Phd Thesis (8.850Mb)

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PROTECTION OF AUTHOR ’S COPYRIGHT This copy has been supplied by the Library of the University of Otago on the understanding that the following conditions will be observed: 1. To comply with s56 of the Copyright Act 1994 [NZ], this thesis copy must only be used for the purposes of research or private study. 2. The author's permission must be obtained before any material in the thesis is reproduced, unless such reproduction falls within the fair dealing guidelines of the Copyright Act 1994. Due acknowledgement must be made to the author in any citation. 3. No further copies may be made without the permission of the Librarian of the University of Otago. August 2010 Postcolonial Theory and the Faciality Machine " Jo T. Smith . A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. 2002 ii Abstract Postcolonial Theory and the Faciality Machine This thesis examines theories of colonial stereotypes and spectatorship as they circulate in postcolonial film and media theory. Conventional approaches to the repetitive and easily reproduced characteristics of the colonial stereotype measure and evaluate the image according to a prior ideal colonial subject. The thesis argues that this method replicates the dialectical divide between the image (as representation) and the empirical "real" that the stereotype fails to encompass and that it subsequently neglects the discursive nature of colonial identity. It is precisely this gap between the image (as representation) and the empirical "real" (that the stereotype fails to encompass) that constitutes a leap from the particular to the general. In these accounts, the concept of cultural difference (including racial and sexual differences) remains static, ahistorical and formed in dialectical opposition to a normative paradigm of subjectivity derived from colonialist discourse. This thesis approaches the colonial stereotype from another direction. It examines how particular expressions of the racial and sexual stereotype that emerge in canonical and contemporary cinema, and in cultural spaces beyond cinema, transform the ideal and general concepts of spectatorship and cultural difference. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze's work on cinema and his theory of the relationship between difference and repetition, the thesis discusses the paradoxical force of colonial stereotypes that express the repetitive logic of habitual recognition and the differential forces of time. The thesis develops Deleuze's writings on the cinematic close-up and his work with Felix Guattari to deploy the conceptual framework of Faciality which describes the simultaneous forces of difference and repetition expressed in the colonial stereotype. Faciality is treated as both a synecdochical concept and a partial object in order to trace the paradoxical force of the stereotype. As a synecdochical concept, Faciality expresses the representational powers of the human face as a communication device par excellence, and as the most highly coded and semiotically dense part of the human body. This treatment abstracts the singularity of the close up and places it in automatic relation to the film as a totality, or to a prior ideal. Chapter One traces the dominance of this automatic reflex, or habitual form of recognition through the camera obscura model of perception that dominates postcolonial theories of the racial and sexual stereotype. Chapter Two re-reads two iii canonical film texts (The Birth of a Nation and Touch of Evi[) in light of postcolonial theories of-hybridity and Jonathan Crary's counter-narrative of cinema spectatorship. Chapter Three discusses Gilles Deleuze' s writings on the deterritorialising powers of the cinematic close-up in relation to two contemporary repetitions of images of Oriental femininity from Double Happiness and Irma Vep. Throughout this thesis, the concept of Faciality develops a theory of spectatorship that examines the simultaneous process of inscription and reterritorialisation that occurs in the repetition of the stereotype, as well as describing the potential deterritorialising effects of these repetitions that affirm the differential and future oriented forces of time. Chapter Four develops these dual forces as a cultural politics 'i of Faciality that examines how the bicultural model of politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand can be approached as an immanent form of cultural difference. The chapter examines this bicultural-becoming through a discussion of the figure of the Dusky Maiden stereotype in the mock documentary Velvet Dreams. The thesis concludes that by approaching the colonial stereotype as a paradoxical force of difference and repetition and by apprehending cinema as a logic of relations the act of spectatorship becomes a productive assemblage which presents the possibility of thinking from the viewpoint of immanent difference. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Thierry Jutel for his generous support, his enthusiasm and his erudite guidance in the writing of this thesis. Thanks also to my co-supervisor Chris Prentice for her engagement with the work, her advice and her insight. This thesis owes much to Sally Milner' s invaluable editing suggestions, as well as her friendship, advice and support. Thanks also to Anita Brady, Annie Dignan and my family and the Otago Film and Media Studies postgraduate students Vicki Evans, Michael Goddard, Terence Baird, Chris Ho, Miranda Kaye, and Lisa Morton. Also thanks to the staff in the Film and Media Studies programme at the University of Otago and to David Gerstner. Finally, this thesis would not have been possible without the friendship, support and wisdom of Jennifer Bell. The writing of this thesis was funded in part by a University of Otago Postgraduate Award and the Putea Matauraka Scholarship programme administered by the Ngai Tahu Development Corporation. Thanks also to the Otago University Scholarship Office for their assistance. V Table of Contents Abstract ll Acknowledgements N Table of Contents V Abbreviations vi I ' Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Double Bind of Postcolonial Media Theory 11 1.1 The Legacy of Colonial Discourse in Cinema 12 1.2 Postcolonial Critiques of Western Models of Vision 21 1.3 The Major/minor Dyad and Minoritarian-becomings 36 1.4 The Politics of Theoretical Production 40 Chapter Two: What is a Hybrid Mode of Perception? 46 2.1 A Counter-narrative of Cinema Spectatorship 47 2.2 Colonial Desire and Machinic Assemblages 55 2.3 Hybridity and Triangulation 59 2.4 Faciality and the Binary Machines of Hybridity 64 2.5 The Reterritorialising Powers of the Close-Up 68 2.6 Ruptures in the Flow of the White Man Face 72 2.7 Hybridity in Touch of Evil 75 Chapter Three: The Critical Dimensions of Faciality 90 3.1 The ''new dimension" of Physiognomy 91 3.2 Interpretation and Translation 95 3.3 The Affection-Image 100 3.4 The Event in Double Happiness 107 3 .5 The Time-Image 111 3.6 The Virtual Observer 115 3. 7 Cultural Encounters as Relations of Immanence 120 ,, Chapter Four: A Cultural Politics of Faciality 123 4.1 Neocolonialism and Immanent Relations of Power 129 4.2 The Dusky Maiden's Eternal Return 134 4.3 Repetition and Difference 138 4.4 Dusky Maiden-becomings 141 4.5 The Two Faces of Neocolonial Aotearoa/New Zealand 144 Conclusions 149 y Works Cited 154 Filmography 167 vi Abbreviations Works by Deleuze Cl Cinema I: The Movement-Image C2 Cinema 2: The Time-Image DR Difference and Repetition N Negotiations Works by Deleuze and Guattari AO Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizaphrenia ATP A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia K Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature 1 Introduction In ideality alone, there is no repetition, for the idea is and remains the same and as such cannot be repeated. When ideality and reality touch each other, then repetition occurs. When, for example, I see something in the moment, ideality enters in and will explain that it is a repetition. Here is a contradiction, for that which is is in another mode. (Soren Kierkegaard 1983, p. 275) This thesis examines theories of colonial stereotypes and spectatorship as they circulate in postcolonial film and media theory. The thesis argues that conventional spectatorship l- theory presumes a general and transcendent idea of spectatorship that is subsequently realised in a media event. Recent research in film and media theory addresses this movement from the ideal to the empirical experience of spectating, as a process of abstraction that collapses under the differential pressures of film audience responses. / This thesis contributes to the revisioning of spectatorship theory by asking, what does a concept of spectatorship that proceeds from the particular to the general, look like? This question is developed in relation to the concept of the colonial stereotyped image as it is critiqued in postcolonial media theory. Postcolonial theorists address the repetitive and easily reproduced characteristics of the stereotype image as a paradoxical force that r ) simultaneously reiterates and destabilises colonial and imperialist authority. However, the structure of this double bind draws upon a generalised and abstracted concept of spectatorship that, this thesis argues, maintains a dialectical divide between those represented by the stereotype and those who voyeuristically consume it. It is precisely this gap between the image (as representation) and the empirical "real" (that the stereotype fails to encompass) that constitutes a leap from the particular to the general. In these accounts, the concept of cultural difference (including racial and sexual differences) remains static, ahistorical and formed in dialectical opposition to a normative paradigm of subjectivity derived from colonialist discourse. This thesis examines the nature of the paradoxical force of the colonial stereotype using an alternate model of spectatorship developed from the work of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze' s theory of immanent difference acts as an antidote to the dialectical structuring of difference derived from the camera obscura model of perception that exhausts the terms one can use to engage with issues of racial and sexual difference.

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