I take it my post didn't ring any bells. Let me try again. I am trying
below to describe a "dead present" (as in Blanchot) as what I think is the
very co-existence of the virtual and the actual that Deleuze speaks of
through out his works.
>From P&S: D is keen to show that the 'Combray' that unfolds from the flavor
is not any Combray that was present to a percetion. Not a real Combray,
but its "truth"--the "very being of the past in itself" (59). As was
pointed out to me previously, this "in itself" is deceptive besause (from
Massumi) it is a dispersion. Dispersion because it is that of a real
Combray (which we can visit on a tour) that has no self and dispersion
because it is all of Combray, all its qualities and sensations--but without
any identity to attach them to (as in an Agamben logic). This virtual
Combray then is --what --a "empty totality" ? lacking nothing but a self,
an identity--empty because overful with qualities--and all the more
affective because thought has nothing to aim at. yes? Indifferent to
thought. Indifferent to thought, it is as removed from Marcel as the star
from the cockroach in Lispector, or the lover from the beloved (below). In
short, in every real, live, presence to perception there is simultaneously
and indifference to perception (to thought) and that indifference, that
glacial remove, that Neuter, that unrequitedess, is a kind of fundamental
affect, an obscure affect that can resolve itself only resentment, on the
one hand, or amor fati on the other. The latter is love of that which must
escape every time, which is indifferent to us.
I am being overly concretely psychologistic here and in the below only in
order to orient myself toward what D is really talking about. Am I close
to Deleuze here? Or too close to Blanchot?
If I am on to something, then cinema is a very unique art in that it--by
its very nature--continually "offers" that which escapes (Shaviro's anaysis
in chapter 1 of *Cinematic Bodies*)(that is--the screen continually hits us
with qualities, sensations--but there's no "it" there) thus "showing" us
that which D describes philosophically in P&S and LS. The cinematic
experience is unique because we are really, brutally, *forced* into a pure
past. (I could ramble on but...)
Tom
>Isn't Deleuze, in his way, like Blanchot, obsessed with the Neuter, with
>implacable indiffenence--as when you love someone who doesn't love you (I
>borrow this comparison from a private message from R. Thomas). Isn't
>discontinuity for D (as for Blanchot) a contact with an Outside. Doesn't
>this indifference act on a part of me that is also indifferent to me (my
>impersonal soul--a BwO?)? Or am I way off the mark here? There is an
>inhuman indifference at work throughout D's writings and the "pure past"
>(which is also dispersion--thanks) is the "image" of that indifference. ??
>It acts the way "it rains". (Deleuze compares cinema to rain somewhere).
>When I love someone who doesn't love me my love is dispersed--this is the
>contact with an Outside--and the one I love sinks back into the void: every
>encounter with her is a fragment of nothing, my very body a superfluous
>mass of sensation. The presence of the one who does not love me is
>precisely a non-presence, a past/future because he or she looks at me from
>before/beyond my love for her as if I (her lover) was not there.
>
>Am I on to anything here?
>
>Still in the Void,
>Tom
------------------
below to describe a "dead present" (as in Blanchot) as what I think is the
very co-existence of the virtual and the actual that Deleuze speaks of
through out his works.
>From P&S: D is keen to show that the 'Combray' that unfolds from the flavor
is not any Combray that was present to a percetion. Not a real Combray,
but its "truth"--the "very being of the past in itself" (59). As was
pointed out to me previously, this "in itself" is deceptive besause (from
Massumi) it is a dispersion. Dispersion because it is that of a real
Combray (which we can visit on a tour) that has no self and dispersion
because it is all of Combray, all its qualities and sensations--but without
any identity to attach them to (as in an Agamben logic). This virtual
Combray then is --what --a "empty totality" ? lacking nothing but a self,
an identity--empty because overful with qualities--and all the more
affective because thought has nothing to aim at. yes? Indifferent to
thought. Indifferent to thought, it is as removed from Marcel as the star
from the cockroach in Lispector, or the lover from the beloved (below). In
short, in every real, live, presence to perception there is simultaneously
and indifference to perception (to thought) and that indifference, that
glacial remove, that Neuter, that unrequitedess, is a kind of fundamental
affect, an obscure affect that can resolve itself only resentment, on the
one hand, or amor fati on the other. The latter is love of that which must
escape every time, which is indifferent to us.
I am being overly concretely psychologistic here and in the below only in
order to orient myself toward what D is really talking about. Am I close
to Deleuze here? Or too close to Blanchot?
If I am on to something, then cinema is a very unique art in that it--by
its very nature--continually "offers" that which escapes (Shaviro's anaysis
in chapter 1 of *Cinematic Bodies*)(that is--the screen continually hits us
with qualities, sensations--but there's no "it" there) thus "showing" us
that which D describes philosophically in P&S and LS. The cinematic
experience is unique because we are really, brutally, *forced* into a pure
past. (I could ramble on but...)
Tom
>Isn't Deleuze, in his way, like Blanchot, obsessed with the Neuter, with
>implacable indiffenence--as when you love someone who doesn't love you (I
>borrow this comparison from a private message from R. Thomas). Isn't
>discontinuity for D (as for Blanchot) a contact with an Outside. Doesn't
>this indifference act on a part of me that is also indifferent to me (my
>impersonal soul--a BwO?)? Or am I way off the mark here? There is an
>inhuman indifference at work throughout D's writings and the "pure past"
>(which is also dispersion--thanks) is the "image" of that indifference. ??
>It acts the way "it rains". (Deleuze compares cinema to rain somewhere).
>When I love someone who doesn't love me my love is dispersed--this is the
>contact with an Outside--and the one I love sinks back into the void: every
>encounter with her is a fragment of nothing, my very body a superfluous
>mass of sensation. The presence of the one who does not love me is
>precisely a non-presence, a past/future because he or she looks at me from
>before/beyond my love for her as if I (her lover) was not there.
>
>Am I on to anything here?
>
>Still in the Void,
>Tom
------------------