Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and frames
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface: a Deleuzian cineosis
- PART ONE UNFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section I First Introduction – Two Regimes of Images
- Section II Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
- 1 Perception-images
- 2 Affection-images
- 3 Impulse-images (the nascent action-image)
- 4 Action-images (small form, action → situation)
- 5 Action-images (large form, situation → action)
- 6 Attraction-images (first reflection-image; sixth mental-image)
- 7 Inversion-images (second reflection-image; fifth mental-image)
- 8 Discourse-images (third reflection-image; fourth mental-image)
- 9 Dream-images (third mental-image)
- 10 Recollection-images (second mental-image)
- 11 Relation-images (first mental-image)
- 12 Opsigns and sonsigns
- 13 Hyalosigns
- 14 Chronosigns
- 15 Noosigns
- 16 Lectosigns
- Afterword to Part One: the unfolded cineosis
- PART TWO ENFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section III Third Introduction – Cinematographics (1995–2015)
- Select Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
16 - Lectosigns
from Section II - Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and frames
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface: a Deleuzian cineosis
- PART ONE UNFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section I First Introduction – Two Regimes of Images
- Section II Second Introduction – A Series of Images and Signs
- 1 Perception-images
- 2 Affection-images
- 3 Impulse-images (the nascent action-image)
- 4 Action-images (small form, action → situation)
- 5 Action-images (large form, situation → action)
- 6 Attraction-images (first reflection-image; sixth mental-image)
- 7 Inversion-images (second reflection-image; fifth mental-image)
- 8 Discourse-images (third reflection-image; fourth mental-image)
- 9 Dream-images (third mental-image)
- 10 Recollection-images (second mental-image)
- 11 Relation-images (first mental-image)
- 12 Opsigns and sonsigns
- 13 Hyalosigns
- 14 Chronosigns
- 15 Noosigns
- 16 Lectosigns
- Afterword to Part One: the unfolded cineosis
- PART TWO ENFOLDING THE CINEOSIS
- Section III Third Introduction – Cinematographics (1995–2015)
- Select Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Lectosigns are the ‘final aspect of the direct time-image, the common limit’ of all time-images (C2: 279). Everything begins with opsigns and sonsigns – pure optical and sound situations. Opsigns and sonsigns appear in the aftermath of a collapse in the coordinates of the movement-image; we can no longer specify cinematic images as perception-images, affection-images, action-images or mental-images. Deleuze writes: ‘we gave the name opsign (and sonsign) to the actual image cut off from its motor extension’ (C2: 69). What appears on-screen are pure actualised de-differenciated images. Opsigns and sonsigns are ‘slivers’ of time and space which will rejoin each other as hyalosigns then chronosigns and noosigns (C2: 69). In the first place, opsigns and sonsigns are immediately hyalosigns. If the actual image no longer abides the sensory-motor trajectory, there is – for Deleuze – a simultaneous relinkage; and this relinkage is between an actual image and its virtual correlate. This is the hyalosign, the description of an image. Opsigns and sonsigns stymie the seamless flow of actual image to actual image; while the hyalosign links the actual image to its virtual. Through their very constitution, opsigns and sonsigns must become hyalosigns; an actual must relink to the virtual if delinked from other actuals. Hyalosigns – in the second place – immediately join up to create chronosigns, time-image narration. Chronosigns ‘no longer concern … description, but narration’ (C2: 127). The images of the film explore the ‘order of time’ and the ‘series of time’ in that they undermine linear chronology, the continuity of past, present and future (C2: 155). Narration no longer gives us a present as a product of the past and the future as consequence of the present. All of time resonates in the virtual. Finally – and in the third place – hyalosigns and chronosigns pass immediately into noosigns: image and narration give us a narrative. This is the storytelling function of the time-image – where the film explores the genesis of bodies and the world as an image of the brain. The story is the virtual arising from the disruptions of the image and narration – a new image of thought, the unthought. Noosigns, chronosigns and hyalosigns are narrative, narration and description – composed from opsigns and sonsigns: the zeroness of the time-image.
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- Deleuze's Cinema BooksThree Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images, pp. 162 - 171Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016