From a Tactile Epistemology to the Ontology of Affect: Two Readings of Deleuze’s Time-Image in Film and New Media Theory

• Authors: Árpád Bak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper compares how two theorists of media arts, Mark B. N. Hansen and Laura U. Marks, interpret the relation of Deleuze’s time-image to corporeality. Both argue that some novel types of images - in film and media art - engage the body in new and also more intensive ways than traditional cinema did. While they remain committed to Bergson’s theory of perception, their works offer different readings of how the Bergsonian concepts of Deleuze’s film philosophy can be applied to new media: on the one hand, to the non-signifying, affective properties of Hansen’s digital image in contemporary media arts, and on the other, to Marks’s - in the last instance, memory-signifying - haptic image, which she discussed initially in connection with video art and experimental film. In New Philosophy for New Media (2004), Hansen asserts that “Deleuze’s neo-Bergsonist account of the cinema carries out the progressive disembodying of the [body]”, which “reaches its culmination in […] what he calls the ‘time-image,’” and calls for “a rehabilitation of Bergson’s embodied concept of affection.” While Marks also offers some criticism on Deleuze, she suggests that his “theory of timeimage cinema permits a discussion of the multisensory quality of cinema,” and undertakes to examine “how the body may be involved in the inauguration of time-image cinema.” Besides arguing that both tendencies are present in Deleuze to varying degrees, I attempt to contextualize the divergences in their lines of thought by looking at the types of media and selection of works they examine, as well as the possible theoretical commitments that might guide these selective strategies

Keywords

EN

Deleuze’s time-image; digital; haptic image; affect; body; new media

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 19-33

Dates

published

2013-08-01

online

2014-06-04

Contributors

author

Árpád Bak

• Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) PhD Program in Film, Media and Contemporary Culture

References

• Beekman, Rene. 2005. Review of New Philosophy for New Media, by Mark B.N. Hansen. Leonardo vol. 38 no. 4: 355-356.
• Bergson, Henri. 1991 [1896]. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books.
• Bonitzer, Pascal. et al. 2000 [1986]. The Brain is the Screen. An Interview with Gilles Deleuze. In The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, ed. Gregory Flaxman, 365-73. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Deleuze, Gilles. 2009 [1983]. Cinema 1. The Movement-Image. London: Continuum.
• Deleuze, Gilles. 1989 [1985]. Cinema 2. The Time-Image. London: The Athlone Press.
• Eagleton, Terry. 2000. The Idea of Culture. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell.
• Haines, Christian. 2011. Corporeal Time. The Cinematic Bodies of Arthur Rimbaud and Gilles Deleuze. Angelaki vol. 16 no. 2: 103-126.[WoS]
• Hansen, Mark B.N. 2009. Living (with) Technical Time. From Media Surrogacy to Distributed Cognition. Theory, Culture & Society vol. 26 no. 2-3: 294-315.[WoS]
• Hansen, Mark B.N. 2006 [2004]. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.
• Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual. Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ausfm-2014-0002