­ chronological time--as if every milieu and every course of action were its own absolute present.

The Peak is an example of a Chronosign Hyalosign, but in light of my aim in this chapter to demonstrate the extended structure of Deleuze's semiotics, I want to return to

Deleuze's analysis of the action-image and make explicit a sense in which the Peak is a

Chronosign Hyalosign in so far as it is a crystallized event. In Chapter Five I described how an event that is a sign (Imprint), is expressed in either a binomial relation of a milieu and an action (Synsign), or an indexical relation of a milieu and an action (Index). The Peak is an event that is a sign (for example: the dinner party in The Discrete Charm of the

Bourgeoisie), but particular about this event is the sense of its indetermination. The Peak turns the duel of forces in the action-image inside out. There is no definitive situation to speak of (localized in a space-time), and so an action is anything but causal and reactionary.

In this ca~e the Imprint is expressed in a Chronosign. Thus a Peak is a crystallized event that is a sign, a Chronosign Imprint.

Deleuze's concept of the Sheet is another way of conceiving non-chronological

time in the cinema. Rather than think of time as a present which is present and past at the

same time (thus yielding a simultaneity of presents: a Peak), Deleuze returns to his reading of

Matter and Memory and considers the past as the most general form of an "already-there"

(Iime 98). He says that, "The present itself exists only as an infinitely contracted past

which is constituted at the extreme point of the already-there" (98). Deleuze continues,

explaining how the past is made up of a variety of different moments, such as recollections, memories, and feelings. Furthermore, since there is no succession in the pure past,

Deleuze explains how these moments do not succeed each other, they simply have an actual present as their extreme limit. In the face of this distinction Deleuze describes these moments as "sheet!' or "stratd'---each sheet being something like one's memories of their childhood or adolescence-stating that they succeed each other "only from the point of view of former presents which marked the limit of each of them" (99).

As a semiotic concept, Deleuze seems to suggest that a Sheet is typical when an event involves an exploration of memory. The event might be a death, like in Welles' Citizen

Kane (1941); a murder, like in Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955); a love triangle, like in Welles'

The Lady from Shanghai (1947); a crisis or catastrophe, like in Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour (1959), or even time-travel, like in Resnais' Je t'aime je t'aime (1968). Important about the Sheet, and significant about these examples, is the sense in which the past is present in-itself.

Let me explain this further. Films illustrative of the Sheet are often concerned with a problem specific to some event that a character is trying to solve. Furthermore, implicit to their quest for a solution is an exploration of memory. Specific about the Sheet, however, is the sense of its occurrence when a character's motivation for exploring the past is no longer logical, known or relevant. In this case Deleuze writes that the Sheet is manifest when the chronological relation of past and present is thrown out of joint. In a

similar case, Deleuze writes that a Sheet is manifest when a region of the past is evoked by

a character, but this region is not related to any significant event. The past is simply

evoked, and that's it. For example, in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), the past

is "summoned" ("Isabelle's marriage of pride, George's childhood, his youth, the

Amberson family"), but particular about this film is the sense in which the images from the

past are quite "useless because they can no longer be inserted into a present which would extend them into action" (112). 5 In another case, Deleuze writes that a Sheet is manifest when, during the course of a character's exploration of the past, there is no discernible difference between past and present whatsoever. When this occurs, "the present begins to float," and is "struck with uncertainty" (116).

Each of the above cases is an example of Deleuze's second time-image: the Sheet.

I want to emphasize, however, that the Sheet-like the Peak-is another way of conceiving of the indiscernible relations characteristic of the Chronosign Hyalosign. Particular about this kind of Chronosign Hyalosign is the sense in which the indiscernible Composition of cinematic elements is the product of a character's exploration of memory.

Both Deleuze's Peak and Sheet are time-images, both are examples of the

Chronosign Hyalosign, but I think we can be clearer about the difference between these two examples. Similar to my analysis of the Peak, we can identify the Sheet with the other kinds of sign Deleuze has discussed so far in his semiotics. Specifically, I would argue that we can identify the Sheet with a special kind of Symbol: a crystalline Symbol.

Consider the following explanation. Deleuze describes the Sheet whenever a character attempts to solve some problem that has something to do with memory. We know from Chapter Five that a Symbol is more developed than an Imprint because it is concerned with the logical relationship of a situation and an action. In the present discussion we can say that, since a character is exploring a problem or embarking on a mission to find a solution, the Sheet is a Symbol. But, what is particular to the Symbol described here is the sense in which, even though there is a mission, there is an absence of logic informing the mission. As Deleuze tells us, a character's reason for exploring the past is no longer known, logical or relevant. This means that the character's logical actions and

their situation, although distinct, don't really have any bearing on each other. The result is

5 These two cases of the Sheet are taken from Deleuze's reading of the two principle forms of "illness of memory" in Bergson's Matter and Memory (Iime 299 note 20). that they become indiscernible. I would contend that this is another way of saying that the

Symbol is expressed in a Chronosign. In this respect the Sheet is a Chronosign Hyalosign

(time-image), but more specifically, it is a Chronosign Symbol.

Deleuze's next time-image is a Genesign. He defines the Genesign as a time-image which "on this occasion constitutes time as series" (Iime 275). For Deleuze, a series is constituted when "the before and the after are no longer themselves a matter of external empirical succession, but of the intrinsic quality of that which becomes in time" (275).

Deleuze is telling us that the concept of the series relates to the idea of a temporal flow that is not based on succession-it is another way of conceiving non-chronological time. Yet the series is important for another reason, and this relates to the sense in which Deleuze is defining the Genesign. In so far as a series ordinarily suggests a grouping together in time,

Deleuze uses the concept of the series as a way of thinking about a sequence of images; but, in terms of the idea of temporal flow raised above, Deleuze uses the series more specifically to describe a sequential arrangement of images not detmnined l?J chronological time. The sequential relation is not an ordered progression, but a bursting forth in multiple directions:

"A series is a sequence of images, which tend in themselves in the direction of a limit, which orients and inspires the first sequence (the before), and gives way to another

sequence organized as series which tends in tum towards another limit (the after)"

(Deleuze Time 275).

Deleuze takes as his prime example of this special kind of sequential relation (the

serial relation) what he calls narrative falsification. The concept of falsification is based on

the idea that non-chronological time is not determined according to fixed markers of

reference-in other words, there is no definite point in relation to which a moment in time

is past, present or future. A state of falsification is suggested because, corollary to the

absence of fixed markers of reference, is a disappearance of fixed ideas of truth. In terms of narrative, then, falsification can be said to occur when sequences do not appear either past or present or future in relation to each other. Another way of putting this is to say that sequences are indiscernible. Thus falsification reveals to us the sense in which the

Genesign is another kind of Chronosign Hyalosign. This time, however, the indiscernible

Composition characteristic of the Chronosign is described in terms of the sequential relations of images in the cinema.

Deleuze's main examples of narrative falsification are from Resnais' Last Year at

Marienbad. Deleuze writes that this work "testifies to the power of the false as principle of production of images" (Iime 131). He claims that the images are "produced in such a way that the past is not necessarily true [... ]." Any idea of truth is meaningless, and this is made apparent in the following description of Last Year at Marienbad:

Did that man and that woman really meet and fall in love last year at Marienbad?

Does the young woman remember, and is she only pretending not to recognize the

handsome stranger? Or has she really forgotten what there had been between

them? etc. Let us be frank: these questions are meaningless. (Robbe-Grillet

Snapshots 149)

For Deleuze, what is most significant about the sequential relations (or more specifically, the series) in films like Last Year at Marienbad is the flow of non-chronological time.

If we move beyond the cinema books to a more contemporary context we can see an example of the Genesign in Wong Kar Wei's In the Mood for Love (2001). The narrative of this film centres on the adulterous affair of Li-zhen and Mo-wan and their attempt to create the perfect romance for themselves-in other words, a romance without

the emotional turmoil typically associated with being in love. In their desire to achieve this Ch:ipt,:r :~i: 219

ideal kind of stability, the protagonists rehearse whatever pivotal (future) moments of their affair they think may arise. They are preparing themselves to cope with their own sadness.

As these scenes occur, however, no justification is given for the changes in mood, and we don't know until after each scene that the characters were only rehearsing their feelings. For example, at one moment they even rehearse their own break up. But it is not immediately clear why Li-zhen is crying, and then, why she is yelling angrily at Mo-wan. Watching this sequence we can't help wonder what has happened to their intimacy, and why things have gone so sour. What is occurring as this sequence unfolds is the disintegration of all ideas of truth. Time, simultaneously, unfolds itself, splintering off in multiple directions. What is given is a serial relation of images, a Genesign.6

I want to return to my argument about Deleuze's time-images and the other signs of his semiotics and argue that the Genesign, in so far as it is a narrative sign and refers to a certain kind of logical relation of images, is in fact a Symbol. Similar to Deleuze's concept of the Sheet, however, this is a very special kind of Symbol. In terms of the idea of falsification described above, this Symbol is a circumstance of relation expressed in an indiscernible Composition (Chronosign). The Sheet is a Chronosign Symbol.

Deleuze's final time-image is the Lectosign. The Lectosign is concerned with a certain relation of sound and image-or what Michel Chion calls the audio-visual relation.

Deleuze claims that when the audio and visual reach their "common limit," they become

readable: "Speech reaches its own limit which separates it from the visual; but the visual reaches its own limit which separates it from sound. So each one reaching its own limit which separates it from the other thus discovers the common limit which connects them to

each other" (Iime 279). For Deleuze, when image and sound reach their common limit,

they are in a state of perpetual re-linkage.

6 It is interesting to note that Yau identifies Deleuze's Genesign most explicitly with Hong Kong Cinema. See "3rdness: Filming, Changing, 1binking Hong Kong" (546-554). Deleuze explains how sounds and images reach their common limit when they are no/complementary. To explain this point I want to consider Fritz Lang's M (1933) as an example of the complementary relation of the audio-visual. This film centres on the urban hysteria surrounding the apprehension of a child serial killer in 1930s Germany. At the beginning of the film, a woman waits apprehensively in her kitchen for her child, Elsie, to return home from school. The camera follows her gait as she ambles over to the window.

She opens it, and we stare at her back as she screams into the street: "Elsie! ... Elsie! ...

Elsie!" At this moment the film cuts to a scene of the empty street, then an abandoned warehouse, followed by an empty playground, and then Elsie's vacant place at the dinner table. This is a montage sequence, and as we see the images the woman's voice reverberates in the out-of-field. Her call, "Elsie!. .. Elsie!. .. Elsie!", grows fainter, and then disappears while we stare at a shot of Elsie's balloon drifting slowly away from its entanglement in some overhead power lines. Sound and image are complementary here because the sound of the woman's cries flow into the image, and as a result, the sound tells us something about the image: it is complementary to the image. A non-complementary audio-visual relation, then, is one in which sound and image don't appear to have any logical relation whatsoever.

Deleuze gives us some examples. He returns to Last Year at Marienbad and describes "a new asynchrony, where the talking and the visual were no longer held together, no longer corresponded, but belied and contradicted themselves, without it being possible to say that one rather than the other is "right" [.. .]. (:rime 250). Based on this

example Deleuze claims that a non-complementary relationship of the audio and visual

means that sound and image are autonomous. When this is the case, he explains, "the sound

continuum[... ] ceases to be differentiated according to what the visual image belongs to"

and vice-versa (:rime 260). The following passage makes clearer this idea of autonomy: The first characteristic of this [... ]image is that "asynchrony" is no longer in any

way[ ... ] a matter of making heard words and sound whose source is in a relative

out-of-field or relation with the whole, and which thus relate to the visual image

whose givens they simply avoid doubling. Nor is it a matter of a voice-off which

realizes an absolute out-of-field or relation with the whole, a relation which itself

still belongs to the visual image. (250)

The autonomy Deleuze is describing isn't an apparent autonomy of image and sound-in other words, when the sound inhabits an out-of-field and we hear a part of the visual image we couldn't otherwise see.7 With the kind of autonomy Deleuze is describing, there is no out-of-field:

There is [... ]no longer an out-of-field, any more than there are sounds-off to

inhabit it, because the[ ...] out-of-field, and the corresponding sound distributions,

were still part of the visual image. But now the visual image has given up its

externality; it has cut its self off from the world and conquered its reverse side; it

has made itself free from what depended on it. In the same way, the sound image

has shaken off its own dependency; it has become autonomous, has mastered its

own framing. (251)

7 A typical example, manipulated to good effect at the very beginning of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocaln,se ~ (1979) is the off-screen sound of a helicopter, rising and falling in volume as it hovers about the immediate vicinity of the visual image. Deleuze continues and identifies the autonomy of sound and image with his concept of readability. He says that sound and image are readable in the sense that everything ordinarily covered up by a complementary relation of the audio-visual, is now apparent. In a complementary audio-visual relation, Deleuze is suggesting that we see only in relation to what we hear, and we hear only in relation to what we see; for example, in terms of the case of M described above, Deleuze is saying that our perception of the various milieus depicted in the montage sequence is orientated and guided by the off-screen cries of

Elsie's mother. In contrast, there are no hiding places with a non-complementary audio­ visual relation, and Deleuze explains that sound and image enter into combination based on their own material properties. Furthermore, since there is nothing determining their relation, Deleuze's concept of readability suggests that the audio-visual relation is a perpetual state of sound and image re-linkage. On this point we can be clear that Deleuze's

Lectosign is another example of the time-image, which in this case is concerned with the indiscernible relations of sound and image. Deleuze states as much in the following description of Last Year at Marien bad:

[fhe audio and the visual] belied and contradicted themselves, without it being

possible to say that one rather than the other is "right" [... ]. And the contradiction

no longer allows us to simply confront the heard and the seen bit by bit, one by

one, pedagogically: their role is to induce a system of unhookings and intertwinings

which in tum determine the different presents through anticipation or regression,

in a direct time-image[ ... ]. (250)

For Deleuze, the perpetual re-linkage of sound and image expresses non-chronological

time. (J-.:-iptcr '.:i: 223

- The Lectosign is Deleuze's final time-image, and like my analysis of his other time- images I will show how the Lectosign includes the other kinds of signs Deleuze describes in The Movement-Image. Taking the principal image-types only, it is logical to say that a sound can function as a Qualisign. Also, sound and image can function as an Imprint; for example, a character's call "Food here!" suggests a certain relation between a situation and an action in terms of the audio-visual. And, sound and image can function as a Symbol; for example the relation between off-screen sound and image in M. Typically, the audio-visual relationship is expressed in a complementary relation of sound and image. They form a composite whole, either through an Icon, Synsign/Index or Mark/Demark. Deleuze's

Lectosign, however, identifies cases where sound and image are non-complementary or readable, when the Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols described above are expressed in indiscernible Compositions (Chronosigns). When the Lectosign is described in this way, it is clear the sense in which a Lectosign is all of the following: a Chronosign Qualisign, a

Chronosign Imprint, and a Chronosign Symbol.

In my discussion so far I have unpacked Deleuze's examples in order to show how his time-images are different examples of a Chronosign Hyalosign. More importantly, I have hoped to demonstrate how a Chronosign Hyalosign is in fact produced when the

Geneses of Deleuze's semiotics are expressed in an indiscernible Composition

(Chronosign). So far I have described a Chronosign Imprint and a Chronosign Symbol, but what about a Chronosign Qualisign? Deleuze's discussion doesn't suggest any cases of what this kind of embodied sign might involve, but from the logic implied by his other examples I will return to my analysis of Snow's Wavelength and argue a case of the

Chronosign Qualisign.

As I noted in Chapter Three, Snow's film centres around a relentless forty-five minute zoom from one end of an apartment to another, ending on the far wall on a close- up of a photograph of the sea. Throughout the zoom, the piercing sound of a sine wave fills the sound track. The image is randomly tinted: sometimes sepia, sometimes red and sometimes green. Sometimes the image appears in negative, or black and white. Or sometimes it just flickers, like an old home movie. At one stage a man walks into the space and dies. Then some girls enter the apartment. They listen to the radio, and after noticing the man, one of them telephones the police. We only hear her conversation: we never see the dead man because the zoom has already passed beyond the girls and the body.

In Chapter Five I explained that a Qualisign in Deleuze's semiotics is expressed in an Icon that is abstracted from a physical milieu. Deleuze calls this process of abstraction faceification, and I explained how a face, or any body part, or even a landscape for that matter, can be faceified. In the context of my discussion of Deleuze's time-images, I want to suggest a sense in which the milieu of Wavelength is faceified. The milieu of

Wavelength is abstracted because of the effect of the random tinting of the image, the flashes of red, and the negative reversal of the image. A similar technique is found in the rising and falling intensity of the sound wave, the flicker effect, and even the duration of the zoom. As it continues past the characters, the space loses its importance as a physical space of people and actions. The viewer's attention is forced into considering the milieu as a space of optical effects, of tonalities of sound and light, of colour and shape. In this abstracted space, each flicker of light, or hint of colour, or shape on the far wall, is a pure quality: a Qualisign. But also, Snow's film is significant because the viewer is bombarded with multiple Qualisigns. And, in this abstract space of pure qualities, each quality is distinct but their difference is not attributable. What is constituted is an indiscernible continuum

of qualities-in other words, the Qualisign is crystallized as a pure image of time: a

Chronosign Qualisign. I will continue filling in the blanks of Deleuze's semiotics. I have linked his time­ images with the other kinds of signs in his semiotics by arguing that a time-image

(Chronosign Hyalosign) is a crystalline Qualisign, Imprint and Symbol. Now I will continue my analysis and examine the degenerate image-types and two other examples of a

Chronosign Hyalosign.

First of all, consider the impulse-image and, as an example, Buiiuel's That Obscure

Object of Desire. It is a good example of a Symbol because it is about Mathieu's relationship with Conchita and the process of his plan to bed her and the reasons for her continual refusal. Also, part and parcel of Mathieu's attempted seduction are the two characters actions: the Imprints of the film. For my purposes I want to focus on this film as a good example of a Symptom. Towards the end of the film Conchita lets Mathieu bury his face in her hair. He does this through the iron bars of the security door of her new home. She won't let him have sex with her, and she won't even let him enter the house, but she will allow him to smell her hair, her neck, kiss her ankle . . . The act of smelling is what Deleuze would call a partial action or Symptom. In Deleuze's analysis, however, this isn't just a regular Symptom. In the context of Deleuze's previous discussion of Buiiuel's film as a time-image (Peak), the partial actions (the kisses, the caresses), are different perspectives on one and the same extended present moment. The Symptom is a time­ image in so far as these partial actions are crystalline. It is a Chronosign Symptom.8

Now I will complete my analysis and, using Carine Adler's Under the Skin (1998),

8 Deleuze describes this film as an example of the Peak because its actions take place in a perpetual present. lbis is due to the effect of various techniques, such as repetition and the use of two different actors to play Conchita. Since the actions take place in a perpetual present, I am also arguing that the partial actions take place in a perpetual present, and that this film also contains Chronosign Symptoms. In the perpetual present of this film, the partial actions are indiscernible. Moreover, this is a different kind of indiscernibility than the indiscernibility I described (in Chapter Five) to be characteristic of the Fetish Symptom. In the latter, a character's partial actions are indiscernible from their actual existence in a state of things. Their partial actions are not indiscernible from each other (time-image), but are grounded in the originary world of impulses. Deleuze notes this difference when he suggests that the signs of naturalist cinema (Fetish Symptoms) are almost time-images: "It is undoubtedly one of naturalist cinema's great achievements to have come so close to a time-image. However, what prevented it from reaching time as pure form was its I will explain one final kind of Chronosign Hyalosign: the Chronosign Discursive. This film is about the way a young woman, Iris, copes with the death of her mother. She handles her grief by leaving her boyfriend and embarking on a series of chance sexual encounters with strangers. I would argue that Iris copes with the situation of her mother's death by constructing a particular vision of how she wants the remainder of her life to unfold. I explained in Chapter Five that a vision is a Discursive. Unlike a Symbol, a vision is not a logical response to a situation. A vision is more developed than an Imprint and less developed than a Symbol, and this is clear in Adler's film: Iris is not just reacting to her mother's death (Imprint), and she's not thinking logically about how to cope (Symbol), but instead she has a vision of recklessness, sexual gratification, power, fun and irresponsibility, and it is clear at the beginning of the film that Iris sets out to live this vision. Particular about Under the Skin, though, is the way the vision eventually culminates in a crystalline

Composition of images. By the end of the film, Iris no longer appears as a young woman who, in an attempt to cope with her grief, goes on a sexual bender. By the end of the film,

Iris and the vision she has of herself are indiscernible (Chronosign Imprint).

Based on the four examples of the time-image examined in Cinema 2: The Time­

Image, the Peak, Sheet, Genesign and Lectosign, I have shown in this section how Deleuze extends the semiotic structure he borrows from Peirce by demonstrating that a sign of non-chronological time is formed when a Qualisign, Imprint and Symbol-and their degenerate types-are expressed in an indiscernible Composition. A Chronosign

Hyalosign, therefore, implies the following completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics: a

Chronosign Qualisign; a Chronosign Symptom; a Chronosign Imprint; a Chronosign

Discursive; and, a Chronosign Symbol. To sum up, consider again the following list of

obligation to keep time subordinate to naturalistic co-ordinates, to make it dependent on impulse" (Movement 127). embodied signs from my discussion in Chapter Five and my discussion above of the time- unage:

Table 6.2

Twenty Embodied Signs of Deleuze's Semioticsa

G C I Gl co Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl Icon Qualisign III Gla co Chronosign Symptom IV Gla Cl Icon Symptom V Gla Cla Fetish Symptom VI G2 co Chronosign Imprint VII G2 Cl Icon Imprint VIII G2 Cla Fetish Imprint IX G2 C2 Synsign/Index Imprint X G2a co Chronosign Discursive XI G2a Cl Icon Discursive XII G2a Cla Fetish Discursive XIII G2a C2 Synsign/Index Discursive XIV G2a C2a Figure Discursive xv G3 co Chronosign Symbol XVI G3 Cl Icon Symbol XVII G3 Cla Fetish Symbol XVIII G3 C2 Synsign/Index Symbol XVIV G3 C2a Figure Symbol XX G3 C3 Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: The sign elements of the affection-image (in accordance with Peirce's categories of Being) are represented as 1, the sign elements of the action-image are represented as 2, and the sign elements of the relation-image are represented as 3. The sign elements of the optical-image are represented as 0, and for the sake of this table, the sign elements of the impulse-image are represented as la, and the sign elements of the reflection-image are represented as 2a. All expressions such as G 1, C2 should be read in the following way: a Genesis of the affection-image that is expressed in a Composition of the action-image.

• In respect of my claim that a Chronosign Hyalosign is given when a Genesis from the image-types of the cinema is expressed in an indiscernible Composition (Chronosign), the reader will note that I have not listed the Chronosign Hyalosign per se, but its five variations (in italics) . Mnemosigns and Onirosigns: These are Not Genuine Chronosign Hyalosigns

Deleuze looks at two more signs that appear to be time-images (or what I have been examining as Chronosign Hyalosigns), but are not. First is a sign Deleuze identifies with recollections and the exploration of memory in the cinema that he calls a Mnemosign.

Second is a sign Deleuze identifies with dreams and dreaming that he calls an Onirosign. So as to understand these signs better, I will begin by considering how they might fit into

Deleuze's structure of sign elements laid out so far-in other words, I will consider how these signs may be Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols. This will make clearer exactly what

Mnemosigns and Onirosigns are; and most importantly, why they are not time-images.9

According to Deleuze a Mnemosign is the sign of a character's relationship to past events (Iime 50-53). In the context of Deleuze's thesis on optical-images and the expression of non-chronological time in the cinema, a discussion of Mnemosigns is fitting because these are signs concerned with the relationship of the past and present in the cmema.

I want to begin unpacking the Mnemosign by asserting that, in terms of the relationship between past and present that is characteristic of this sign, a Mnemosign is a name given a Qualisign, Imprint or Symbol that is concerned explicitly with memory. In so far as a Mnemosign might involve a character's voluntary evocation of a memory in order to solve some problem in the present, we can determine a Mnemosign as a Symbol. In so far as a memory may not be intentionally invoked for the purposes of making some logical judgement about the past and present, we can determine the Mnemosign as an Imprint,

and I would argue that this occurs when a character has an involuntary memory of some

9 Since the sign elements of the impulse-image and the reflection-image are degenerate kinds of the affection­ image, action-image and relation-image, my argument will be sound if I focus on the relation of the Mnemosign and Onirosign to the Qualisign, Imprint and Symbol only. Also, it will unnecessarily complicate event. Finally, in so far as a Mnemosign might involve a character's involuntary memory of a quality of the past, we can determine the Mnemosign as a Qualisign.

Based on Deleuze's discussion of the optical-image and the potential of cinema to express non-chronological time, a Mnemosign would be a time-image if the relationship between past and present characteristic of the Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols described above were expressed in indiscernible Compositions (Chronosigns). Implied, therefore, would be the following embodied signs: a Chronosign Symbol, which in this case would occur when a character's attempt to solve a problem about the present is confounded by their own experience of the indiscernibility of past events and present events (according to

Deleuze's definition of indiscernibility I explained earlier, these events would be distinct, but their difference would be indiscernible); a Chronosign Imprint, which in this case would occur when the difference between a character's involuntary memory of an event is indiscernible from present events (for example, a character may ask himself: am I having sex right now, or am I remembering a sexual act from before?); and, a Chronosign

Qualisign, which in this case would occur when the difference between a character's involuntary memory of a quality, and the same character's experience of present qualities, are also indiscernible.

Deleuze points out, however, that a Mnemosign is not a time-image because past and present alwqys remain discernible. Although a Mnemosign is concerned with the exploration of time because of its focus on memory, past and present remain distinct as specific moments in time. Since this is the case, it can be said that a Mnemosign portrays time in the cinema, but does not present a little time in its pure state. The emphasis of the

Mnemosign on maintaining the distinction of past and present is rendered cinematically

through the conventional use of the fade or dissolve-a technique used to mark the

things if I consider the Mnemosign and Onirosign in relation to the sign elements of the degenerate image­ types. transition from a present moment to a past moment (Time 48). For example in Curtiz's

Mildred Peirce, when Mildred explains her past actions while sitting in the police station, the dissolve is used to signal the transition of her narrative to past events.

If a Mnemosign is not a time-image, then what is it? In so far as a Mnemosign can be concerned with a character's attempt to make some logical claim about the relationship between their present and past lives, I have explained how a Mnemosign is a Symbol. But, this Symbol is not expressed in an indiscernible Composition of past and present-it is not another example of a time-image (which in this case would be a Chronosign Symbol)­ because past and present remain distinct. I will argue that past and present remain distinct when a Symbol is expressed in a Mark/Demark, a Synsign/Index or an Icon. Thus a

Mnemosign is either a Mark/Demark Symbol, a Synsign/Index Symbol or an Icon Symbol.

To be clear, a Mark/Demark Symbol is a Mnemosign when a character's exploration of the past is resolved in favour of a specific judgement. This is often the case in the detective genre, for example, when a character lies about the past in an attempt to guarantee their innocence in the face of a crime. (In Mildred Peirce, however, Mildred sets out to achieve the contrary: she lies about her memory in an attempt to guarantee her guilt so that her daughter, the true murderer, will remain free). A Synsign/lndex Symbol is a Mnemosign when a character, in the course of their exploration of the past, simply recounts an event of the past and does not impart any judgement on these events. Finally, an Icon Symbol is a

Mnemosign when a character, in the course of their exploration of the past, recounts a quality or sentiment in general from the past.

I have also explained how a Mnemosign is an Imprint in the sense that it may involve a character's involuntary memory of some past event, but this Imprint is not

expressed in the indiscernible relation of past and present-it is not a time-image either

(which in this case would be a Chronosign Imprint). I will argue that past and present Chnptcr '.~i: 231

remain distinct when an Imprint is expressed in a Synsign/Index and an Icon. Thus a

Mnemosign is also either a Synsign/Index Imprint or an Icon Imprint. A Synsign/Index

Imprint is a Mnemosign when a character has an involuntary memory of some action of a past event; for example, a character's involuntary memory of a sexual act. An Icon Imprint is a Mnemosign when a character has an involuntary memory of the qualify of some action or past event, such as a character's memory of the scent of their lover's skin specifically.

Finally, I explained how a Mnemosign is a Qualisign in the sense that it may involve a character's involuntary memory of a pure quality, but this Qualisign is not expressed in the indiscernible relation of past and present-it is not a time-image (which in this case would be a Chronosign Qualisign). I will argue that past and present remain distinct when a Qualisign is expressed naturally, in an Icon. An Icon Qualisign is a Mnemosign when a quality in-itself is expressed. An example might be a sudden memory of happiness independent of any recollection of a specific past event.

In terms of my analysis of the Mnemosign, I have established a sense in which this sign is a Qualisign, Imprint or Symbol. Also, I have established that the Mnemosign is not another example of the Chronosign Hyalosign because it is not a Qualisign, Imprint or

Symbol that is expressed in an indiscernible Composition of past and present images. It is not another example of a time-image, or what I have examined in this chapter as a

Chronosign Hyalosign. Instead, a Mnemosign is simply an embodied sign produced from the combination of sign elements of the affection-image, action-image and relation-image.

Deleuze's second example of a sign that appears to be a time-image is an

Onirosign. In the context of his thesis on optical-images and the expression of real Time in the cinema, a discussion of Onirosigns is also fitting because these are signs concerned with dreams and dreaming. For Deleuze, Onirosigns seem like signs of non-chronological time because a character's act of dreaming appears to transcend actual time and space.

They are not time-images, however, and in the remainder of this section I will explain why.

Similar to my discussion of the Mnemosign, I will begin by clarifying how an

Onirosign is a Qualisign, Imprint and Symbol (or a combination of all three). This time, these Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols are concerned with dreams and dreaming specifically. My argument is as follows. In so far as a dreamer may tum to a dream in an attempt to draw some conclusions about the actual world, we can determine an Onirosign as a Symbol. In so far as the dreamer is not interpreting the dream world, but the dream world imparts itself unannounced on the actual world (for example, a daydream), we can determine an Onirosign as an Imprint. Finally, in so far as a dreamer may dream-just for a moment-a pure quality or feeling, we can determine an Onirosign as a Qualisign.

Deleuze refers to Michel Deviller's concept of the "implied dream" and tells us that an Onirosign would be a time-image if the dream was no longer attributed to a dreamer

(Iime 59). 1° For instance, when the world of the dreamer is as dreamlike as a dream itself; when a character is not sure if he is dreaming, or if the world is dreaming around him.

When "the road is not slippery without sliding on itself," or when "the frightened child faced with danger cannot run away, but the world sets about running away for him, and takes him with it, as if on a conveyor belt" (59). For my purposes, an Onirosign that is a time-image implies the following indiscernible Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols: a

Chronosign Symbol, which would occur when a character's attempt to interpret a dream in relation to actual events is confounded by their own experience of the indiscernibility of

the dream world and the actual world; a Chronosign Imprint, which would occur when the

events of the dream world are indiscernible from actual events; and a Chronosign

Qualisign, which would occur when the qualities of the dream world are indiscernible from

10 See Devillers "Reves informules." Cinematographe 35 (1978). actual qualities. In relation to this last kind of time-image, a character may ask the following question: "Am I feeling this sensation right now, or am I dreaming it?"

Deleuze points out, however, that in the majority of cases an Onirosign is not a time-image because the actual world of the dreamer and the dream world of the dream are discernible. In respect of this distinction, the dream (like the recollection described above), is signalled through cinematic conventions such as "dissolves, super-impositions, deframings, complex camera movements[ ... ]" (Deleuze Time 58). In Deleuze's semiotics, a dream may appear to transcend time and space, expressing non-chronological time, but the fact that it is attributed to a dreamer means that the Onirosign is grounded in a present moment and does not involve an indiscernible Composition of images. These are dream­ images, not time-images.

If an Onirosign is not a time-image, then what is it? In so far as an Onirosign can be concerned with a character's interpretation of the dream world, I have explained how an

Onirosign is a Symbol. But, this Symbol is not expressed in an indiscernible Composition of the actual world of the dreamer and the dream world of the dream-it is not a time­ image (which in this case would be a Chronosign Symbol)-because the actual world and dream world remain distinct. I will argue that the actual world and dream world remain distinct when a Symbol is expressed in a Mark/Demark, a Synsign/Index or an Icon. Thus an Onirosign is either a Mark/Demark Symbol, a Synsign/Index Symbol, or an Icon

Symbol. To be clearer, a Mark/Demark Symbol is an Onirosign when a character, in the course of interpreting their dreams, makes some interpretation about the actual world. A

Synsign/lndex Symbol is an Onirosign when a character, in the course of interpreting their dreams, simply recounts an event of the dream world and does not impart any judgement

on these events. Finally, an Icon Symbol is an Onirosign when a character, in the course of

interpreting their dreams, recounts a quality or sentiment in general from the dream world. I have also explained how an Onirosign is an Imprint. It is an Imprint in the sense that the dream world may impart itself unannounced on the actual world, but this Imprint is not expressed in the indiscernible relation of dream world and actual world-it is not a time-image either (which in this case would be a Chronosign Imprint). According to

Deleuze, the dream world and the actual world of the dreamer remain distinct, and I will argue that this is the case when an Imprint is expressed in a Synsign/Index and an Icon.

Consequently, an Onirosign is also either a Synsign/Index Imprint or an Icon Imprint. A

Synsign/Index Imprint is an Onirosign when a character daydreams about some action; for example, surfing a wave or diving into a pool. An Icon Imprint is an Onirosign when a character daydreams about the quality of some action or event; for example, the smell of coffee described by Peter Falk in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987), or the pleasure of rubbing one's hands together when it's cold.

Finally, I explained how an Onirosign is a Qualisign in the sense that a pure quality of the dream world may impart itself unannounced on the actual world. Again, however, this Qualisign is not expressed in the indiscernible relation of the qualities of the dream world and the qualities of the actual world-it is not a time-image (which in this case would be a Chronosign Qualisign). According to Deleuze, the dream world and the actual world of the dreamer remain distinct, and I will argue that this is the case when a Qualisign is expressed in an Icon. An Icon Qualisign is an Onirosign when a character daydreams about a quality in-itself; for example, the rush of adrenalin independent of a surfer's movement on a wave.

Onirosigns, like Mnemosigns, are special kinds of Qualisigns, Imprints and

Symbols, but these signs are not time-images because they are not expressed in indiscernible Compositions of images. In other words, they do not have the Chronosign as

their Compositions, and are not examples of the Chronosign Hyalosign that I discussed in the previous section of this chapter. Instead, Onirosigns and Mnemosigns are names given to Icon Qualisigns, Icon Imprints, Synsign/Index Imprints, Icon Symbols, Synsign/Index

Symbols and Mark/Demark Symbols that are concerned explicitly with a character's recollections and dreams. These signs portray time in the cinema but do not express non­ chronological time. Consequently, I have demonstrated how the Mnemosign and

Onirosign fit in with Deleuze's semiotic structure as a whole; and also, I have emphasized in a single move 1) the difference between Deleuze's time-images (Chronosign Hyalosigns) and the other embodied signs of his semiotics, and 2) the fact that even though these signs are different, they are the product of the same semiotic structure of sign elements.

Conclusion

I started this project by claiming a semiotic principle based on the relation Deleuze discusses between a semiotic matter on the one hand, and a sign on the other. For

Deleuze, the sign (by right), is an expression of matter. It is not the product of transcendent structures. It is the product of immanence in the universe. Then I maintained that Deleuze uses Peirce's semeiotics as a way of translating the above principle of the sign to the cinema. In this case, the matter of the cinematic sign (signaletic material) is the tangled web of Firstness (affection-image), Secondness (action-image) and Thirdness

(relation-image). Furthermore, with his discussion of non-chronological time, Deleuze is

saying that a sign can express an absolute category of Being (optical-image). This suggests

an extension of semeiotics; but in a lot of ways also, Deleuze's discussion of the optical­

image marks a return to his original concept of the signaletic material (as pure symbolic

spatium swelling in real Time). In analyzing Deleuze's time-images I have argued that the expression of absolute

Being in the cinema is the potential of all signs. It is achieved when a Genesis is expressed in an indiscernible Composition of elements (Chronosign). Furthermore, this Composition does not simply porlrt!J time (like images of recollection or dreaming). It presents a little time in its pure state.

In Chapter Seven I will consider something that, up until now, has been missing from Deleuze's discussion. 1bis is Deleuze's examination of thought in relation to his concept of the sign. We will see that Deleuze describes certain kinds of thought particular to the categories of image he borrows from Peirce. These kinds of thought, or N oosigns, constitute a third aspect of Deleuze's semiotics alongside his signs of Genesis and

Composition. The aspect of thought completes Deleuze's semiotic structure of immanence. In uncovering the Noosigns of his semiotics we will see that Deleuze's concept of the sign actually involves three aspects: a combination of Genesis, Composition andNoosign. Moreover, the inclusion of a Noosign serves to differentiate further the embodied signs noted so far. a ran

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I Chapter Seven

Deleuze, Peirce and the Cinema: Noosign

Introduction

Deleuze uses Peirce's semeiotics to describe how the signaletic material of the image is expressed in a range of different signs. In accordance with the three categories of

Being, Peirce divides the sign into three aspects-. its nature in-itself (Representamen); its relation to an object (Object); and its relation to an interpreter (Interpretant). Furthermore, since there are three categories of Being and three kinds of experience in the universe, there are three kinds of Representamen, Object and Interpretant. Considered in its practical application, then, Peirce's concept of the sign involves nine individual sign elements.

In terms of the combination of Representamens, Objects and lnterpretants and the formation of completed signs, however, the sign elements do not combine infinitely.

Peirce's categories are ordinal and hierarchical, meaning that there are only ten possible combinations of Representamen, Object and lnterpretant in semeiotics-in other words, there are ten completed signs of semeiotics. My argument has been that Deleuze bases his idea of the cinematic sign on semeiotics, using Peirce's categories to conceive of the

signaletic material of the cinema. The categories are the underlying matter of the image,

and Deleuze identifies Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness as the affection-image, action­

image and relation-image of the cinema. He begins by describing a concept of the

cinematic sign specifically in terms of Peirce's Representamen and Object. For Deleuze Genesis is equivalent to Peirce's Representamen and refers to the sign in-itself (an essence of

Deleuze's semiotics). Composition is equivalent to Peirce's Object and refers to the sign's embodiment in a specific context (the way an essence is expressed in a composite whole of elements). In Deleuze's semiotics the sign is a Composition of elements in the frame that functions to express a category of Being characteristic of a Genesis. Consequently, Deleuze's concern so far has been with using semeiotics to conceive of the different ways the signaletic material is expressed in the different embodied signs of the cinema.

In this chapter I will consider how at the very end of his second volume on the cinema, Deleuze discusses the cinematic sign in terms of the different ways it can be interpreted by a subject. I argue that Deleuze is revealing a third aspect of his sign, alongside

Genesis and Composition. He calls this aspect of the sign the Noosign. It will be explained how this aspect of the sign is equivalent to Peirce's lnterpretant. Since this is the case, moreover, we will see that just as there is a range of different kinds of Interpretant in semeiotics, there is a range of different Noosigns characteristic of the different image-types of Deleuze's semiotics. My discussion in this chapter implies a more fully developed concept of the sign in Deleuze's semiotics. Up until now I have described the different combinations of Genesis and Composition as the embodied signs ofDeleuze's semiotics.

Now, in terms of the different combinations of Genesis, Composition and Noosign, I will identify the completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics. It is my argument that the completed signs extend the list of embodied sign since a completed sign takes into account the different ways an embodied sign might be interpreted. The definition of the completed sign I will be working with is the following: a completed sign is a certain essence of Being

(Genesis), expressed in a certain composite whole of elements in the frame (Composition), that is interpreted in a certain wqy (Noosign). It must be noted, however, that Deleuze is not as explicit as I am in my discussion about the completed signs of his semiotics. I am making the argument that the completed signs underlie Deleuze's semiotic theory based on my interpretation of the cinema books.

In so doing, I am outlining my contention that semeiotics informs Deleuze's semiotics throughout both his cinema books. Another way of putting this point is to say that

Deleuze's entire semiotic project is reducible to a single (Peircian) structure of immanence, and that semeiotics holds the key to understanding how all of Deleuze's signs fit together

(even though he doesn't say as much himself).

My first step in putting forward my argument about Deleuze's Noosign is quite general. I unpack some broad ideas concerning the twin concepts of thought and thinking in Deleuze's and Peirce's philosophies. I will consider some points raised by Deleuze in

Difference and Repetition; and with regards to Peirce, I will expand on some arguments I made in Chapter Three about the immanence of thought in Peirce's philosophy. We will see that Deleuze and Peirce converge on the understanding that thought is not an action guided by transcendent presuppositions operating at the level of the thinking subject. Deleuze and

Peirce instead describe thought strictly as the result of the shock of the subject's encounter with a stimulation.

The second step of my argument moves this chapter towards Deleuze's analysis of thought in the cinema specifically and his development of a third aspect of the sign. The underlying question of this section is the following: what does it mean to think in terms of signs?

It will be suggested that Peirce translates his conception of thought and thinking to semeiotics through the sign's lnterpretant. Based on his trichotomous division of the universe into three categories of Being, there are three kinds of Interpretant in semeiotics

(represented in the Tri-Square of sign elements below): Table 7.1

Peirce's Tri-Square of Sign Elements

1 2 3 Representamen Qualisign Sinsign Legisign Object Icon Index Symbol Interpretant Rheme Dicent Ar~ment

From my broad analysis of Peirce's philosophy, and picking up again on some points I raised in Chapter Three, I will refer to Peirce's three kinds of lnterpretant as the three principal ways ideas are formed in his semeiotics. What I will emphasize is the sense in which these ideas are not transcendent to the sign, but are produced at the very moment of the subject's encounter with the sign.

We will see that Deleuze also tackles the problem of thought in his semiotics by developing a third aspect of the sign: the Noosign. I will explain how Deleuze implements his philosophy of thought and thinking outlined in Difference and Repetition and continues his application of semeiotics to the cinema when he suggests different kinds of Noosigns characteristic of the different image-types. He analyzes what he calls classical cinema, and from his analysis I argue that he is in fact describing the kind of Noosign characteristic of the relation-image (Deleuze's category of Thirdness in the cinema). I call this Noosign a

Whole, and note its equivalence to Peirce's Argument. Furthermore, he analyzes what he calls modem cinema, and from this analysis it is quite clear that Deleuze is describing the

Noosign of the optical-image (Deleuze's category of Zeroness in the cinema), which I call a

Caesura. I analyse the Caesura and the Whole as two extremes of a continuum of thought associated with the image-types of Deleuze's semiotics. These extremes suggest that in his discussion of thought Deleuze is sticking to his conception of the image-types and sign elements outlined so far. Included in this continuum, therefore, are the N oosigns of

Deleuze's affection-image and action-image. Based on Deleuze's discussion of these image-types and my previous analysis of their similarities to Peirce's Firstness and

Secondness respectively, I make a case for two Noosigns equivalent to Peirce's Rheme and

Dicent, which I call the Term and Proposition of Deleuze's semiotics.1 Consequently, I arrive at the following completed structure of sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics:

Table 7.2

The Principal Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semioticsa

0 1 2 3 affection-ima e action-ima e relation-ima e Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/Index Mark/Demark Noosign Term Pro osition Whole

It is in the final section of this chapter that I consider the completed signs underlying Deleuze's semiotics. These completed signs are given through the combination

of Genesis, Composition and N oosign in table 7 .2. I focus on the completed signs

produced from the principal image-types, and below I have noted the nineteen principal

completed signs underlying Deleuze's semiotics that I discuss in this chapter.

1 Note: In Deleuze's semiotics I use Term and Proposition as alternate names for Peirce's Rheme and Dicent so as to avoid confusing these Noosigns with two ofDeleuze's sign elements of the perception-image (Reume and Dicent). For the sign elements of the perception-image, see Chapter Four of this dissertation. • My concern in this chapter is with establishing the kinds of interpretation associated with Deleuze's image­ types. In an attempt to avoid over complicating things, I focus only on the Noosigns characteristic of the principal image-types: the optical-image, affection-image, action-image and relation-image. This is because, according to the logic of my discussion so far, these are the basic Noosigns ofDeleuze's semiotics, making the Noosigns of the degenerate image-types (impulse-image and reflection-image) versions of these basic kinds. Most important for my discussion at this stage is the establishment of these basic kinds. Readers can decide for themselves how the Noosigns of the degenerate image-types might be slightly more or less developed than the Noosigns of the principal image-types. Table 7.3

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semioticsb

G C N I Gl co NO Caesura Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl NO Caesura Icon Qualisign III Gl Cl Nl Term Icon Qualisign IV G2 co NO Caesura Chronosign Imprint V G2 Cl NO Caesura Icon Imprint VI G2 Cl Nl Term Icon Imprint VII G2 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Imprint VIII G2 C2 Nl Term Synsign/Index Imprint IX G2 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint X G3 co NO Caesura Chronosign Symbol XI G3 Cl NO Caesura Icon Symbol XII G3 Cl Nl Term Icon Symbol XIII G3 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Symbol XIV G3 C2 Nl Term Synsign/Index Symbol xv G3 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol XVI G3 C3 NO Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol XVII G3 C3 Nl Term Mark/Demark Symbol XVIII G3 C3 N2 Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol XVIV G3 C3 N3 Whole Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: Similar to Peirce's ten classes of sign formed from the combination of sign elements of his Tri-Square, expressions such as Gl, CO, NO should be read as a Genesis which is a First, a Composition which is a Zero, and a Noosign which is a Zero.

Furthermore, revealing the completed signs means explaining some points Deleuze doesn't elucidate. I recapitulate my argument that Peirce's semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the expression of the signaletic material in the cinema. In respect of this first point, I emphasize how the nineteen completed signs represent nineteen ways the signaletic material is expressed. Then I look in some detail at the completed signs themselves. I explain how the inclusion of a third and final aspect of the sign functions to differentiate the embodied signs I described in Chapter Five and Chapter Six. For instance,

b In this chapter I am examining the thought (Noosigns) characteristic of the principal embodied signs I discussed in Chapter Five and Chapter Six. Regarding the principal embodied signs, I stated in Chapter Six that a Chronosign Hyalosign is, in fact, a Chronosign Qualisign, a Chronosign Imprint, and a Chronosign Symbol. For this reason I did not list the Chronosign Hyalosign per seas an embodied sign of Deleuze's semiotics. The reader will notice that I do not list the Caesura Chronosign Hyalosign as a completed sign for a Synsign/Index Imprint is different when it is interpreted as a Proposition (the completed sign of which is a Proposition Synsign Index), than when it is interpreted qualitatively, as a

Term (the completed sign of which is a Term Synsign/Index Imprint). Also, I explain how two embodied signs,'although seemingly different, can have the same Noosign (for example: a Proposition Synsign/lndex Imprint and a Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol).

Using a range of detailed cinematic examples of these completed signs, I come to the conclusion that these signs are different in so far as their Noosigns are of different degrees ofpurity.

Finally, we will see that uncovering the completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics pries open the door on two burning issues. One is what I think is cinema's great potential for Deleuze, and that is its ability to foreground certain kinds of completed signs, and in turn, certain kinds of thought that may go unnoticed in our everyday experience of the world. The other is cinema's greatest danger, and that is the reduction of the completed signs to transcendent structures.

A Shock to Thought: Deleuze and Peirce2

From the very moment Deleuze raises the problem of thought in the cinema, describing thinking in terms of a certain kind of "shock" to thought Q)me 156), he is

1) extending his critique of thought in classical philosophy, developed in detail in

Difference and Repetition, and 2) putting forth an idea of thought without presupposition

that is similar in many respects to Peirce's views on thinking and intelligence. In

the same reason. Instead, its three principal variations are noted: the Caesura Chronosign Qualisign, the Caesura Chronosign Imprint, and the Caesura Chronosign Symbol. 2 A Shock to Thou,ght: Expressionism and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2002) is the title of a collection of essays edited by Brian Massumi. Difference and Repetition Deleuze takes aim at the philosophy of Descartes and Kant and the idea that thought is a process of recognition and thinking is grounded in the subjective identity of the se!f and the objective identity of the object. Deleuze aims to overturn the model of recognition by arguing that a subject's perceptions are not unified by a subjective identity. Furthermore, he claims that the object does not have an objective identity, but is a material intensity only-what Deleuze in the cinema calls the signaletic material. This makes the subject's encounter with the object fundamentally perplexing: a shock. Thought, therefore, is a dynamic and creative act that attempts to make sense of the encounter based only on what is given by the encounter. Peirce is another thinker who spends a considerable amount of time attacking phenomenology for the emphasis placed on psychological givens in determining the subject's experience of the world. Peirce also does away with psychological presuppositions in his phenomenology and describes the act of thinking and the faculty of intelligence as an extension of a subject's encounter with the categories of Being in the universe.

In his critique of thought, Deleuze identifies two poles in the model of recognition.

The first pole is the subjective identity of the self and its faculties, manifest as common sense, or in philosophy with the "I think" of the Cogito. The second pole is the supposed objective identity of the object to which the faculties refer.3 Daniel W. Smith explains that these two poles constitute what Deleuze calls a "dogmatic" image of thought ("Deleuze's

Theory of Sensation" 30). It is a "dogmatic, moral or orthodox image" of thought because

3 Deleuze defines recognition in Kantian terms in the following passage:

Recognition may be defined by the harmonious exercise of the faculties upon a supposed same object(... ]. No doubt each faculty-perception, memory, imagination, understanding ... -has its own particular given and its own style, its peculiar ways of acting upon the given. An object is recognized, however, when one faculty locates it as identical to that of another, or rather when all the faculties together relate their given and relate themselves to a form of identity in the object. Recognition thus relies upon a subjective principle of collaboration of the faculties for "everybody"-in other words a common sense as concordia facultatunr, while simultaneously, for the philosopher, the form of identity in objects relies upon a ground in the unity of a thinking subject, thought is always already "prejudged" based on the presuppositions implicit to the model of recognition: the subjective identity of the self and the objective identity of the object

(Deleuze Difference 131).

Smith summarizes Deleuze's critique of the dogmatic image of thought according to several interrelated postulates. First he explains how thought, based on the model of recognition, is considered to formally contain the truth-for instance, certain ideas are considered innate and certain concepts a priori. Thinking is also considered to be the voluntary and natural exercise of a faculty, and the thinker is thought to possess a natural love for the truth. Smith explains how error is simply a diversion from the truth, and this is the result of certain forces that are foreign to thought and distract the mind from its vocation; for example, passions. Finally, Smith sums up by claiming that recognition hinges on a "method" for thinking truthfully-a method that will ward off error "and bring us back to the truthful nature of thought" ("Deleuze's Theory of Sensation" 32). For

Deleuze, each of these postulates imprisons the act of thinking, and thus constitutes a great hindrance to philosophy. He asks: ''Who can believe that the destiny of thought is at stake in these acts?" (.Qifference 135).

Peirce, like Deleuze, is also critical of a theory of thought that relies on any presuppositions. He attacks Descartes and Kant for what he describes as the psychologism implicit to their phenomenology., A case in point, Deledalle explains, is Peirce's attack on the role of intuition, both in Descartes' criteria of clarity and distinctness as the test of an idea

(102), and in Kant's reduction of sense perception to the a priori forms of the

"understanding" (9). Jeff Kasser lists some of Peirce' s more general ideas of psychologism, such as: the operation of a natural inclination or social impulse guiding a subject's experience of the world (5), a natural understanding as to what makes an argument valid or

of which all the other faculties must be modalities. Tbis is the meaning of the Cogito as a beginning [... ].(Difference 133) true (11), a feeling of doubt as the motivation for an inquiry, and a feeling of satisfaction or

"settlement of belief' marking the end of an inquiry (13). In all instances Peirce's critique of psychologism is directed at any psychological impulses thought to predetermine the outcome of a thinking subject's encounter with the world.

Deleuze attempts to overturn the model of recognition in philosophy by claiming that thinking is not a natural and voluntary process guided by a transcendent idea of what is true. For Deleuze, there is no subjective identity of the Self, and there is no harmonious relation of the faculties. Thus Deleuze explains that the object of an encounter is not recognized, but is encountered by the subject simply as a material intensity--or what I described at the very beginning of this project as a signaletic material. Deleuze describes the object in Difference and Repetition in the following terms: "It is not a sensible being but the being efthe sensible. It is not the given but that by which the given is given" (140).

For Deleuze, the object is perplexing and is a source of shock and violence, and thought is produced in an attempt to get to know the object. Deleuze writes that the object "moves the soul," and "forces it to pose a problem" (140). And since thought does not operate according to any presuppositions, the problem that is posed by the object and the thoughts that are created are only produced as a result of the givens of the encounter. There is nothing transcendent to the subject-object relation that may have a bearing on the nature of the problem posed and the thoughts created, and Deleuze describes this process as a truly "creative" act (147). The kernel of an idea is buried in every encounter with an object, and thinking is the process of extending the kernel, fostering it and inflecting it.4

Deleuze gives us a way of visualizing what he understands as the act of thinking.

He borrows an example from Liebniz and asks us to imagine the sea. It is, Deleuze says,

4 I have borrowed the ideas offostering and inflecting from Massumi ("Introduction" xxii). "a system of liaisons or differential relations between particulars and singularities corresponding to the degrees of variation among these relations-the totality of the system being incarnated in the real movement of the waves" (Difference 165). He argues that thinking is a creative endeavour when one enters into relation with the idea and constructs a "problematic field." And for Deleuze, this process is manifest, for example, when we learn to swim:

To learn to swim is to conjugate the distinctive points of our bodies with the

singular points of the objective Idea in order to form a problematic field. This

conjugation determines for us a threshold of consciousness at which our real acts

are adjusted to our perceptions of the real relations, thereby providing a solution to

the problem. (165)

We can extend Deleuze's discussion here and claim that the problematic field may be based on what I have described in this project as a Firstness of the encounter: the qualities of the encounter, like the shimmering of the water; or, a Secondness of the encounter: the physical presence of the object, its movement, the lapping of the waves; or even a combination of both, a Thirdness of the encounter: the coldness of the water's touch on the swimmer's body. According to Deleuze's thesis, one defines the nature of the problem and does not simply apply "rule enabling solutions." What is most important, then, is how the problematic field unfolds the kernel of an idea potential to the object of an encounter.

Deleuze and Peirce are alike in their critiques of classical philosophy because both take aim at any presuppositions thought to determine the nature of the thinking subject.

And Deleuze and Peirce are again alike because Peirce also attempts to overturn classical philosophy by doing away with these presuppositions, with what Peirce identifies specifically under the rubric ofp[Jchologism. Deledalle tells us the Peirce denounces psychologism in his own phenomenology-which he calls phaneroscopy-because he is wary about making any claims about how the mind functions.5 For instance Peirce describes how it is fundamentally problematic to assume that the propositions formed by a subject about an object are guided by psychical truths: "To explain the proposition in terms of the 'judgement' is to explain the self-intelligible in terms of a psychical act, which is the most obscure of phenomena or facts" (2.309 note qtd. in Deledalle: 101). Peirce abstains from psychology in his phenomenology and insists that propositions are the result of ideas that are produced entirely from the givens of the encounter. Thus Peirce insists that thoughts are not "in us," but we are "in thought'' (Peirce 5.289 note qtd. in Deledalle: 101).

Furthermore, Peirce defines the idea simply as "all that is any way or any sense present to the mind" (Peirce 1.284 qtd. in Deledalle: 102). The necessary corollary to Peirce's antipsychologism is his claim that the object is never known. Similar to Deleuze's idea of the signaletic material, Peirce defines it simply as a "material quality" (5.290 qtd. in

Deledalle: 84), an "objectum"-in other words, that which is "thrown" (jectum) "in front of' (ob) the mind (Peirce Semiotics and Signifies: 69 qtd. in Deledalle: 41-42). Thoughts are produced as a result of the subject's encounter with the object(um), and the following description, where Peirce gives his own version of Descartes' criteria of clarity and distinctness, reads much like a description of a Deleuzian problematic field: "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object" (5.402 qtd. in Deledalle: 102).

5 At this stage the reader is reminded that I am reading Peirce through Deledalle for two reasons: 1) Deleuze credits his understanding of Peirce in large part to Deledalle's translations; and 2) since the primary focus of this dissertation is an explication of the semiotic structure of Deleuze's cinema books, Deledalle provides an accessible and coherent summary of the eight volumes of Peirce's Collected Papers. Thought for Deleuze and Peirce is not an act of recognition based on subjective presuppositions. Instead, and from the comparisons I have made above, thought for

Deleuze and Peirce is the product of the shock implicit to the subject-object relation. And from this relation ideas are formed based on the material properties circulating in the encounter.

Thought and the Sign: Peirce's lnterpretant and Deleuze's Noosign

I will now look at how Deleuze develops these ideas of thought and thinking in a specifically cinematic context. He does this by extending his semiotics to include a version of the third aspect of Peirce's concept of the sign, the lnterpretant. To set the scene for my argument I will recapitulate Peirce's Interpretant. The act of thinking for Peirce is not rightfully determined by any psychological presuppositions, and I will contend that the

Interpretant is the way Peirce conceives of the formation of ideas in the universe, and that the three kinds of Interpretant made possible when Peirce's concept of the sign is deployed in a practical semeiotic context (Rheme, Dicent, Argument), refer to the three principal kinds of ideas in his phenomenology. Most important here is something I raised in

Chapter Three; namely, the sense in which these ideas are produced entirely from the sign­ object relations characteristic of Peirce's second aspect of the sign and the fact that thought is not transcendent to the sign in semeiotics. Then, I consider how Deleuze translates his thesis on thought to the cinema. He does this by continuing his application of semeiotics to the cinema. He also claims a third aspect of his concept of the sign-alongside Genesis and Composition-called the Noosign, and suggests different kinds of Noosigns characteristic of the different image-types. Deleuze analyzes what he calls classical cinema,

and I argue that it is quite clear that he is describing the kind of Noosign characteristic of the relation-image. I call this Noosign a Whole, and note its equivalence to Peirce's

Argument. Deleuze analyzes what he calls modern cinema, and I argue that it is quite clear that he is describing the Noosign characteristic of the optical-image, which I call a Caesura.

The classical and the modem are the only kinds of thought Deleuze is explicit about, but based on my contention that Deleuze is still sticking quite closely to semeiotics, I show how a version of Peirce's Rheme (or Term) and Dicent (or Proposition) can also be gleaned from his discussion and revealed in his semiotics.

At the very beginning of this project I explained that Peirce's semeiotics is the study of how a subject makes sense of an encounter. It is, moreover, a study of signs because, in attempting to make sense of something (such as the experience of a smell or a sound), Peirce claims that the process involved is an interpretation of signs. This is a very particular kind of interpretation because (as I explained in the first section of this chapter),

Peirce insists in his philosophy on a conception of thinking and interpretation that is not guided by transcendent determinants (psychologism). Peirce grounds this conception of interpretation in semeiotics because he has a very particular idea of what a sign is.

As I have noted throughout this project, Peirce's concept of the sign is based on his division of the universe into three phenomenological categories of Being: the category of existence in-itself, or Firstness; the category of actual existence, or Secondness; and the category of logical existence, or Thirdness. In respect of these categories, he claims that a sign has three aspects: as a First, it is something in-itself: a certain kind of sign

(Representamen); as a Second, it stands in some relation to an object (Object); and as a

Third, it stands in some relation to some object for some interpreting subject

(Interpretant). According to the three categories of Being there are three aspects of the

sign, but also, Peirce claims that when a sign is deployed in a practical semeiotic context, there are three kinds of each aspect. 1bis makes for nine individual sign elements of semeiotics:

Table 7.1

Peirce's Tri-Square of Sign Elements

1 2 3 Representamen Qualisign Sinsign Legisign Object Icon Index Symbol Interpretant Rheme Dicent ArQ'lllllent

Furthermore, I have explained in this project how these sign elements do not combine infinitely but, according to the ordinal and hierarchical nature of the categories, combine to form only ten completed signs of semeiotics.

I made an important argument in Chapter Three about the immanence of Peirce's categories and their impact on the sign elements and completed signs of semeiotics. I asserted that at the very basis of Peirce's philosophy is the following principle: the continuity of matter and mind. Consequently, the categories of Being are present to the senses in exactly the same way they exist in the universe. Since each of Peirce's sign elements are characteristic of a category of Being, further implications are that each kind of sign

(Representamen) and each kind of sign-object relation (object) are immanent to the universe and exist in-themselves, and most importantly, that a subject does not interpret the sign-object relation of an encounter (Interpretant) by adding a new knowledge to that encounter. It is in terms of the nature of this idea of interpretation and its relationship to the continuity of matter and mind in Peirce's philosophy that Peirce grounds his anti­ psychologism in semeiotics.

Since the Interpretant does not add a new knowledge to the sign-object relation of semeiotics, I said that it translates the properties of that relation according to an unfolding process something like Massumi's reading ofproprioception or Deleuze's concept of expression. Each kind of lnterpretant of the completed signs of semeiotics, therefore, is representative of a different focus of the unfolding process: a Rheme is a general interpretation based on an object's qualities-it is a feeling or sentiment; a Dicent is more specific and is based on an object's physical characteristics-it is a proposition made about the object's existence; and an Argument is an interpretation of an object in terms of whatever may be logically deduced from that object-it is an idea, concept or judgement.6

At the end of Deleuze's explication of his semiotics he describes two main ways of thinking, the· first of which he calls a classical mode of thought and identifies with classical cinema. Classical cinema is based on the kind of thought Deleuze identifies with the abstract relation of elements in the frame, or what Deleuze broadly defines as images.

Deleuze uses as his predominant case study Eisenstein's theory and practice of montage.

Montage is the method of placing images in relation through editing. This is not a cause­ effect relation of images, but a strictly abstract relation based only on what Eisenstein defines as the "harmonics" of each image (Iime 60).

Editing, however, is not the only way of determining an abstract relation of images.

Deleuze explains the same kind of montage effect in a single shot. For example, Deleuze

6 Consider an example: "that footprint that Robinson Crusoe found in the sand" (Peirce 4.531 qtd. in Deledalle: 105). The footprint is the sign of an object, a man (in this case, Friday). From semeiotics, Robinson can consider the footprint from a number of different perspectives. Most obviously, he will think that the footprint is an actual thing that is a sign, a Second (Sinsign). He might think that it involves an iconic relation of sign and object (the footprint stands for Friday based on the qualitative resemblance between the imprint in the sand and the shape of Friday's foot). And if this is the case, Robinson will interpret the footprint rhematically: Robinson will interpret the Icon most generally as the sign of some possible object. But, Robinson might think that the footprint stands in an indexical relationship to its object. He might think that the footprint is produced by an actual man. If this is the case, then Robinson might also interpret the footprint as a Rheme, or as a Dicent. As a Rheme, the quality of the footprint tells Robinson something general about an actual man that produced it. As a Dicent, Robinson interprets the shape of the footprint and makes some specific claims about the actual object. Or, Robinson might consider the footprint as a general type, a Legisign. In this case Robinson is considering the footprint as the sign of a certain type of man, an indigenous or native man perhaps. He might think that the footprint is in an iconic or indexical or symbolic relationship to its object. As an Icon, Robinson would assume that the footprint simply resembles a type of man; as an Index, Robinson would assume that the footprint is produced by a type of man who stepped on the soft sand of the beach; as a Symbol, it is Robinson that determines the relation of sign and object. In this case Robinson's interpretation is not limited to the empirical evidence provided by the Index, but Robinson forms a series of judgements based on whatever he might infer from the Symbol. describes how Hitchcock makes disparate elements in a frame relative through the extended duration of one shot: "The Rope is made up of a single shot in so far as the images are only the winding paths of a single reasoning process" (.Movement 200). And

Deleuze also notes how montage can involve an audio-visual relation, or what Eisenstein calls "audio-visual montage" (Eisenstein The Film Sense. London: Faber and Faber, 1943:

114-156 qtd. in Deleuze Time: 238). From Eisenstein's "Statement on Sound" we can understand audio-visual montage as the oppositional relation of image and sound, produced as a result of incongruous sound effects. For Eisenstein, "Onfy the contrapuntal use of sound vis-a-vis the fragment of montage will open up new possibilities for the development and perfection of montage" (Eactory 234).

From Eisenstein's thesis on montage, Deleuze claims a notion of conceptual thought associated with the abstract relation of images. According to Eisenstein, montage involves a totalization of elements from which concepts or wholes are formed-involved is the thinking of the "whole" as "intellectual totality" (Iime 157). More importantly still, these concepts result from a thought process that interprets the montage dialecticalfy.

Eisenstein tells us that the whole does not refer rightfully to some "unity of a higher order," but (as Deleuze explains), it is based on the "form of opposition overcome[... ] of the transformation of opposites" (158). The whole is the "dynamic effect" of images and the concept created is not rightfully based on any ideas that are transcendent to the elements of the relation. Deleuze cites Eisenstein who claims that "from the shock of two factors a concept is born" (158).7

Deleuze uses montage as the basis of his thesis on classical cinema, but I want to shift the apparent emphasis on his historicity and argue that Deleuze is also describing the kind of thought particular to his conception of the relation-image. Montage refers us to

7 At this point Deleuze refers us to "The Mille Separator and the Holy Grail" in Eisenstein's Nonindifferent N.amre. (38) ~ 158 note 5). the relations of images, and more specifically, montage is one way of describing a grouping

together of elements that are otherwise unrelated-it refers us to a strictly logical

Composition of elements. In Chapter Five I explained how Deleuze calls the sign of such

a Composition either a Mark or Demark. Now I want to suggest that the kind of thought

Deleuze is identifying with montage is the kind of thought characteristic of the

Mark/Demark and the relation-image of the cinema. Moreover, in so far as Deleuze notes

the whole (concept) as the outcome of a montage process that is essentially dialectical in

nature, I also want to suggest that Deleuze is describing one kind of non-representational

thought in th:e cinema and in so doing is sticking quite closely to Peirce's Interpretant of

Thirdness, the Argument. Both Deleuze and Peirce are describing thinking as a process of

evaluation that is based on the abstract relations of terms and is not determined by

transcendent structure. I will name the sign of conceptual thought in Deleuze's semiotics

the Whole, and will note its position in Deleuze's structure of the relation-image as follows:

Table 7.4

The Sign Elements of the Relation-Image

Classical 3 relation-ima e Genesis Symbol Composition Mark/Demark Noosign Whole

In the last third of Chapter Twelve of The Movement-Image Deleuze describes

another way of thinking in the cinema, a modem way, and he looks at the Noosign specific

to this period in the second third of Chapter Seven of The Time-Image. After World War

II, in so called modernity, Deleuze notes a change in the discursive context of the cinema.

He describes a state of post-war disillusionment that led to a crisis in the relations of objects and bodies in the modem world. After the war, Deleuze writes, shell-shock replaced logical action. Furthermore, these changes eventually filtered through into the relations of images and found their way into the signs of the cinema.

Deleuze opines that the modem is characterized by an illogical relation of elements.

Consequently, he writes images are no longer combined, and that a logical relation of images is no longer dominant in modernity. Instead, modem cinema places the emphasis on the BE1WEEN of images (Iime 180). For instance, Deleuze writes that classical cinema was focussed on what images mean: the Whole was ''being continually made[... ] by internalizing the images and externalizing itself in the images, following a double attraction.

This was the process of an always open totalization, which defined montage [... ]" (179).

Furthermore, he notes an associated concept of chronological time: "Time is necessarily an indirect representation, because it flows from the montage which links one movement to another" (34-35). Then he describes the modem: "The point is quite different," he says, the question is no longer what images mean, "It is no longer that of the association or attraction of images. What counts is on the contrary the interstice between images, between two images[ ... ]" (179).

Deleuze continues, explaining how the dissociative relations of images resist unification in thought, inviting an act of thinking profoundly different from the classical idea of thought. Thought is confronted by what Deleuze calls the caesura separating images, and in thinking the caesura, the viewer is confronted with the absolute point of difference between all images. In thinking this point of difference Deleuze claims that thought is tackling the "un-thought within thought": the "unsummonable," "undecidable,"

"inexplicable," "impossible," and "irrational" (Iime 278).

In his discussion of the modern, Deleuze is describing a kind of thought associated with a Composition of images that emphasizes the between of images, not their "totalization" (Iime 179). As I explained in Chapter Six, the process of "perpetual

exchange" or indiscernibility (273) principle to the Chronosign is a process resistant to the

idea of "totalization." Thus it is apparent that Deleuze's discussion of the modem is also

geared towards revealing the kind of thought specific to the optical-image of the cinema.

Deleuze himself is quite clear about this when he notes two kinds of time-images as the

best examples of the signs of modem cinema: the "series" or Genesign (277), as well as the

Lectosign (278-279). The Noosign of modem cinema, then, is the Noosign of the optical­

image. It can be described in terms of the thoughts produced when the viewer, confronted

with the perpetual relinkage of images, is confronted by a cinematic caesura. Consequently,

concepts are not produced in thought, but thought remains in this point of difference. In

order to make clear the distinction between the Noosign of the classical and the Noosign

of the modem, I will use the term Caesura for the latter:

Table 7.4

The Sign Elements of the Optical-Image and the Sign Elements of the Relation-Image

(Modem) (Classical) 0 3 relation-ima e Genesis Symbol Composition Mark/Demark Noosign Whole

Deleuze is explicit about a classical and modem way of thinking only, and I have

advanced the notion that the classical can be identified with the Noosign of the relation­

image (Whole) and the modem can be identified with the Noosign of the optical-image

(Caesura). What is suggested, then, are three aspects of the sign (Genesis, Composition

and Noosign) characteristic of these two image-types. However, I want to make another

suggestion based on Deleuze's discussion of the classical and modem. I want to emphasize the Caesura and Whole as two polarities in a continuum of thought: a continuum that stretches from thought's confrontation with what is absolute, "inexplicable" and

"irrational" (Caesura), to thought's completely rational and logical function (Whole). I want to also emphasize how this continuum of thought parallels the continuum of image­ types of Deleuze's semiotics and the idea that cinema is a signaletic material of various kinds of Being; from Being in its most elemental state to Being in its most developed state: from aberrant movement/non-chronological time (optical-images); pure qualities

(affection-images); events (action-images), to logical relations (relation-images). In so far as the Caesura and Whole are two polarities in a continuum of thought, and in so far as

Deleuze sticks quite closely to Peirce's categories when positing the image-types of the cinema, I want to fill in the blanks of these final moments of Deleuze's discussion and uncover a Noosign of the affection-image and a Noosign of the action-image. There are occasions in the cinema books where Deleuze suggests a Firstness of thought characteristic of the affection-image that echoes Peirce's Rheme, and a Secondness of thought characteristic of the action-image that echoes Peirce's Dicent.

Deleuze implies a version of Peirce's Rheme that is characteristic of the affection­ image early in The Movement-Image. In Chapter Five I explained how Deleuze describes certain kinds of images that function as signs of some qualiry of a state of things. He calls these kinds of image Icons, and the quality signified a Quale (97). For example, a particular event, like the trial of Joan of Arc, might be represented by the anguished face ofJoan-an

Icon that stands for some quality of the trial. I called this embodied sign an Icon Imprint, and maintained that it is something like what Peirce would call an Iconic Sinsign. For

Peirce, this kind of sign, whereby an actual thing is expressed in an iconic relation of sign

and object, is interpreted generally as a Rheme. When Deleuze describes an event

expressed in exactly the same terms, it follows that a Rheme (or what I call in Deleuze's semiotic, the Term) is also implied by his sign-that is, the Icon is interpreted generally as

the sign of some possible state of things. In revealing the Term in Deleuze's semiotic, we

have the following sign elements of the affection-image:

Table 7.5

The Sign Elements of the Affection-Image

1 affection-ima e Genesis Qualisign Composition Icon Noosign Term

Deleuze also implies a Noosign of the action-image equivalent to Peirce's Dicent in

his discussion of Flaherty's documentary style. I explained in Chapter Five how Deleuze

describes some of the images of Flaherty's documentaries as examples of the Synsign

Imprint. And I also explained how, according to Deleuze, Flaherty has been criticized for

not imparting any judgement on the subject matter of his documentaries. On this point,

Deleuze writes that films like Nanook of the North simply appear to present an

"exposition" of the milieu, capturing in the "raw" a character's "tete-a-tete with the milieu"

(Movement 143). Another way of putting this criticism is to say that Deleuze is suggesting

a Dicent as the dominant mode of interpretation of Flaherty's films. With Peirce's Dicent,

logical claims are not being made; instead a sign is interpreted as a proposition only. I will

not yet discuss the value of a Dicent as a kind of interpretation (and, therefore, whether or

not the criticisms of Flaherty noted by Deleuze are negative). Instead, I simply want to

note the prevalence of the Dicent (or what I will call the Proposition for Deleuze) as

Noosign in Deleuze's semiotics. The Proposition completes the sign elements of the action-itnage, and in turn completes the structure or principal sign elements in Deleuze's

semiotics as a whole:

Table 7.6

The Principal Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics

(Modem) (Classical) 0 1 2 3 affection-ima e action-ima e relation-ima e Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/Index Mark/Demark Noosign Term Pro osition Whole

In this section I have aitned to explicate the completed structure of Deleuze's

cinema semiotic. Using Deleuze's discussion of what he calls classical and modem ways of

thinking in the cinema, I have shifted the apparent emphasis of the cinema books away

from historicity and argued that Deleuze is extending his thesis on thought from

Difference and Repetition by describing two kinds of pure thought in the cinema. It is my

claitn also that these two kinds of thought are constitutive of two extremes in a continuum

of cinematic interpretation that Deleuze develops from semeiotics. I interpreted Deleuze's

classical as the kind of thought particular to Thirdness. And with his idea of the modem I

argued that Deleuze extends the semiotic structure he borrows from Peirce by describing a

special kind of thought associated with an absolute category of Being, the optical-itnage.

Furthermore, I returned to Deleuze's discussion of the affection-itnage and action-itnage

and argued that a version of Peirce's Rheme and a version of Peirce's Dicent can rightfully

be added to Deleuze's semiotics, thus completing the semiotic structure developed in the

cinema books. Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics

I have maintained throughout this project that Deleuze's semiotics is Peircian. I have explained the completed structure of Deleuze's semiotics, and this involves his determination of the cinema according to four principal image-rypes, his division of the sign into three aspects, and the resulting range of (twelve) sign elements of his semiotics (table 7 .6).

Now, I want to use this completed structure to recapitulate the most important aspects of

Deleuze's semiotics.

I begin by returning to an underlying argument of this dissertation; namely the sense in which semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the expression of the signaletic material in the cinema. In the face of linguistic inspired semiology, semeiotics affords Deleuze a way of conceiving of the sign and meaning independently of transcendent structures.

Then I consider the structure of Deleuze's semiotics noted above. I explain how the sign elements can be combined to form nineteen principal completed signs of

Deleuze's semiotics, and that these completed signs are the underlying signs of Deleuze's entire semiotics. But in relation to my first point above, I emphasize that, in light of

Deleuze's particular development of semeiotics in the cinema, the completed signs produced from the combination of sign elements represent nineteen ways the signaletic material is expressed.

Having established the completed signs and their relation to a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema, I clarify some finer details about the nature of the completed

signs themselves. A completed sign is an embodied sign considered in terms of its interpretation.

With respect to this distinction, I explain how the inclusion ofa Noosign in Deleuze's

semiotics functions to differentiate the embodied signs. Furthermore, something that is related to this issue is the sense in which a Noosign is of different degrees of purity, depending on the Composition to which it is attached.

Finally, I elucidate what I see as cinema's greatest attraction and its greatest danger for Deleuze. Its greatest attraction is its ability to foreground certain signs and force certain kinds of thought (that we might have forgotten how to think), and its greatest danger is the susceptibility of its images and signs to transcendent structures (codes).

1

In the Introduction and Chapter One of this dissertation I explained Deleuze's distaste for semiology. Deleuze is critical of the emphasis semiology places on transcendent structures in shaping the matter of the sign. Deleuze is critical of this process because of its end result: that meaning is never new and original, and always pre-exists the sign in the transcendent structure. 1bis is an idea of stale meaning, and in Deleuze's eyes it is the great dilemma of semiology. He gets around this dilemma in his own conception of the sign and language by insisting that transcendent structures are not necessary for the creation of meaning. For Deleuze, the matter of the sign is a material ofpotential meaning, and a sign is the product of the actualization of this meaning. 1bis process of actualization is a self-referencing process, or what Deleuze sometimes refers to as an expression. It occurs independently of transcendent forces acting on matter. What results is a concept of the sign that is not meaningful because its matter reflects pre-existent meaning, but a concept of the sign that is meaningful in-itself, in so far as the sign is an actualization of the properties of its matter.

Deleuze develops this matter-sign relationship in the cinema books and, as I have suggested throughout this project, the cinema books are an extended meditation on expression in language. He calls matter the signaletic material of the cinema; but also, he equates the cinema and the universe, claiming that the signaletic material of the cinema is, in fact, the signaletic material of the universe.

In respect of this universe-cinema equation, Deleuze applies Peirce's phenomenological semeiotics directly to the cinema, using Peirce's theory of the different signs characteristic of Being to describe a range of ways the signaletic material is expressed.

It can be said that in the initial stages of Deleuze's semiotics he identifies Peirce's three categories of Being with the signaletic material of the cinema. For Deleuze the cinema is most essentially a tangled matter of different categories of Being (or what he calls image­ types). We know that the categories in Peirce's semeiotics are immanent to the universe, and since this is the case, we know that each kind of sign characteristic of a category

(Representamen), each kind of sign-object relation (Object), each kind of interpretation

(Interpretant), and each completed sign produced from the hierarchical combination of these elements, is also immanent to the universe. Deleuze takes his very notion of immanence on board in the cinema and reveals his understanding of semeiotics when he uses Spinozistic terminology to describe a version of Peirce's sign. Initially, he states that the sign is made up of two parts (aspects), and I have suggested that these are equivalent to

Peirce's Representamen and Object. Deleuze, however, calls the first aspect of the sign

Genesis in order not only to suggest an idea of the sign, in-itself, that is characteristic of a category of Being (Peirce's definition of the Representamen), but to emphasize how the sign, in-itself, is like an essence of his semiotics and is immanent to the cinema. He calls the second aspect of the sign, Composition, not only to suggest an idea of the sign's embodiment (Peirce's definition of the Object), but to emphasize the sense in which a sign is embodied when a Composition of elements expresses a category of Being-in other words, when a Composition of elements expresses an essence. With an analysis of these two aspects I stated in my explication that Deleuze initially focuses on the sign from the perspective of how it is physically manifest in the cinema. In respect of Deleuze's claim that the cinema is a tangled skein of different image­ types, and therefore, different kinds of Genesis and Composition characteristic of each image-type, I described a range of different kinds of embodied signs. Most important about the embodied signs, moreover, is the sense in which these signs exist because they express an essence-to put this in terms of the matter-sign relationship I described above, they exist because of the way they actualize the signaletic material of the cinema (not because a transcendent force shapes the signaletic material).

Towards the end of the cinema books Deleuze reveals a third aspect of his concept of the sign called the Noosign, which I analyzed as equivalent to Peirce's Interpretant. My point was that the Noosign describes a Composition of elements from the perspective of the thoughts it might generate in an interpreting subject. From Difference and Repetition I outlined the basis of thought and thinking in Deleuze's philosophy as a whole. I claimed that thought for Deleuze is not an act of recognition based on subjective presuppositions.

Consequently, thought is the product of the shock implicit to a subject-object relation, meaning that ideas are formed based in the material properties circulating in the encounter itself. In the cinema specifically, I argued that this process of thought is embedded in

Deleuze's concept of the Noosign: in exactly the same way that a Composition does not require a transcendent structure to make it meaningful, an associated interpretation is produced entirely from the material properties of that Composition. Furthermore, since

Deleuze describes four principal kinds of Composition in the cinema (Chronosign, Icon,

Synsign/lndex, Mark/Demark), I uncovered four underlying kinds of Noosign in his

semiotics (Caesura, Term, Proposition, Whole). Table 7.6 represents the principal kinds of the three aspects of Deleuze's sign, or what I have called the sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics. Table 7.6, therefore, represents the different kinds of signs in-themselves (Genesis), the different ways these signs are embodied (Composition), and the different kinds of thought associated (Noosign).

I want now to be a little more specific and consider the combination of these sign elements and the range of completed signs produced. Based on the hierarchical combination of the sign elements, we can arrive at the following list of nineteen completed signs:

Table 7.7

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics

G C N I Gl co NO Caesura Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl NO Caesura Icon Qualisign III Gl Cl Nl Term Icon Qualisign IV G2 co NO Caesura Chronosign Imprint V G2 Cl NO Caesura Icon Imprint VI G2 Cl Nl Term Icon Imprint VII G2 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Imprint VIII G2 C2 Nl Term Synsign/Index Imprint IX G2 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint X G3 co NO Caesura Chronosign Symbol XI G3 Cl NO Caesura Icon Symbol XII G3 Cl Nl Term Icon Symbol XIII G3 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Symbol XIV G3 C2 Nl Term Synsign/Index Symbol xv G3 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol XVI G3 C3 NO Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol XVII G3 C3 Nl Term Mark/Demark Symbol XVIII G3 C3 N2 Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol XVIV G3 C3 N3 Whole Mark/Demark Symbol

* Note: Similar to Peirce's ten classes of sign formed from the combination of sign elements of his Tri-Square, expressions such as Gl, CO, NO should be read as a Genesis which is a First, a Composition which is a Zero, and a Noosign which is a Zero.

From my discussion in Chapter Five and Chapter Six and, as I also mentioned above, a completed sign is an embodied sign considered in terms of its Noosign. Deleuze is not clear about identifying the completed sign as the outcome of his semiotics. I want to emphasize however that the list above of completed signs underlies Deleuze's entire semiotic thesis.

Furthermore, in so far as the completed signs are the combinations produced from 1) the different kinds of signs themselves that are immanent to the cinema (Geneses), 2) the different kinds of composite wholes that are immanent to the universe (Composition), and

3) the different kinds of interpretation that are immanent to the composite wholes

(N oosign)-in other words, in so far as the completed signs are produced from what I will call a structure ofimmanence-I want to be absolutely clear and state that the list of completed signs represents nineteen different ways the signaletic material of the cinema is expressed.

2

I will explain now these completed signs in some detail. I noted in Chapter Five and Chapter Six how a Genesis can be expressed in a Composition equal to or lower than its phenomenological kind, thus producing a range of embodied signs ofDeleuze's semiotics. Now consider how the inclusion of Noosigns further differentiates the embodied signs (producing the completed signs).

According to table 7.7, a Symbol can be expressed in a range of different kinds of

Composition and can involve a range of different kinds of Noosign.

A Symbol expressed in a logical Composition, a Mark/Demark, is most typically interpreted conceptual!J (the Noosign of which is the Whole), and the completed sign given is the Whole Mark/Demark Symbol (XVIV). According to the hierarchy of the image­ types, however, a Mark/Demark can also be interpreted in terms of the factual information

afforded by the Composition (the Noosign of which is the Proposition), and the completed

sign given is the Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol (XVIII). Still in terms of the

hierarchy of the image-types, a Mark/Demark can be interpreted in terms of the qualitative information afforded by the Composition (the Noosign of which is the Term), and the completed sign given is the Term Mark/Demark Symbol (XVII). Finally, a

Mark/Demark can be interpreted from the perspective of the elements' absolute difference from each other (the Noosign of which is a Caesura), and the completed sign given is a

Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol (XVI).

If a Symbol is expressed in a genuine Composition, a Synsign/Imprint, it is most typically interpreted as a Proposition, and the completed sign given is a Proposition

Synsign/Index Symbol (XV). According to the hierarchy of the image-types, a Synsign

Imprint can als·o be interpreted as a Term or a Caesura. The completed signs given, therefore, are the Term Synsign/Index Symbol (XIV) and the Caesura Synsign/Index

Symbol (XIII) respectively.

If a Symbol is expressed in a qualitative Composition of images, an Icon, it is most typically interpreted as a Term, and the completed sign given is a Term Icon Symbol

(XII). According to the hierarchy of the image-types, an Icon can also be interpreted as a

Caesura, and the completed sign given is a Caesura Icon Symbol (XI)

Finally for the Symbol, if itis expressed in an indiscernible Composition, a

Chronosign, it can only be interpreted as a Caesura. The completed sign given is a

Caesura Chronosign Symbol (X).

According to table 7. 7, an Imprint can also be expressed in a range of different kinds of Composition and can involve a range of different kinds ofNoosign.

An Imprint expressed in a Synsign/Index is typically interpreted as a Proposition, and the completed sign given is a Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint (IX). According to the hierarchy of the image-types, a Synsign/lndex can also be interpreted as a Term or a

Caesura. The completed signs given are the Term Synsign/Index Imprint (VIII) and the

Caesura Synsign/Index Imprint (VII). If an Imprint is expressed in an Icon, it is typically interpreted as a Term, and the completed sign is a Term Icon Imprint (VI). According to the hierarchy of the image­ types, an Icon can also be interpreted as a Caesura, and the completed sign given is a

Caesura Icon Imprint (V).

Finally for the Imprint, if it is expressed in a Chronosign, it can only be interpreted as a Caesura. The completed sign given is a Caesura Chronosign Imprint (IV).

According to table 7. 7, a Qualisign can be expressed in an Icon or a Chronosign. If it is expressed in an Icon, it is typically interpreted as a Term, and the completed sign given is a Term Icon Qualisign (III). According to the hierarchy of the categories, a Term can also be interpreted as a Caesura, and the completed sign given is a Caesura Icon

Qualisign (II).

Finally for the Qualisign, if it is expressed in a Chronosign, it can only be interpreted as a Caesura. The completed sign given is a Caesura Chronosign Qualisign

(I).

I have examined above how the inclusion of a Noosigns further differentiates the embodied signs I described in Chapters Five and Six. Regarding these embodied signs, I stated in Chapter Six that a Chronosign Hyalosign is, in fact, a Chronosign Qualisign, a

Chronosign Imprint, and a Chronosign Symbol. For this reason I did not list the

Chronosign Hyalosign per seas an embodied sign of Deleuze's semiotics. The reader will notice in this chapter that I do not list the Caesura Chronosign Hyalosign as a completed sign for the same reason. Instead, I list its three principal variations: the Caesura

Chronosign Qualisign (I), the Caesura Chronosign Imprint (IV), and the Caesura

Chronosign Symbol (X). 3

In this section I will continue my explanation ofDeleuze's completed signs by now referring to some cinematic examples. The list above of completed signs suggests that different Compositions in Deleuze's semiotics can have the same Noosign. For example, an Imprint expressed in an Index can be interpreted as a Term (the completed sign of which is a Term Index Imprint), yet an Imprint expressed in an Icon can also be interpreted as a Term (Term Icon Imprint). Based on this point I will be clear on the difference between Deleuze's completed signs by stating that a Noosign is at its purest when it is attached to an embodied sign that is characteristic of the same image-type. For example, a Noosign of the affection-image (Term) is not as pure when it is attached to an

Synsign as when it is attached to an Icon. By purity, I am referring to the sense in which the

Noosign in the former case is not focussed solely on the qualities of that semiotic

Composition (Icon), but the qualities of that Composition in relation to its genuine existence in a state of things (Synsign).

In The Movement-Image Deleuze identifies this very difference between the Term.

He compares an Icon that has been abstracted from a state of things, expressing a quality in-itself, to an Icon that remains tied to a state of things, expressing the quality of an event

(97). He explains how the first kind of Icon is characteristic of the affection-image-in other words, it is expressive of a Qualisign. In Chapter Five I analyzed a close-up of Joan's face in Dreyer's The Passion ofJoan of Arc as an example of what I specified as an Icon

Qualisign. Deleuze explains how the second is characteristic of the action-image-in other words, it is expressive of an Imprint. Also in Chapter Five I analyzed a close-up of Father

Bobby's face in Levinson's Sleepers as an example of what I specified as an Icon Imprint.

Now I want to consider Deleuze's explanation of how the Icon Qualisign gives rise

to a version of Peirce's Rheme: an "immediate and instantaneous consciousness"; and how the Icon Imprint gives rise to a slightly different idea of rhematic interpretation, a consciousness of some object or event, a feeling or idea associated with a state of things (98).

Deleuze is clearly describing two versions of rhematic interpretation and two degrees of the

Term in relation to the Icon Qualisign and the Icon Imprint. In this respect I will continue my reference to the two examples above by describingJoan's face as a Term Icon

Qualisign, and Father Bobby's face as a Term Icon Imprint. Both completed signs involve an interpretation of the qualitative information afforded by the Composition, but

Deleuze's discussion posits a very subtle distinction between the two. For Deleuze, the

Term attached to an Icon Qualisign suggests an interpretation of pure qualities, while the

Term attached to an Icon Imprint suggests an interpretation of the qualities of a specific spatio-temporal location. We can say that in the latter case, the Term is not as pure.

We can extend Deleuze's discussion and pose a further loss of purity of the Term with respect to the Term Icon Symbol As an example of this completed sign, consider a close-up of Raleigh St. Clair's face in The Royal Tenenbaums. Raleigh (played by Bill

Murray) is a Symbol in many respects; for example, he is a victim of adultery and a victim of a failed marriage (he is getting the cold-shoulder from his wife); and more generally, he is a bumbling professor. Raleigh's nature as a Symbol is expressed in the qualities of his face

(the sadness in his eyes, his balding head, and his bushy professor's beard), and these qualities engender a Term. In respect of the Term Icon Symbol, it follows that the qualitative interpretation characteristic of this completed sign is less pure than the qualitative interpretation characteristic of the Term Icon Qualisign Qoan's face) and the

Term Icon Imprint (Father Barry's face). This is because the quality expressed by Raleigh's

face (Icon) is not only grounded an event, but a logical event of complicated relations

(Symbol). There would be an escalating loss of purity still with respect to the Tenn

Synsign/Index Imprint, the Tenn Synsign/Index Symbol, and the Tenn Mark/Demark

Symbol.

First of all is the Term Synsign/Index Imprint. Consider Deleuze's example of an alcoholic. In The Movement-Image he explains how an alcoholic is an Imprint. This

Imprint is expressed in the alcoholic's destructive actions in a milieu, and it is for this reason an alcoholic is necessarily a Synsign. Furthennore, we can say that this Synsign is typically interpreted rhematically, in tenns of the qualities of the alcoholic; for instance, the drunk's dishevelled appearance, swaying movement, the quality and tone of their garbled moaning. As an example we might consider any moment of Nicholas Cage's perfonnance as Ben in Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas (1995). But the Tenn Synsign Imprint is going to be less pure than a Tenn Icon Imprint, since the qualities interpreted are grounded not just in a milieu (Icon Imprint) but specific actions in a milieu (Synsign Imprint).

An example of the Term Synsign/Index Symbol is the musical motif repeated throughout Wong's In the Mood for Love. This piece is called Yumeji's Theme and it is composed, arranged and produced by Shigeru Umebayashi. It is a melancholy score, dominated by an eerie and sad violin melody, and held together by the steady rhythm of a double bass. The first time we hear the motif is during the following sequence. In slow motion we see Mo-wan and his wife, and Li-zhen and her husband, playing a game of Mah­ jong. Then, Mo-wan gets up to leave the table and (for just a moment) makes eye contact with Li-Zhen. In the remainder of the film's narrative, Yumeji's Theme is repeated at key moments when these two protagonists are together. It can be described as a complex

Symbol of their mutual feelings of betrayal and loneliness associated with their collapsed relationships with their cheating spouses, as well as their mutual attraction to each other.

Generally, since the motif is repeated in the soundtrack when the characters are together, this Symbol is expressed in a Synsign/Index; for example, when Mo-wan and Li-Zhen are passing each other on the staircase, or in the noodle market-and eventually-when they are lovers in a hotel room. More specifically, since the characters' actions disclose a range of situations (the affairs of their spouses, their own affair ... ), we can say that the Symbol is expressed in an Index. And, although the cinematic elements of this particular semiotic

Composition are in a genuine relationship, an interpretation is not necessarily guided towards the Noosign typically associated with the Synsign/Index (Proposition). Instead, the effect of the music guides the subject towards a rhematic interpretation (Term). The

Composition is interpreted in terms of its qualities; for instance, one cannot help feel that the affair of Mo-wan and Li-zhen is tinged with sadness and is inevitably doomed. But the qualities of the music are tied to the characters' logical actions (Index Symbol), and regarding my thesis about the purity of the Term, I would argue that the subject's experience of the qualities of this particular completed sign (Term Synsign/Index Symbol) is one step less pure than the Term Synsign/Index Imprint.

What about the Term Mark/Demark Symbol? Above, I noted Deleuze's identification of some of Eisenstein's images as key examples of logical Compositions, or what I call Mark/Demark Symbols. Furthermore, a Term Mark/Demark Symbol is a logical Composition of images interpreted in terms of their qualities, and as an example we might identify the famous Odessa sequence in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925). In

this montage sequence, shots of people frantically fleeing down the steps of the harbour

are juxtaposed with shots of a stone lion. With this assemblage of unrelated shots we can

posit a general example of a Mark/Demark Composition in Deleuze's semiotics; what is

also particular about this sequence is the sense in which the grimace of the lion serves to

emphasize the qualities of the Composition, in tum suggesting the Term as its Noosign.

Furthermore, we can say that the rhematic interpretation involved with this Term would be the least pure of all the rhematic interpretations of Deleuze's semiotics. Why? Because the

Term is not only grounded in the actions of an event but, also, it is grounded in the web of logical relations of that event (Mark/Demark).

Similarly, we can assume a range of degrees of purity of the Proposition in

Deleuze's semiotics. A Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint involves the most pure kind of propositional thought because the natural kind of thought associated with a genuine

Second is a Proposition. There is a good example of this completed sign in Beau Travail.

A strange narrative shift occurs in the final two scenes of Denis' film. In the second last scene we watch from a close distance as Galoup, an ex-Legionnaire Sergeant meticulously makes a small bed in the comer of a drably furnished room. He has been expelled from the Legion, and the fact that he is still bothering to be so meticulous about his bed, combined with the slow, almost lethargic pace of his movements, suggests not only that he is still thinking about his troupe, but that he is quite depressed about no longer being a Sergeant. Then he takes his gun from his bag, and lies on the bed. The scene ends with a close-up of the gun as it rests on Galoup's naked chest, before cutting suddenly to another scene: an empty, mirrored room in a nightclub. In this scene the camera is stationary and quite high in the comer of the room. We see Galoup from a distance dressed in black shirt and tie with white shoes, smoking a cigarette and, as he swaggers towards the centre, running his fingers along the huge mirrored wall at the far end of the room, some electronic dance music swells to full volume in the film's soundtrack. Galoup struts around for a moment; his gestures are relaxed but cocky, as though he's doing an exaggerated impression of John Travolta in John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Then he starts to dance. His movements are subtle at first, and are limited to striking various short, sharp poses. They get more frantic, however, and Galoup starts hurling

himself around the room. He doesn't seem to be repeating any traditional dance moves but, chaotically, he gyrates his body. Eventually he throws himself on the ground and tumbles around the dance floor until an abrupt cut to the credits punctuates the end of the film.

The nightclub scene is discontinuous with the scene it immediately follows. Denis severs the dramatic tension of the bedroom scene by throwing us abruptly into the nightclub without warning. The nightclub scene is not foreshadowed in any way by the scene before it, and neither is it explained in any subsequent scenes. The scene itself isn't even brought to an end, but is simply cut, right at the crescendo of Galoup's dancing. I contend that, based on the discontinuity of the two scenes, Denis constructs Galoup's dancing as a Proposition Synsign Imprint. The viewer sees Galoup's dancing simply as actions in a milieu, forcing the viewer to think propositionally.

Now if we consider an example of the Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol then we will see a case in which the Proposition is less pure. At the conclusion of The Royal

Tenenbaums, the camera watches from a medium distance as Royal's children stand around their father's grave. Non-diegetic music swells to fill the soundtrack, and the camera remains static as the children walk away in slow motion. One person remains, however, Royal's favourite son Richie. The camera watches as he tosses a rose into the grave, and the slow motion emphasizes the significance of this action. Richie's actions are not simply constitutive of an event (Imprint), but these are the actions of a special event:

Richie's grief at his father's funeral (Symbol). The Symbol is expressed in Richie's action of tossing the rose onto the grave (Synsign), and since the significance of this action is intensified through the slow motion of the sequence, the Composition is interpreted as a

Proposition. But the Propositions formed are grounded in the Composition's expression of the Symbol, meaning that the Propositions formed (based on Richie's action of

throwing the rose) are clouded ever so slightly by the fact that these actions are taking place at Royal's funeral and are the actions of Royal's favourite son. Thus the Propositions would never be as pure as they would if they were formed in relation to an Imprint.

Continuing this line of reasoning, we can say that the Proposition associated with a

Mark/Demark Symbol is the least pure in Deleuze's semiotics. Consider again The Royal

Tenenbaums, this time as an example of the Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol

Raleigh has the sneaking suspicion that his wife, Margot Tenenbaum, has been having an affair. He hires a private detective. In a scene towards the end of the film we watch from the detective's perspective across a small desk crammed with papers as Raleigh is handed a file on Margot. Raleigh opens it up. There is a cut and a montage sequence immediately follows which lasts about thirty seconds. It is accompanied in the soundtrack by loud, trashy, British punk music with indeterminable lyrics, and its images show for the first time, in quick succession, various secret snapshots of Margot's life ...

Each of the snapshots has a small title superimposed in one comer of the frame.

We see, for example, a tight shot of Margot at a party, standing at the left of the frame.

She is surrounded by Jamaicans who are swinging their hips to music we cannot hear while taking sips from their beers. Margot is having a wreath of flowers placed over her head by one of the men. The title reads: "Age 19, first marriage." This is followed by a shot of

Margot from a slight distance, standing at an open window at night. Reflected in the pane of glass is a tiny image of the Eiffel tower, illuminated in lights. Margot is in her underwear. A topless young woman enters the frame and stands to Margot's right in the open window. Then, Margot begins to passionately kiss the woman and fondle her breasts.

The title reads: "Age 21, Rive Gauche." Next, we see Margot from a medium distance seated facing the camera with her back to an illuminated mirror in a dressing room. A

older man in a drab grey suit stands behind her with his arms over her shoulders and his

hands clamped finnly on her breasts. Margot smokes a cigarette, looking disinterested. The title reads: "Publicity tour, age 24." In another shot we see Margot from the thigh up in a bright pink bikini. She has her back to us, and is to the left of the frame, standing in front of a very fake looking jungle whilst passionately kissing an indigenous tribesman in traditional costume. The title reads: "Papua New Guinea, age 25." Finally, we see a most recent snapshot of Margot passionately kissing a conservative looking young man with blond hair and glasses. They are on a bus, and the title reads: "22 Ave. Express, age 32."

They take a momentary break from their kissing, and an abrupt cut in the image and soundtrack ends the montage sequence.

Since the montage sequence is about Margot's character, we can identify it as a

Symbol. Furthermore, the fact that it links otherwise unrelated events in Margot's life means that this Symbol is expressed in an abstract Composition (or more specifically, an abstract relation of elements based on their similarity: a Mark). While this sequence may be interpreted conceptually as a Whole Mark Symbol (the images are all about Margot, and so it follows that a subject might attempt to unify these images into a whole by forming some concept about them), I would argue that Anderson's technique in constructing this montage sequence forces the viewer to form Propositions, thus determining this sequence more significantly as a Proposition Mark Symbol. The speed of the cutting, as well as the abrupt ending, prevent the viewer from absorbing the images in enough detail to form concepts. Moreover, the titles themselves have a denotative effect, further preventing the viewer from interpreting the images beyond what is immediately given. Finally, while the non-diegetic punk music is continuous throughout each of the scenes in this sequence, the inaudibility of its lyrics means that it doesn't emphasize anything particular about the images, and in this respect it doesn't serve to promote any conceptual unification of the images in the sequence. And, regarding my argument about the purity of the Proposition, I want also to make clear a sense in which the Proposition formed in this case is the least pure of all the completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics, because the Proposition this time is grounded in an abstract Composition of cinematic elements.

Only one completed sign of Deleuze's semiotics includes the Whole (Whole

Mark/Demark Symbol), and in this respect there are no degrees of purity of this Noosign.

So far I have noted the dialectical relations of images in Soviet montage as Deleuze's key example of the Whole Mark/Demark Symbol. Although these images can sometimes be interpreted qualitatively (for example: the Term Mark/Demark Symbol described above), the abstract Composition characteristic of montage typically invites a conceptual interpretation (Wh~le).

Another example of the Whole Mark/Demark Symbol which illustrates this point can be found in John Cassavetes' Gloria (1980). Gloria is a middle-aged woman living in the Bronx, and the narrative of this film is concerned with her relationship with an eight-year-old-boy named Phil. Phil is the son of Gloria's best friend who has just been killed by the mob, and Gloria is forced to protect Phil from the same fate as his mother. In terms of a Genesis of Deleuze's semiotics, I would describe this general notion of the characters' relationship as a Symbol. In terms of a Composition, this general notion is expressed specifical/y in Gloria and Phil's actual relationship in the narrative. Moreover, since Gloria and Phil are otherwise unrelated, except for their determination as such by the situation of the narrative, the general notion of relationship (Symbol) is expressed in an abstract relation of terms (Mark/Demark). And in this case, the abstract relation of elements is not achieved predominantly through editing, as we have seen with Soviet montage. Shots of Gloria are not juxtaposed with shots of Phil. Instead, the relationship is

suggested through Cassavetes' use of the cinematic frame to maintain the two bodies in an

intense proximity. An example is the scene when Gloria tries to leave Phil at the side of

the road, pushing him in the direction of his old house, where Cassavetes tightly encloses the actions of the characters within a single frame. As Gloria pushes Phil away, they seem inseparable. Phil almost bounces back into Gloria's arms as if attached to an elastic band around her waist. In terms of a Noosign, Adrian Martin's analysis of Gloria explains for us the function of the Whole here. Something particular about Cassavetes' film, according to

Martin, is the varied ways in which Gloria's relationship to Phil is interpreted: sometimes they seem like enemies; sometimes mother and son; sometimes lovers. From Martin's analysis, I want to emphasize how the interpretation of an abstract Composition in

Deleuze's semiotics (Whole) is varied and flexible and is produced from whatever can be inferred from the material properties of its elements. 8

Finally, I want to note some degrees of interpretation specific to the Caesura. It is logical to claim that the Caesura functions differently when it is the Noosign of a

Chronosign from when it is the Noosign of an Icon, Synsign/Index or Mark/Demark. All imply a kind of thought concerned with thinking absolute difference, but with the

Chronosign, the effect is purer and more powerful than it is with the other Compositions.

In Chapter Six I revealed three principal embodied signs in Deleuze's semiotics that have the Chronosign as their Composition and, in terms of their Noosigns, I have identified the following completed signs in this chapter: the Caesura Chronosign Qualisign, the Caesura Chronosign Imprint, and the Caesura Chronosign Symbol. With the

Chronosign and the pure image of time, thought is confronted directly by the absolute, and is forced to tackle the absolute head-on. Consider again Deleuze's analysis of Bufiuel's

That Obscure Object of Desire (Iime 103). Deleuze calls the sign created a Peak and explains how the use of multiple actors to play one character serves to suggest how "one and the same event" exists "in different objective worlds" as a simultaneous past, present

and future (103). When this happens, actions are not relative to other actions, but are

8 Martin, A. Address. Book Launch: Kouvaros, G. Where Does it Happen:> John Cassayetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). University of New South Wales, 19 indiscernible. I identified the Peak as an event that is a sign, expressed in an indiscernible relation of actions, and now we can say that it is interpreted as a sign of absolute difference: it is a Caesura Chronosign Imprint. Most importantly, though, the indiscernibility of the actions characteristic of this completed sign force thought's direct confrontation with absolute difference.

When the Caesura is attached to Compositions other than the Chronosign, the subject can only think absolute difference in terms of the Icon, Synsign/Index or

Mark/Demark. In the same way Deleuze suggests that a quality is not experienced in its purity when it is grounded in a state of things (Term Icon Imprint), it can be said that thoughts of absolute difference are not as pure when they are grounded in an Icon,

Synsign/Index or Mark/Demark.

In this section I have explained Deleuze's completed signs by differentiating them according to the varying degrees of purity of their Noosigns. Below I have summarized my examples:

May 2004. Table 7.8

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs ofDeleuze's Semiotics (and Examples/

I Caesura Chronosign Qualisign Flashes of colour in Wavelength

II Caesura Icon Qualisign A quality in-itself interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

III Term Icon Qualisign Joan's face in c/uin Passion ofJoan of Arc

IV Caesura Chronosign Imprint Two actresses in That Obscure Object of Desire

V Caesura Icon Imprint An event, expressed in a qualitative Composition, and interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

VI Term Icon Imprint Father Bobby's face in c/u in Sleepers

VII Caesura Synsign/Index Imprint An event, expressed in a genuine Composition, and interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

VIII Term Synsign/Index Imprint Ben (the drunk) in Leaving Las Vegas

IX Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint Galoup's dancing in Beau Travail

X Caesura Chronosign Symbol Narrative falsification in Last Year at Marienbad

b The reader will note that my examples of the Caesura Chronosign Qualisign, Caesura Chronosign Imprint and Caesura Chronosign Symbol are from my discussion in Chapter Six ofDeleuze's time-images. Also, I have not given specific examples of all the other completed signs that have the Caesura as their Noosign. These are very complicated completed signs because (as I mentioned above), they do not put thought directly in touch with a contemplation of absolute difference, but motivate a contemplation of absolute difference in relation to the Icon, Synsign/Index and Mark/Demark presented. Deleuze doesn't give us any hints in the cinema books about possible examples of these signs, and I feel that developing these examples myself is a huge task and is a dissertation in-itself. For these reasons I have chosen in table 7.3 to simply define these completed signs and to leave it up to the reader to decide on specific cinematic examples. XI Caesura Icon Symbol A logical relation, expressed in a qualitative Composition, and interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

XII Term Icon Symbol Raleigh's face in c/u in The Royal Tenenbaums

XIII Caesura Synsign/Index Symbol A logical relation, expressed in a genuine Composition, and interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

XIV Term Synsign/Index Symbol Yumeji's Theme in In the Mood for Love

xv Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol Richie tosses the rose into Royal's grave in The Royal Tenenbaums

XVI Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol A logical relation, expressed in an abstract Composition, and interpreted as a sign of absolute difference

XVII Term Mark/Demark Symbol The Odessa steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin

XVIII Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol Margot's montage sequence in The Royal Tenenbaums

XVIV Whole Mark/Demark Symbol Gloria's relationship with Phil in Gloria

Each of these completed signs is potential to the cinema, and all of them are produced from the same semiotic structure.

By way of conclusion, I want to mention something that emerges with my identification of the completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics. It is Deleuze's understanding of what I consider to be one of cinema's greatest assets. This is cinema's ability to foreground each and every one of these completed signs. On the one hand, it can be said that Deleuze revels in cinema's nature as movement-image-in its equation with reality.

This is an argument I have made throughout this project, and it is the basis for Deleuze's translation of semeiotics to the cinema. But on the other hand, it can be said too that

Deleuze never loses sight of cinema's potential as an artistic text. Deleuze's semiotics hinges on the idea that cinema can construct Hyalosigns, Qualisigns, Imprints and Symbols.

This ability to construct these signs appears an obvious asset when we remember Peirce's claim that Qualisigns are manifest in everyday life onfy in fleeting moments of lost consciousness, just as when we contemplate a painting and, for a moment, ''We lose the consciousness that it is not the thing[... ], the distinction between real and copy disappears" (Peirce 3.362 qtd. in Merrell Semiosis: 103).9 Similarly, we can suppose that the completed signs associated with propositional thought (Peirce's Dicent or Deleuze's

Proposition) are as invisible in everyday life as Qualisigns. These completed signs are part of day-to-day experience and are essential to our interpretation of all kinds of sensory stimulation. We may form a Dicent/Proposition about some object while strolling along in the park relaxing and thinking about nothing in particular, but these kinds of thought often go unnoticed. Cinema, however, can construct these completed signs, forcing them upon the viewer. Finally, Deleuze's time-images (or what I have been calling Chronosign

Hyalosigns) are the best example of this potential I am identifying. Where else but art could thought be confronted with the absolute?

5

Cinema can foreground each and every sign potential to the semiotic spectrum of the image but, at the same time, Deleuze notes a certain vulnerability of cinematic language.

Deleuze is wary of the cinematic sign's susceptibility to transcendent structures.

In Chapter One I explained how Deleuze is critical of Metz's semiological concept

of the sign, because in it he presupposes transcendent structures or codes as the

9 Consider another example of a Qualisign. I am daydreaming as I walk along a busy city street when a green car approaches me. Because of my lack of concentration, the green car approaching me is experienced simply determining factor in an image's signification. For Metz, the image functions as a sign when meaning is attributed to it by the code. Deleuze returns to this same critique of the code when, at the end of The Time-Image, he identifies an idea of what he calls bad cinema when the Whole is misconceived. "Bad" is a rather basic way of describing the shortcomings of the sign, but for Deleuze the problem he is addressing is really just that straightforward. Deleuze writes that bad cinema is most obviously manifest when the abstract relations of images are thought to be predetermined. He explains by aligning himself with Eisenstein:

What Eisenstein criticizes in others [... ]is having badly understood the whole,

because they were content with a diversity of images without reaching the

constituent oppositions, having composed figures badly, because they do not

achieve metaphors or harmonics. (163)

When Deleuze states that the constituent oppositions of images are not reached and harmonics are not achieved, he is saying that images are not dialectical in the manner I described earlier in this chapter. And he is also saying that when this is the case, the whole is "badly understood." Deleuze writes that the whole is confused "with the figurative violence of the represented" (157)-in other words, the images are thought to represent some concept rather than be productive of a concept.

Deleuze isn't entirely clear, however, about whether or not bad cinema is the product of an interpretive disposition of the viewing subject, or whether it is the fault of

the film maker (like those Eisenstein is criticizing). I think that it is both. In Difference

and Repetition, Deleuze is critical of what he describes as the subject's preference for a

model of recognition in thought (135). Recognition refers to a thought process concerned

as "a vague feeling ofgreennul': a Qualisign (Merrell Peirce's Basic Classes of Sign 4). with recognizing "values attached to an object," rather than the object itself (135). Deleuze states in Difference and Repetition that the subject prefers the model of recognition in thought because they are fundamentally complacent. For Deleuze, thinking in this way is an ingrained and familiar process for the subject. In so far as the model of recognition involves recognizing pre-existent meaning, Deleuze's critique of recognition is paralleled by his critique of the "badly understood" Whole in the cinema. Taking these ideas of recognition into account and tracing the roots of bad cinema back to a complacent subject, however, does not necessarily rule out establishing fault with the film maker. We can say that if the subject is attracted to a model of recognition in the cinema, then it is the responsibility of the film maker to purposefully construct Compositions that resist evoking pre-existent meaning. In the previous passage from The Time-Image, Eisenstein claims that to do this one must construct Compositions based on the "harmonics" of the images themselves.

As Deleuze suggests, bad cinema occurs specifically when a subject forms an interpretation by attributing pre-existent concepts to a Composition of images-in other words, when the Whole in a Whole Mark/Demark Symbol is not the product of the images themselves but is transcendent to the images. Deleuze provides us with a key example of bad cinema when he describes the hero in some American films as a cliche. To illustrate,

Deleuze notes cases where the hero's action is the same across a number of films. He writes that American cinema "shoots and reshoots a single fundamental film" (Movement

148). And he makes the same point again when he claims that the "hero's place has been prepared long before he comes to occupy it" (152).

I want to use Rob Cohen's XXX (2002) to explain this idea of bad cinema in more

detail. In the film the major protagonist is Xander, the star of the action, and the female

protagonist is Yelena. At the beginning of the film, Yelena is Xander's enemy. She is a strong and powerful woman. She negotiates the sale value of the stolen goods, and she is the person that Xander must bargain with. Moreover, she uses her powers of seduction to hold Xander quite easily under her thumb throughout the early parts of the narrative.

Eventually, however, we find out that Yelena is an undercover agent like Xander. Thus

Yelena and Xander, by combining their strengths, devise a plan to beat the situation created by the enemy. When Yelena and Xander discover each other's true identity (about two­ thirds of the way through the narrative), and team up as a united front, we can say that they become heroes, fighting a common evil. They are, therefore, Symbols. Furthermore, in terms of their united front and the plan of action they devise to beat the enemy, they are

Symbols expressed in an abstract Composition (M:ark/Demark).

But the problem with this film, and why I am using it as an example of bad cinema, is that the subject, watching the action unfolding on the screen, can't help but attribute cliches to Xander and Yelena. In the final act of the narrative, when Xander and Yelena are putting their plan into effect, Yelena becomes the sulky-faced love interest, the emotional wreck that can't bear to be separated from Xander. She becomes the support for Xander's role in the plan, and this is nowhere more evident than during the film's climactic car chase. Yelena holds the wheel of the Pontiac GTO, keeping the car steady, while Xander climbs out the window and takes decisive action. She winces and cheers while Xander dodges bullets and shoots rocket-launchers. And Xander is now the stereotypical male action hero. For the subject interpreting this film, what is the end result?

It is not an interpretation of Xander and Yelena (a Mark/Demark Symbol) similar to the kind of interpretation I noted in Gloria. Concepts in this case are not created from the material properties of the elements of the Composition; instead, the subject attaches pre­

existent concepts to the elements of the Composition. XXX is an example of bad cinema because of certain choices made by the film maker, choices which bind the images inextricably with cliches. The cliche isn't always at the basis of action films however. Bruce Lee is a film maker who makes a point of resisting cliches, or what he refers to as form and style in martial arts. His films abound with heroes undertaking a decisive plan of action (Mark/Demark Symbols), but unlike the film makers ofXXX, Lee goes to great lengths to prevent cliches.

Central to achieving this aim is Lee's particular concept of the hero/warrior. He describes his philosophy of martial arts with the following metaphor: "The warrior must empty his mind," he says, "and be formless, shapeless, like water."10 In his last film, The

Game of Death (1972), Lee puts this philosophy into practice. This film is a martial arts film about Han Tien's (played by Lee) attempt to retrieve some stolen gold. The gold is located on the fifth floor of a pagoda in a sacred site in China. Each floor is guarded by a warrior specializing in a certain discipline of martial arts; for example, the first floor is guarded by a master in the art of kicking, the second floor by a Wing Chung master and so on. In order to retrieve the gold, Tien must defeat each of the warriors on each of the five floors. Lee's hero is formless in the following sense. The basis of Tien's plan to defeat the warriors guarding the gold is the adaptability of his fighting technique. He is not restricted by the set moves of any particular discipline-Lee himself says that Tien is "without style."

He even wears an unadorned yellow tracksuit to show that he is not affiliated with any particular discipline. When he fights, his adaptability is apparent even for viewers who have no expertise in martial arts skills: sometimes he bites and wrestles, at times even utilizing objects in the milieu, like ladders and whips. All the while, he adapts to the

situation at hand. Because of this very principle of formlessness, Tien succeeds in

defeating each of the guardians of the pagoda.

10 The source of this material is John Little's docwnentary: Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Tourney (2000) screened by the Special Broadcasting Services Australia. SBS TV. 14 July 2003. Tien is a hero with a plan and in this sense he is a Symbol, expressed abstractly, in a

Mark/Demark. He is similar in this respect to Xander and Yelena, but unlike them his plan is based on his own formlessness. I would suggest that, in so far as Tien is formless and adaptable in his fighting (grabbing chairs, kicking, biting: mixing all styles of combat), he does not evoke cliches for an interpreting subject. Since his plan does not appear predictable in any way, Tien's fighting is not comparable to anything else, and the subject is forced to interpret these scenes based only on the material properties of what is presented in the frame-in other words, what is produced is a genuine Whole.

As I mentioned earlier, however, bad cinema is not simply a problem with the kind of film making I have just described. For Deleuze it is a problem associated with a fundamental complacency at the heart of the thinking subject. Deleuze outlines this notion of the complacent subject in Difference and Repetition. In the cinema this is the subject who does not interpret a semiotic Composition by creating concepts (Wholes); instead, the complacent subject is content to recognize pre-existent concepts (cliches) attached to

Compositions.

Conclusion

This chapter brings my analysis of Deleuze's semiotics to completion. I have interpreted his discussion of classical and modem cinema in order to reveal a third aspect

of his sign, and a third aspect of his semiotic structure. This aspect, called the Noosign, is

concerned with the interpretive power of the cinematic sign. The idea on thought Deleuze

develops with this aspect of the sign continues the importance of expression in his semiotics.

In Deleuze's philosophy as a whole, thought is produced as an extension of the material element of an encounter and, in extending this material element, a problematic field is created. Deleuze continues his Peircian structure of the sign in order to develop four main kinds of problematic field in the cinema, from the absolute thought of the optical-image, to the logical thought of the relation-image. 1brough its spectrum of signs, cinema has the potential to stimulate each of these kinds of thought.

Table 7.6 outlines the principal sign elements of Deleuze's semiotic, and table 7.7 outlines the nineteen principal completed signs produced from the hierarchical combinations of these sign elements. In arguing that this structure underlies Deleuze's semiotic thesis, I demonstrate how all of Deleuze's signs are unified. The corollary to this is my aim to reveal, in full, a single semiotic structure applicable to all films.

Conclusion

A Structure of Immanence

In this project I have examined Deleuze's Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and

Cinema 2: The Time-Image in an attempt to make sense of his concept of the cinematic sign and elucidate a systematic theory of the sign that is applicable to all films. I have called this theory a semiotic structure of immanence. The problem I have set myself has required me to read the cinema books in light of aspects of Deleuze's philosophy as a whole, Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics, Metz's semiology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Bergsonian cosmology, Spinoza's theological philosophy of substance, and Peirce's semeiotics. I have analyzed a range of films, from Deleuze's examples, such as: Vertov's Man With a Movie

Camera, Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, and Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire; to my own, including: Kitano's A Scene at the Sea, Cohen's XXX, Anderson's The Royal

Tenenbaums and Denis' Beau Travail. I have not made any value claims about these films nor attempted an historical analysis of them. Instead, I have treated them specifically as different assemblages of signs and used them to interrogate Deleuze's semiotic theory.

In my opinion, Deleuze's approach in developing a cinema semiotics is inspirational. He uses the cinema as his workbook for thinking through certain philosophical ideas. Cinema for Deleuze is a kind of toolbox, then, and the cinema books

are the products of Deleuze's labour. One such philosophical idea that has received much

attention in a large amount of exegeses on the cinema books is Deleuze's thesis on

cinematic movement. Deleuze grounds his study of the cinema in a Bergsonian definition Cor.r::lwi, ,n 289

of the image. He claims that the cinematic image is a movement-image, and from this idea he thinks through a whole series of philosophical problems, like the relation between matter and image, and movement, time and duration ...

Imagining the original context of the cinema books, one can't help thinking that

Deleuze chose to ground his examination of the cinema in philosophical arguments about movement because of his intention to break with the structural linguistic approach dominating the early stages of film-critical discourse. And one can't help thinking that

Deleuze's approach is also reflective of a similar desire held by theorists like Metz: a desire to assert the legitimacy of film for academic study. For Metz, this is achieved through the application of linguistic models to the organization of cinema; for Deleuze, the same goal is achieved through cinema's contribution to reinventing weighty philosophical concepts.

Deleuze's concept of the sign, developed in step with his determination of the image as movement-image, is another idea contained in the cinema books. Thinking about the image in terms of the problem of the sign and language is not itself new, and has been around since the 1920s.1 In the 1960s, Metz was the first to use modem linguistic models to approach the problem of whether or not cinema is a language (Guzzetti 292).

Moreover, Metz's work popularized the idea that cinema is a textual system, that an image's function as a sign is homologous to the way the phonic and conceptual differences of natural language are formed by a system of rules and conventions in Saussure's idea of the language system. In the cinema books, however, Deleuze turns the linguistic approach to

the cinematic sign on its head. He does this by focussing on the matter of the image itself,

claiming that signs are not necessarily produced by an external force acting on this matter.

For Deleuze, linguistics misconceives the fundamental nature of the cinematic sign. He

suggests that the matter of the movement-image, in so far as it is equated with matter in the

1 Stam, Burgoyne and Flittennan-Lewis cite the application of a conception of "language" to the cinema in the early twentieth century by Riccioto Canuda, Louis Delluc and Vachel Lindsay (28). universe, is the signaletic material from which signs are created. In other words, signs emerge from the signaletic material. Consequently, linguistic structures are not only secondary to the sign in Deleuze's theory, but futile. In Deleuze's semiotics the image is a sign of its own matter, and attributing meaning to it misconceives the fact that it is meaningful in-itself.

Deleuze's perspective on the cinematic sign is novel, and I am of the opinion that my approach to explicating Deleuze's semiotics in this project is also novel. Although there have been a range of valuable studies of Deleuze's concept of the sign, it is my contention that the particular path I chart between Deleuze, Metz and Peirce makes new inroads into Deleuze's semiotics and cinema semiotics as a whole.

I focussed on the problem of semiotic matter, or specifically the image's signaletic material, as the key element differentiating Metz's semiology and Deleuze's semiotics. I noted precisely the moment at which Deleuze states that his difficulty with Metz is based on the latter's assumption that the image, as signaletic material,presupposes transcendent structure for its meaningful articulation. And, in response to Deleuze's critique of this perspective on the signaletic material, I returned to Deleuze's early work on language and structuralism and laid out a blow-by-blow account of exactly how Deleuze conceives of the nature of the signaletic material together with the process of expression informing his perspective on the signaletic material-sign relationship.

When it comes to developing a semiotic theory of expression in the cinema, I argued that Deleuze implements a version of Peirce's semeiotics and sustains his use of

Peirce throughout both his volumes on the cinema. I made the claim that Peirce gives

Deleuze a way of conceiving of the sign as an expression, and my steps were as follows.

From Peirce's tripartite classification of the universe into three categories of Being and his

tripartite classification of the sign into three aspects (Representamen, Object and

Interpretant), I explained how Deleuze develops an idea of the sign as a particular essence of Being (Genesis), expressed in a particular composite whole of cinematic elements

(Composition), and interpreted in a particular way (Noosign).

In the early stages of The Movement-Image, Deleuze's primary concern is with a concept of the sign independent of its interpretive power. He divides the cinema into three principal categories of Being (or what I called the principal image-rypes of Deleuze's semiotics: affection-image, action-image, relation-image) corresponding to Firstness,

Secondness and Thirdness of semeiotics. He also extends Peirce's categories to include 1) two degenerate image-types (impulse-image and reflection-image) and 2) another principal image-type of absolute Being (optical-image). Moreover, I uncovered a range of embodied signs made possible through the different combinations of Genesis and Composition characteristic of each image-type. The arguments I made about the equivalence of Peirce's and Deleuze's sign stem from my contention that Peirce's signs can be conceived as expressions of the signaletic material of the universe because they are not formed in relation to transcendent structures. I stated that they are like bodies in Spinoza's substantial philosophy.

It is in the latter stages of The Time-Image that Deleuze considers the embodied signs in terms of their interpretive power, developing his concept of the Noosign in close relation with Peirce's Interpretant. Since the embodied signs are expressions of the signaletic material-in other words, since they do not presuppose transcendent structures in order to make them meaningful-Deleuze's concept of the Noosign refers to an interpretive process according to which ideas are formed based strictly on the material properties of a Composition. For Deleuze, interpretation is a shock to thought. The Noosign identifies Deleuze's thesis on non-representational thought with the sign, and more

specifically, it refers to the different ways in which this process of thought and thinking is

characteristic of the different image-types of the cinema. At this stage of my project I focussed on the principal image-types and claimed

four principal kinds ofNoosign in Deleuze's semiotics. Adding these Noosigns to the

Geneses and Compositions of the principal image-types results in twelve individual sign

elements of Deleuze's semiotics. In light of the similarity I have been developing between

Deleuze's structure of the sign and the image-types of the cinema, and Peirce's structure of

the sign and Being in semeiotics, I represented the sign elements of Deleuze's semiotics in

the following version of Peirce's Tri-Square. This table is constitutive of what I have been

calling the structure ofimmanence of Deleuze' s semiotics:

Table 8.1

The Principal Sign Elements of Deleuze's Semiotics

0 1 2 3 affection-ima e action-ima e relation-ima e Genesis Qualisign Imprint Symbol Composition Icon Synsign/Index Mark/Demark Noosign Term Pro osition Whole

This table shows how all the bits and pieces of Deleuze's semiotics fit together.

There are ranges of ways an embodied sign can be interpreted, and in this respect

the Noosign functions to further differentiate the embodied signs of Deleuze's semiotics. I

explained this point by showing how the combination of Genesis, Composition and

Noosign in table 8.1 above produces nineteen completed signs of Deleuze's semiotics: Table 8.2

Nineteen Principal Completed Signs of Deleuze's Semiotics

G C N I Gl co NO Caesura Chronosign Qualisign II Gl Cl NO Caesura Icon Qualisign III Gl Cl Nl Tenn Icon Qualisign IV G2 co NO Caesura Chronosign Imprint V G2 Cl NO Caesura Icon Imprint VI G2 Cl Nl Tenn Icon Imprint VII G2 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Imprint VIII G2 C2 Nl Tenn Synsign/Index Imprint IX G2 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Imprint X G3 co NO Caesura Chronosign Symbol XI G3 Cl NO Caesura Icon Symbol XII G3 Cl Nl Tenn Icon Symbol XIII G3 C2 NO Caesura Synsign/Index Symbol XIV G3 C2 Nl Tenn Synsign/Index Symbol xv G3 C2 N2 Proposition Synsign/Index Symbol XVI G3 C3 NO Caesura Mark/Demark Symbol XVII G3 C3 Nl Tenn Mark/Demark Symbol XVIII G3 C3 N2 Proposition Mark/Demark Symbol XVIV G3 C3 N3 Whole Mark/Demark Symbol

I have not included the degenerate signs in this semiotic structure for practical reasons. It can be assumed, then, that Deleuze's semiotics can be further extended to include the completed signs between the affection-image and the action-image, and the action-image and the relation-image (and potentially, the degenerate signs of the degenerate categories between the degenerate categories themselves ... ). My tabulation of Deleuze's sign elements according to the structure represented by table 8.1 and table 8.2 is vital to my argument about Deleuze's Peircian approach to conceiving of expression in a semiotics of the cinema. It presents Deleuze's signs in a practical and workable format.

This brings us, finally, to the importance of this project for its contribution to

cinema semiotics as a whole. What I have presented here is an attempt to synthesize

Deleuze and Peirce in order to develop a structure of signs that 1) shifts the dominant

tendency of film-critical analysis away from the study of the code and 2) stands for the whole of the cinema and is applicable to all films. My thesis has some way to go, and some points are ripe for discussion. For instance, the distinctions I have examined between the various kinds of Compositions of elements are brimming with potential for further discussion (one could go into much more detail regarding, for example, all the different kinds of actions in cinema). Also, arguments could perhaps be made about the relation of the different completed signs to different historical epochs; and, more detailed work could possibly be undertaken with regard to cinema's potential to force certain kinds of completed signs, in tum harnessing certain kinds of thought. I can say for myself, however, that I have aimed specifically to outline a semiotic structure and I will leave an examination of the nuances of this structure to a later date. nr Works Consulted

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Janine touched me on the shoulder. The Reverend Potter was standing in the doorway like a ship in an upright bottle. My father leaned over to tie his shoe. I heard the bells of the ice-cream truck.

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