The inversion-image is the second avatar of reflection. As Deleuze puts it, here we have ‘literal figures – operating for example through reversal’ (C1: 183). Or rather, a sign ‘reflects its own object, but by inverting it (inverted image)’ (C1: 218; my italics). With the inversion-image, then, the large form action-image and small form action-image have figures that transform each themselves through the influence of one form on the other, as if exerting a centripetal or centrifugal force. In other words, the avatars of the action-image are transformed by the large form becoming small, and the small form becoming large (thus discovering the small in the large, or the large in the small). We might designate these transformations as sAs and aSa. Deleuze names the first sign of composition (corresponding to sAs) as the ‘sublime’, where ‘the action … is not required by the situation’ (C1: 184). The second sign of composition (corresponding to aSa) is the ‘enfeebled’, or futile action that reveals grandiose ‘Powers of the Earth’ (C1: 186). Deleuze does not give a name to – but does (enigmatically) describe – a genetic form; it is where the sAs and aSa become equivalent, ‘the same thing’ (C1: 186). Thus sAs ↔ aSa: we are no longer sure if the actions are sublime or futile, if the situation is insignificant or unfathomable. We might call this a special case of the quotidian: the everyday situation with everyday actions – monuments of the triumphs and disappointments of everyday life. These figures of the sublime, the feeble and the quotidian become mental-images by transforming the action-image through a reflection upon the limits of the avatar as avatar (genetic sign) and with respect to each of the forms (compositional signs). This critique concerns undermining the causal nature of forms: the determination of the situation and the function of the character, and the possibilities of changing or exposing the coordinates of the world.

The inversion-image (second reflection-image; fifth nascent mental image), accordingly, is constituted by the sign series: figure of the sublime (first sign of full molar composition) ↔ figure of enfeeblement (secondary sign of composition) ↔ figure of the quotidian (sign of genetic forces).