DOI: 10.4231/28h2-yk48
title: Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time: Lecture 12, 01 March 1983

description: &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Deleuze Seminars&lt;/em&gt; 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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&ldquo;Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time&rdquo; was a 23-lecture seminar given from November 1982 to June 1983. This seminar revisits many of the main themes from the previous year&rsquo;s seminar (&quot;The Movement-Image: Bergsonian Lessons on Cinema&quot;), 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 &ldquo;philosophy in the manner of cows, rumination&hellip; I want entirely and truly to repeat myself, to start over by repeating myself.&rdquo; Hence, the 1982-83 Seminar consists in once again taking up Bergson&rsquo;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Picking up the discussion of Eisenstein from the previous session, Deleuze considers different uses of &ldquo;figures&rdquo; in Eisenstein, then in Godard and Truffaut, and then shifts gears entirely to reconsider the term &ldquo;figure&rdquo; from the rhetorical perspective, summarizing the complex web of &ldquo;figures&rdquo; outlined in the classic text by Fontanier. This examination of four types of &ldquo;figures&rdquo; yields three kinds of signs for the previously identified category of &ldquo;transformation image&rdquo; (between Secondness and Thirdness). Deleuze identifies the first three figures as &ldquo;indirect figures of thought&rdquo; preparing the path toward a &ldquo;direct figure of thought&rdquo;, the mental image, i.e., the inclusion of a third aspect (hence, Thirdness). Hence, Deleuze links the mental image to another concept, the &ldquo;relation&rdquo; as a &ldquo;thought object&rdquo; (&lt;em&gt;objet de pens&eacute;e&lt;/em&gt;), considering Hitchcock&rsquo;s cinema insofar as he is the inventor of this image form. The reflection on the &ldquo;relation&rdquo; allows Deleuze to complete the classification table, specifically the &ldquo;mental image&rdquo; as Thirdness. At session&rsquo;s end, Deleuze suggests that the mental image actually implies a mutation requiring, once again, that the seminar start from the beginning with yet another classification table.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Les S&eacute;minaires de Deleuze&lt;/em&gt; sont une collection d&#39;enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents compl&eacute;mentaires des conf&eacute;rences que le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Gilles Deleuze a donn&eacute; lors de sa carri&egrave;re &agrave; l&#39;Universit&eacute; de Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&laquo; Cin&eacute;ma: de la classification des signes et le temps &raquo; a &eacute;t&eacute; un s&eacute;minaire de 23 conf&eacute;rences donn&eacute; de novembre 1982 &agrave; juin 1983. Ce s&eacute;minaire a repris certains des th&egrave;mes principaux du s&eacute;minaire de l&#39;ann&eacute;e pr&eacute;c&eacute;dente (&laquo; L&rsquo;image-mouvement, Leҫons bergsoniennes sur le cin&eacute;ma &raquo;), et en offre d&#39;autres consid&eacute;rations. Dans ces conf&eacute;rences, Deleuze examine le cin&eacute;ma et la philosophie bergsonienne vis-&agrave;-vis d&#39;une gamme de philosophes, des modernes aux existentialistes. Deleuze discute &eacute;galement de nombreux artistes et &eacute;crivains qui apparaissent dans les autres s&eacute;minaires sue le cin&eacute;ma.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Reprenant la discussion sur Eisenstein de la s&eacute;ance pr&eacute;c&eacute;dente, Deleuze consid&egrave;re les diff&eacute;rents usages du terme &laquo; figure &raquo; chez Eisenstein, puis chez Godard et Truffaut, puis change compl&egrave;tement de vitesse pour reconsid&eacute;rer le terme &laquo; figure &raquo; d&rsquo;un point de vue rh&eacute;torique, en r&eacute;sumant le r&eacute;seau complexe de &laquo; figures &raquo; esquiss&eacute; dans le texte classique de Fontanier. Cet examen de quatre types de &laquo; figures &raquo; donne trois sortes de signes pour la cat&eacute;gorie pr&eacute;c&eacute;demment identifi&eacute;e d&rsquo;&laquo; image de transformation &raquo; (entre Second&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute; et Tierc&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute;). Deleuze identifie les trois premi&egrave;res figures comme des &laquo; figures indirectes de la pens&eacute;e &raquo; pr&eacute;parant la voie vers une &laquo; figure directe de la pens&eacute;e &raquo;, l&rsquo;image mentale, c&rsquo;est-&agrave;-dire l&rsquo;inclusion d&rsquo;un tiers (d&rsquo;o&ugrave; la Tierc&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute;). Deleuze relie ainsi l&rsquo;image mentale &agrave; un autre concept, la &laquo; relation &raquo; comme &laquo; objet de pens&eacute;e &raquo;, en consid&eacute;rant le cin&eacute;ma d&rsquo;Hitchcock dans la mesure o&ugrave; il est l&rsquo;inventeur de cette forme d&rsquo;image. La r&eacute;flexion sur la &laquo; relation &raquo; permet &agrave; Deleuze de finir le tableau, surtout avec l&#39;image mentale comme Tierc&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute;. A la fin de la s&eacute;ance, Deleuze sugg&egrave;re que l&#39;image mentale implique en r&eacute;alit&eacute; une mutation n&eacute;cessitant, une fois de plus, que le s&eacute;minaire reprenne depuis le d&eacute;but avec une nouvelle table de classification.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 01 March 1983. This is lecture 12 of a 23-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between November 1982 and June 1983.