DOI: 10.4231/yntb-cr44
title: Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time: Lecture 18, 26 April 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;Cinema 1: The Movement-Image&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;While Deleuze lays out some very specific goals for this session, among which is to review Kant&rsquo;s theory of the sublime, the session transforms into the &ldquo;story of red&rdquo; (as Deleuze begins by saying) and ending with his own self-evaluation, &ldquo;I was really off the mark (&lt;em&gt;con&lt;/em&gt;) today.&rdquo; Following a recap of the four steps of the light-image developed in the previous session, which ended with the emergence of red upon red, or God&rsquo;s fury and that of Apocalypse, Deleuze wonders how this &ldquo;red upon red&rdquo; might also be at once choleric and peaceful, even elevating the hypersensitive being&rsquo;s self-awareness. As the basis of the development&rsquo;s fifth step, with reference both to Goethe&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Theory of Colors&lt;/em&gt; and to Kant&rsquo;s theory of the dynamic sublime, Deleuze argues for red as the operation of this sublime and foundation of the totality, justifying these perspectives through a lengthy discussion of the chromatic wheel, at once for the derivation of colors (with references to Messiaen and Kandinsky) and for founding the indirect image of time working through light, with its four characteristics. Turning to Proust&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;&shy;Time Regained&lt;/em&gt; to contrast the interior of time (and the open aspect of time) with the locus one occupies in space and time, Deleuze enters more fully into our experience of time both in terms of the Whole and in terms of the interval and instant. He links the final paragraph of &lt;em&gt;Time Regained&lt;/em&gt; to the sublime, as developed in the cinema of Dovchenko and Eisenstein, in order to trace the path of the infinite distance that one acquires within time&rsquo;s interior.&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. [Please note: the two parts of the Paris 8 recording have been mislabeled and hence the aggregate version starts with part 2, approx. 68&quot;, then part 1 begins]&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;Alors que Deleuze expose des objectifs tr&egrave;s pr&eacute;cis pour cette s&eacute;ance, parmi lesquels la r&eacute;vision de la th&eacute;orie kantienne du sublime, la s&eacute;ance se transforme en &laquo; histoire du rouge &raquo; (comme Deleuze commence par le dire) et se termine par sa propre auto-&eacute;valuation : &laquo; J&rsquo;ai &eacute;t&eacute; extr&ecirc;mement con, aujourd&rsquo;hui. &raquo; Apr&egrave;s un rappel des quatre &eacute;tapes de l&rsquo;image-lumi&egrave;re d&eacute;velopp&eacute;es dans la s&eacute;ance pr&eacute;c&eacute;dente, qui s&rsquo;est termin&eacute;e par l&rsquo;&eacute;mergence du rouge sur le rouge, ou la fureur de Dieu et celle de l&rsquo;Apocalypse, Deleuze se demande comment ce &laquo; rouge sur rouge &raquo; pourrait aussi &ecirc;tre &agrave; la fois col&eacute;rique et paisible, &eacute;levant m&ecirc;me la conscience de soi de l&rsquo;&ecirc;tre hypersensible. En se r&eacute;f&eacute;rant &agrave; la fois &agrave; la th&eacute;orie des couleurs de Goethe et &agrave; la th&eacute;orie du sublime dynamique de Kant, Deleuze d&eacute;fend l&rsquo;id&eacute;e que le rouge est l&rsquo;op&eacute;ration de ce sublime et le fondement de la totalit&eacute;, justifiant ces perspectives par une longue discussion sur la roue chromatique, &agrave; la fois pour la d&eacute;rivation des couleurs (avec des r&eacute;f&eacute;rences &agrave; Messiaen et Kandinsky) et pour la fondation de l&rsquo;image indirecte du temps agissant &agrave; travers la lumi&egrave;re, avec ses quatre caract&eacute;ristiques. En se tournant vers &lt;em&gt;Le Temps retrouv&eacute;&lt;/em&gt; de Proust pour opposer l&rsquo;int&eacute;rieur du temps (et l&rsquo;aspect ouvert du temps) au lieu que l&rsquo;on occupe dans l&rsquo;espace et le temps, Deleuze entre plus pleinement dans notre exp&eacute;rience du temps &agrave; la fois en termes de Tout et en termes d&rsquo;intervalle et d&rsquo;instant. Il relie le dernier paragraphe du &lt;em&gt;Temps retrouv&eacute;&lt;/em&gt; au sublime, tel qu&rsquo;il se d&eacute;veloppe dans le cin&eacute;ma de Dovjenko et d&rsquo;Eisenstein, afin de tracer le chemin de la distance infinie que l&rsquo;on acquiert dans l&rsquo;int&eacute;rieur du temps.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 26 April 1983. This is lecture 18 of a 23-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between November 1982 and June 1983.