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8 - Discourse-images (third reflection-image; fourth mental-image)

from Section II - Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2019

David Deamer
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
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Summary

The discourse-image, the ‘discursive’ figure, is the third and final transformation of action-image forms, the third and final avatar of the reflection-image (C1: 192; C2: 33). Here the action-image is fully captured by the mental-image, and the forms of the small and the large become ‘figures of thought’ (C1: 190). In the first instance, the discourse-image is that which ‘subjects the large form to a broadening which operates as a transformation on the spot’ (C1: 192). For Deleuze, this is the extreme limit of the large form action-image, where the situation appears as a problem which will be explored throughout the film, the resolution that of a considered response. In the second instance, the discourseimage is that which ‘subjects the small form to a lengthening, a drawing-out which transforms it in itself’ (C1: 192). This is the extreme limit of the small form action-image, no longer describing a passage from action to situation as that which discovers the coordinates of a determination, but rather a revealing of the conditions of a problem. Thus the two sides of the problem; the problem being a question (?) and the figure of thought that inspires the discourseimage; this figure explicated in two signs of composition as the extreme limits of the large and the small forms of the action-image (C1: 195). These limits are transformative, not in reference to an immediate confrontation of one form with the other (attraction-images), nor in reference to the reciprocal influence that causes a reversal (inversion-image), but rather through the fullest possible domination of the domain of thought and the mental-image. Each action-image reflects directly upon itself, interrogates and becomes an image of thought for itself, in so doing enacting a reflection. Once again, Deleuze merely hints at a genetic sign, but it is reasonable to assume (just as with the other avatars of the reflection-image) that this is where the two signs of composition collapse in upon one another, where the extreme limit of the large form action-image and the extreme limit of the small form action-image extend to convergence. In other words, the extreme limit of action-images in general, of the avatar of action, where we cannot tell if the originary form is the small or the large – and the film begins, is permeated by and ends with problems.

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Chapter
Information
Deleuze's Cinema Books
Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images
, pp. 115 - 121
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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