Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time: Lecture 23, 07 June 1983

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>“Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time” was a 23-lecture seminar given from November 1982 to June 1983. This seminar revisits many of the main themes from the previous year’s seminar ("Cinema 1: The Movement-Image"), and Deleuze commences the year by explaining that whereas he usually changes topics from one year to the next, he feels compelled to continue with the current topic and, in fact, to undertake a process of “philosophy in the manner of cows, rumination… I want entirely and truly to repeat myself, to start over by repeating myself.” Hence, the 1982-83 Seminar consists in once again taking up Bergson’s theses on perception, but now with greater emphasis on the aspects of classification of images and signs drawn from C.S. Peirce. This allows Deleuze to continue the shift from considering the movement-image, that dominated early 20th century cinema, toward a greater understanding of the post-World War II emphasis on the time-image.</p>

<p>Deleuze starts the Seminar’s final session with an overview of the year’s arguments, then returns to Bergson and certain illustrations in <em>Matter and Memory</em>. With the goal of developing a full classification of images and signs, Deleuze started from movement-images and light-images, assigning centers of indetermination, and yielding three types of images: perception-image, action-image, between which is an affection-image. Then, the images’ composition yielded an indirect image of time as well as indirect figures of thought. Deleuze extracts from Bergson a parallel to the plane of the movement-image in the memory-image, i.e., the importance of recollections, linked to the Bergsonian apparatus of memory. Deleuze reaches a direct image of time in the coexistence of past with present, or (borrowing from Guattari) the “crystal of time”. By adapting the time crystal to the Bergsonian framework as the folding back of the present, Deleuze derives a direct figure of thought, plunging into deeper levels of reality through a circuit process, examples of which come from Fellini (“Amarcord”) and Rossellini (“Europe ‘51”, “Stromboli”). Finally, Deleuze reorganizes Bergson’s illustrations so that the direct time-image reveals at once regions of being and regions of thought, a thought-being or being of thought, aspects clearly requiring two more Seminars on cinema to explore fully.</p>

<p>This dataset includes an aggregate version of the audio recordings into a single mp3, the complete French transcription and English translation in Open Document (odt) format, and the original Paris 8 French transcript.</p>

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<p><em>Les Séminaires de Deleuze</em> sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>« Cinéma: de la classification des signes et le temps » était un séminaire de 23 conférences donné de novembre 1982 à juin 1983. Ce séminaire a repris certains des thèmes principaux du séminaire de l'année précédente (« L’image-mouvement, Leҫons bergsoniennes sur le cinéma »), et en offre d'autres considérations. Dans ces conférences, Deleuze examine le cinéma et la philosophie bergsonienne vis-à-vis d'une gamme de philosophes, des modernes aux existentialistes. Deleuze discute également de nombreux artistes et écrivains qui apparaissent dans les autres séminaires sue le cinéma.</p>

<p>Dans la conférence du 7 juin 1983, Deleuze présente une récapitulation du séminaire. Sujets de discussion comprennent: schémas bergsoniens; le temps; l'image-temps directe; le dédoublement du présent; le souvenir; le présent comme toujours dédoublé et redoublé; le présent qui se présente, et le passé que le présent a été; et le souvenir du présent.</p>