Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 11:57:25 -0500
From: LouisS1061-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: phaneroscopy


"One thing that is immediately obvious in this formulation
of the two views (and I may have gotten yours wrong) is that cinema
is talked about as if it was a _language_ -- you say a sign system --
which can be used to _express_ aspects of the phaneron."
writes Malgosia.

This is exactly right, but for Deleuze and supposedly  for Peirce  there is a
cruxial difference between a language and  a sign system. Deleuze insists
over and over that he is not using a  linguistic method and that cinema works
on a prelinguistic plane of signification. He's into Peirce because he takes
Peirce to be the author of a "pure semiotics" rather than a semiotics of
language. On 69 he tells us that he will use and constantly modify Peirce's
classification of image signs precisely because it is "the richest and most
numerous that has ever been established."

My project is that of deconstructing Deleuze, as if Adrian Miles hadd't
already guessed it. One of the intial sites for that work is the distinction
between linguistic and non-linguistic sign systems. These categories collaps
in Deleuze's own text. As I pointed out in the fall Deleuze claims that the
cinematic image must be read, that it is "legible as well as visible"
(page12). This causes serious problems for the clean separation of the
linguistic and the non-linguistic. When I pointed this out before folks wrote
back that reading wasn't always linguistic. I think that is true, one reads
the expression on a face, yet it is never not linguistic because there is
nothing in "ordinary language" or "philosophical discourse" or Deleuze's
writing that keeps the linguistic meaning of reading in abayence. Even
conceptually there is nothing that sharply delimits the reading of words from
any textual reading, and reading always already produces a text. A text,
though it might not have words is  never  simply without language. So
Deleuze's approach to cinema is neither linguistic nor non-linguistic. What
is intersting is thetension between his declarations and his practice. This
is not an attack on Deleuze, but a reading of the complications  of his text.
As others like to say "I'm just trying to figure out what he's talking
about."
lgs

PS A few weeks ago there was a lot of discussion about the role of negation
in Deleuze's writing and it all focused on how Deleuze wrote about negation.
I wonder what would happen if we looked at moments when Deleuze was negating
things, i.e. saying that cinema is not linguistic. He seems to negate in the
most classical manner though he would tells us otherwise.

     ------------------