DOI: 10.4231/02wy-zj86
title: Cinema: On the Classification of Signs and Time: Lecture 11, 22 February 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;Continuing the complex classification grid, Deleuze considers signs of the action-image (notably, the synsign, binomial and vector), and he compares two kinds of movement-image and space, the breath-space in Kurosawa and the vector-space in Mizoguchi. Needing to develop an additional column for the grid, Deleuze turns from Secondness in the action-image toward an intermediate image preceding the mental image of Thirdness. After an imaginary dialogue between Vertov and Eisenstein about their conceptual differences on the dialectic, Deleuze emphasizes Eisenstein&rsquo;s development of a transformational form associated with a &ldquo;montage of attractions&rdquo;, to which Deleuze attributes the sign of &ldquo;figure&rdquo; in Eisenstein&rsquo;s &ldquo;third image&rdquo;. Then, Deleuze focuses on the three representations in Kant&rsquo;s&lt;em&gt; Critique of Judgement&lt;/em&gt;, notably Ideas and the symbol, and particularly Kant&rsquo;s concept of the &ldquo;schema&rdquo; as a way of understanding, first, the direct exposition of a concept and the indirect presentation. Deleuze argues that Kant&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ideas&rdquo; (concepts without direct presentation within experience) are represented by the term &ldquo;symbol&rdquo;, for which Deleuze substitutes &ldquo;figure&rdquo; (for the table), to which he plans to join two other terms in the following session.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This dataset includes: an aggregate version of only parts 2 &amp; 3 of the audio recordings (the recording of part 1 is missing, although the part 1 segment is both transcribed and translated), 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;Poursuivant la grille de classification complexe, Deleuze consid&egrave;re les signes de l&rsquo;image-action (notamment le synsigne, le bin&ocirc;me et le vecteur), et il compare deux types d&rsquo;image-mouvement et d&rsquo;espace, l&rsquo;espace-souffle chez Kurosawa et l&rsquo;espace-vecteur chez Mizoguchi. Ayant besoin de d&eacute;velopper une colonne suppl&eacute;mentaire pour la grille, Deleuze se d&eacute;tourne de la Second&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute; dans l&rsquo;image-action pour se tourner vers une image interm&eacute;diaire pr&eacute;c&eacute;dant l&rsquo;image mentale de Tierc&eacute;&iuml;t&eacute;. Apr&egrave;s avoir pr&eacute;sent&eacute; un dialogue imaginaire entre Vertov et Eisenstein sur leurs diff&eacute;rences conceptuelles sur la dialectique, Deleuze souligne le d&eacute;veloppement par Eisenstein d&rsquo;une forme transformationnelle associ&eacute;e &agrave; un &laquo; montage d&rsquo;attractions &raquo;, auquel Deleuze attribue le signe de &laquo; figure &raquo; dans la &laquo; troisi&egrave;me image &raquo; d&rsquo;Eisenstein. Puis, Deleuze se concentre sur les trois repr&eacute;sentations de la &lt;em&gt;Critique du jugement&lt;/em&gt; de Kant, notamment les Id&eacute;es et le symbole, et en particulier le concept kantien de &laquo; sch&egrave;me &raquo; comme moyen de comprendre, d&rsquo;abord, l&rsquo;exposition directe d&rsquo;un concept et la pr&eacute;sentation indirecte. Deleuze soutient que les &laquo; Id&eacute;es &raquo; de Kant (concepts sans pr&eacute;sentation directe dans l&rsquo;exp&eacute;rience) sont repr&eacute;sent&eacute;es par le terme &laquo; symbole &raquo;, auquel Deleuze substitue &laquo; figure &raquo; (pour le tableau), et  auquel il compte joindre deux autres termes lors de la s&eacute;ance suivante.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 22 February 1983. This is lecture 11 of a 23-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between November 1982 and June 1983.