DELEUZE’S “CRYSTALS OF TIMEâ€, HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY AND SOCIAL HISTORY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2413-3086/1983Keywords:
Deleuze, crystals of time, time image, capitalism, cinema, reconceptualisation of subjectivity, virtualityAbstract
This paper takes Deleuze’s concept of the “crystals of time†– which condenses, metaphorically, different possibilities of what he calls the “time-image†in cinema – as its point of departure, and does in reverse what Ian Buchanan does where he proposes that one can use the notion of “schizoanalysis†from Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus for the exploration of cinema. In other words, what I do here is to transfer the notion of different time-crystals in cinema to different domains, namely those of human subjectivity and social history. The reason behind this attempt at cross-fertilisation is that, if one reads Deleuze’s book on Kant together with that on the time-image in cinema, the parallel between Kant’s revolutionary reconceptualisation of time (against the backdrop of the Aristotelian conception) and Deleuze’s on the time-image in cinema (as opposed to the “movement-imageâ€) becomes apparent. It follows that, if time comprises the condition of the possibility of human subjectivity (for Kant), and the cinema of the time-image demonstrates that something similar holds for the “fullest†possibility of cinema – time here usurping the position held previously by movement in film – then the concepts employed by Deleuze to come to grips with the multiplicity of cinematic possibilities or virtualities and their actualisations may prove useful for articulating a model of human subjectivity and, at the level of collective subjectivities, social history. Deleuze’s metaphor of “time-crystals†is therefore employed here, not only to give a brief outline of human subjectivity as temporally constituted, but further to focus on social history, or more specifically on different temporal/historical aspects, virtual and actual, of neoliberal capitalism. This is done via the four types of time-crystals distinguished by Deleuze (in cinema), namely the “perfect crystalâ€, “flawed crystalâ€, “crystal of seeds†and “decaying crystalâ€.Metrics
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Published
2016-12-01
How to Cite
Olivier, Bert. 2016. “DELEUZE’S “CRYSTALS OF TIMEâ€, HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY AND SOCIAL HISTORY”. Phronimon 17 (1):25-56. https://doi.org/10.25159/2413-3086/1983.
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Research Articles