r

.~

TH R E E

nal, immobile,

THE

and unchanging

S E SON

THE

L 1 F E - 1 MAG

157

form of all that passes, moves, and changes.

Deleuze thus is able, on the one hand, to declare in the first sentence
his two-volume

S F V E N

on the other hand, to follow this declaration

Three Theses on the Life-Image

(Deleuze, Cinema, Bio-politics)
CESARE

study, "This study is not a history

historical periodizations

immediately

(xiv). There is no contradiction

of

and,

with a series of
here: the point is

that the prime object of Deleuze's hisroricization

is not cinema per se but

the condition

and, indeed, of historic-

of possibility

of all historicization

iry itself, namely, time. Deleuze's study constitutes

CASARINO

of the cinema,"

momentous

an attempt

event in the historical experience of time through

to think a
the cinema:

Deleuze's study is a history of time that needs the cinema in order to think
a radical transformation
and lived in historical

in the way in which time is produced,

forms. This is a transformation

fies in the paradigmatic

that Deleuze identi-

shift from the movement-image

from the indirect representation

the cinematic image.?

to the time-image,

of time to the direct expression of time in

It is the claim of this essay that the radical transformation

in the cinema is materialized
time-image,

constitutes

the most important-if

essay that the life-image

study of the cinema, Gilles Deleuze produces what is at

once a synchronic

and a diachronic

account of cinema. Such an account is

to the extent to which it consists of "a taxonomy,

at a classification
which-Deleuze's

of images and signs."] It is diachronic

protestations

consists of a bipartite

to the contrary

periodization

an attempt

to the extent to

notwithstanding-it

also

of the history of cinema, which pivots

This is not the place to retrace the complex

of this study: the cinema developed

of time in the cinematic

the time-image

rep-

and its varieties, that

image, in the period after

the Second World War. Whereas the movement-image

to movement,

from an indirect

and its varieties, in the period

before the Second World War, to a direct time-image

is, to a direct insertion

the prin-

subordinated

time

liberated time from the harness of movement

and expressed time in its pure state, time as such-that

is, time as the crer-

production

intellectual

it-

comes to

genealogies

of

term that was coined

era.:' For my purposes, what I find most com-

pelling is the critical re-elaboration

been undertaken

of time in the movement-image

the time-image-without,

famously by Michel Foucault in 1974 and a concept whose origins arguably

hark back to the early-modern

as Michael Hardt, Antonio

resentation

emerges from within

the term as well as of the concept of "bio-politics"-a

account share and interfere with one another

cipal argument

not the most obvious-inIt is the further claim of this

at the moment in which such a regime ofbio-political

its full fruition and realization.

around the break of the Second World War. These two aspects of Deleuze's
in what constitutes

production.

to the

however, ever leaving it behind, and, on the contrary, by incorporating

In his two-volume
synchronic

in time, which

as the shift from the movement-image

dex of a regime of bio-political

I The life-image is what the time-image becomes under

a fully realized regime of bio-political production.

embodied,

of the concept

of bio-politics

that has

during the past two decades by a group of thinkers-such

Negri, Judith Revel, and Paolo Virno-who

effect have brought to the foreground

in

as well as pushed to its logical conclu-

sions an insight that had remained largely implicit and latent in Foucault.
This insight concerns the necessary and symbiotic relations between, on the
one hand, bio-politics

understood

as a complex assemblage of modern tech-

nologies of power for the direct management,

organization,

and domination

of life in all of its forms, and, on the other hand, capitalism understood
complex assemblage of modern technologies

of production

as a

for the manage-

r-~:;g

-~'

~f

CESARE

158

CASARINO

mcnt, organization,

THREE

and exploitation

of labor-power

in all of its modalities.

THESES

finds its besr determination

separating it from production;

for my present project: "[Bjio-politics

ible from production-and

sophical-which

is merely an effect, a reverberation,

of that primary fact-both

consists of the commerce of potential

a "commerce

of potential

as potential,"

historical and philoas potential.?"

of course, is the defining feature of

the exchange between capitalist and worker inasmuch as what is exchanged

of the worker.'

the Marxian concept of labor-power,

through

the filter of

thus, Virno asserts:

In my reading,

from post-Fordisr
the condition

capitalism

that characterizes

first time in history

principle

differences

group of thinkers
itly-the

notwithstanding,

together

type of argument

what brings the aforementioned

is that they posit-either

that is fueled crucially

exemplified

here by Virno as the necessary

premise from which to draw the following conclusions:

bio-politics

as a reaction to the revolutions

jectivity

and that is to be understood

post-Fordisrn
synonymic

is another

put it differentlysymbiotic,

natures of post- Fordism and of bio-politics when he states:

pletely throughout

it realizes itself by dispersing itself com-

the myriad and ubiquitous

networks of production;

it

namely, for the

are in

In a process of production

by the communication

of thought,

language,

and

in all their myriad forms, we are all

exploited to the full extent of our potential

to

isolated and periodic instances of this exploitation

as such-in

found throughout

its heterogeneous

yet isomorphic

the history of production.

form of exploitation

of
be

It is only with the emergence

production,

turns into a definitional

is hunted

entirety-can

however, that such a

and dominant

norm. Such

in history when potential

down in all the most recondite

burrows of being,

brought out to the light of day, and turned into a spectacle for all to see-in
all of its absolute

In the world of immateriality in which we live, reproduction-which

is the
first possible definition of biopolitics-and
production can no longer be
distinguished from each other. Biopolitics becomes fully realized precisely
when production and reproduction are one and the same, that is, when production is conducted primarily and directly through language and social exchange.?
Such is the paradox of bio-polirics:

labor-power

qua potential

and

event is

between bio-politics

capitalism:

a regime, in other words, marks that moment

name for a fully realized regime of bio-political

It is Negri who best captures the co-extensive,

by this group of

that make up labor-power

of a fully realized regime of bio-political

of the 1960s and to the new forms of sub-

forged in the heat of those struggles; or-to

production.

that

primarily

in the

(albeit, of course, not all of us in the same way or with the same

pay)." Undoubtedly,

comes

ro its full fruition with that shift in the capitalist mode of production
goes by the name of post-Fordism

produce

of potential

An unprecedented

and directly productive.

exploitable and increasingly

explicitly or implic-

"commerce

articulated

post-Fordist

all those potentials

exploitable

in which it can
as such, that is so

of possibility ofbio-politics

the line of argumentation

affect (and hence also of knowledge)

All other

fulfills its philosophi-

enabled to take place within that zone of indistinction

and production

In this paradox,

mission at the moment

thinkers has the following crucial implication.

Capitalists are interested in the life of the worker, in the body of the worker,
only for an indirect reason: this life, this body, are what contains the faculty, the potential, the dynamis ... Life lies at the center of politics when
the prize to be won is immaterial (and in itself non-present) labor-power.
For this reason, and this reason alone, it is legitimate to talk about "biopolitics."? (Virno 82-83)

of the limits

of a process whose origins and presupposi-

cal nature as well as its historical

as potential"-constituted
first place."

159

when it is not discern-

earlier by Virno: if hie-politics

precisely because capitalist exchange relations-the

that is inseparable from the living body

Looking at the concept of bio-politics

indetermination

when both reign omnipresent.

no longer be distinguished

what Karl Marx identified in Capital as that aggregate

there is labor-power,

of all mental and physical potentials

tions were articulated

LIFE-IMAGE

it is most discernible

Negri describes the completion

Such

THE

in the absolute

Virno expresses such an insight in a powerful thesis that I take as axiomatic

or, in fact, one articulation

ON

the potentials
potential

splendor

constituting

qua potential

in its irnpercepribiliry,

and infinite misery. It is precisely because all

labor-power

are now subsumed

corporeal in its incorporeality,

teriality, present in its non-presence-in

expressive as non-present
that moment

by capital that

is all the more visible in its invisibility, perceptible

short, all the more powerful and

cause immanent

in history too-after

a ruthless process of reaction-when

to the life-image.

material in its imma-

in its own effects. And this is

the revolutions

of the 1960s and during

the time-image

-The concept of the life-image, thus, constitutes

increasingly gives rise

an attempt to answer the

1
160

CESARE

CASARINO

TH R F E

foJlowing question: how can we identif}' and articulate the relation between,
on the one hand, the complete
tion that characterizes
complete

realization

post-Fordisr

of hie-politics

capitalism,

of expression

of time qua

how can we think the relation between a fully real-

ized regime of bio-political

production

and a fully realized cinema of the

The life-image is posited here as a paradigmatic

product of this relation-or,

ing such a relation.

and produc-

and, on the other hand, the

of the cinema as medium

time? Put differently,

time-image?"

indistinction

and defining

at the very least, as a heuristic device for think-

II

rial, and non-present

labor-power.

as the diachronic,

to synchronic,

incorporeal,

Life and labor-power

same thing conceived from two different standpoints:

cisely, docs not limit Itself to representation.

representing
modity-in

corporeal,
immate-

are one and the

they are the two in-

are torn aparr irreparably from each other, an

era in which life is turned into the fetish par excellence while labor-power
is at once foreclosed and exploited

like never before. From the lethal dis-

courses of the "pro-life" political-religious

consumer-culture

discourses around anodyne

days we are confronted

directly proporrional
rectly proportional

movements

incessantly

to the no less deadly

notions of "lifestyle:'

by a life whose increasing

nowa-

ubiquity

to its elusiveness, whose increasing inflatedness

is

a "life-cycle," you can rest assured that the more garrulously life speaks today
the dumber

it has become, and that what you are riding, as you pedal away

but a bio-political

nowhere,

joke of world-historical

course, that in our era the world-historical

is no longer a bicycle of any sort

proportions-which

is to say, of

can no longer be distinguished

from the trivial and the inane as such. Such a spectacular fetishization
is closely related to the fact that the secret of production

oflife

that is hidden away

in life and its forms can be squeezed now for all it is worth: if invocations
of life nowadays sound like so many empty cliches, that is so because for
the first time life has been emptied out completely of its only possible content, namely, labor-power. Today, life and labor-power
apart from each other-separated

life, or, more pre-

An image that limits itself to

life must also turn it into a fetish, into a cliche, into a com-

tion .of life rests upon and points to the expression of labor-power-and
"expression" here I mean that non-representational
mode of communication

that Deleuze finds embedded

immaterial,

in Baruch Spinoza's

cannot be represenred:

non-present-by

by

kind of knowledge and

definition.

it is invis-

Labor-power

can

life inevi-

life inro dead labor, that is so because such an im-

age forecloses rather than expresses that which brought

the first place, namely, labor-power.

Represenration

the image to life in

without expression can

only reify. The life-image, however, represents life and expresses labor-power
at one and the same time; or, more precisely, expresses labor-power
resenring life-thereby

presenting

them as immanent

in rep-

to one another, and

positing both as what Giorgio Agamben might call an indivisible, dynamic,

pulsating form-of-life.13 This means also that the life-image is a form ofbiopolitical resistance, that is, at once a form of resistance against bio-politics
as well as a form of resistance that is itself bio-political-in
resistance that uses and rums bio-politics against itself.

short, a form of

is di-

to its vacuity. If a stand-up bicycle in a gym can be called

eagerly while going absolutely

16r

shorr, into dead labor. In the life-image, rather, the representa-

tably ends up turning

separable sides of the same coin. The life-image, thus, is the image of an era
in which life and labor-power

L I F E - I MAG E

only be expressed. If the image that limits itself to represenring

life needs to be understood

presenr term corresponding

THE

add that the life-image at once is born our of this state of affairs and vet

onrology.12 The poinr is that labor-power

II. The lift-image expresses labor-power.

material,

S E SON

does not belong to it. The life-image does not represent

ible, incorporeal,

In this context,

THE

more than ever stand

by that limit that is capitalism.

Lest I begin to sound as cranky as a latter-day Adorno, however, let me

III. The lift-image finds an exemplary instance

within and against the spectacle of AIDS.
Rarely have more fetishistic
a prodigious

and reified images of life proliferated

speed and in such a voluminous

hiscarical conjuncture

quantity

at such

than during that

that saw the spectacle of AIDS at its zenith, approxi-

mately from the early 1980s to the very end of the last century-a

period

and a spectacle with which we have yet fully to come to terms. Many are
those who have told us already the story of the spectacle of AIDS.14 One
way of telling this same scary from the standpoint

of my present investiga-

tion would be to point our that some of the most reifying forms of representation

were rapidly enlisted in the service of a pernicious

construal

of

AIDS as the deserved product of the possibilities opened up by the political

critiques of the J960s-including
movements

not only the gay and lesbian liberation

but also the critique and subversion of those very forms of rep-

T
162

CESARE

CASARINO

TH R E E THE

resenration.

I have written

one hand, a certain critique

elsewhere about the relation

of representation

between,

that was articulated

in the

19805 and 1990S: suffice to say here that the AIDS pandemic

occasioned

revengeful recrudescence

that thinkers

of representation

such as Deleuze and Guy Debord-among

different yet significandy

others-had

critiqued

in very

reactionary

to The Logic of Sense, as well as to produce

from "representation"

mark study of Spinoza, Expressionism in Philosophy.)

provided

16

the spectacle with the perfect opportunity

a concept of
in his land-

to act increasingly

unrestrained.

of AIDS was at once attendant

the spectacularization
macroscopic

of everything

and microscopic

David Wojnarowicz,

the I980s and I990s, the

Herve Guiberr, Aaron Shurin,

Gregg Araki, John Greyson, Cyril Collard, Marlon Riggs, Rosa von Praunheim, Keith Haring,

Peter Friedman,

to discredit

and hu-

works that constitute

and Tom Joslin, as well as many oth-

have been calling the life-image. 1 will end this essay with a snapshot of such
experimentations.

Sustained experimentations

of an exponential

leap in

everywhere, and especially of the most

life processes, namely, of those rwo poles in

In the I993 documentary Silverlake Life: The Vlew from Here, Tom Joslin pitilessly records the devastating impact of AIDS-related conditions on
his life up until and including
death-when

the instant immediately

his naked, emaciated,

foJJowing his own

ravaged body is exposed to the impas-

sive gaze of the camera in a stunning

and paradoxical

display of what Fou-

the exercise of power over life that Foucault had identified as the anatorno-

cault might have called care of the self Here, 1 am concerned

politics of the human body and the bio-politics

specific sequence,

the AIDS pandemic

of the population,

has made virtually indistinguishable

The spectacle of AIDS emerged as an intensification

marked the bio-polirical

and that

from each other.

of spectacular

logic: it

turn of the spectacle. But if the spectacle of AIDS

could mark such an exponential

with what I

when the spectacle

This is to say that the spectacle

and constitutive

likes of Derek Jarman,

Our sensorium

Throughout

The AIDS pandemic

had come most intensely under attack, and hence also with the perfect opportunity

of life that have been saturating

of the AIDS pandemic.

ers, produced

miliate the political energies of that historical moment

leap in the representational

logic of the

spectacle, that was so not only because the AIDS pandemic was seized as the

with one

which takes place toward the end of the documentary,

lasts approximately

two minutes

shots. The sequence

unfolds according

and six seconds, and consists of thirteen

to a seemingly

logic: the shots follow one another

mediately apparent

der; they appear and disappear

with no self-evident

random

or not im-

in no apparent

or-

relation either to the

preceding ones or to the succeeding ones. It is only well into the sequence

perfect chance for a vicious backlash against the 1960s but also because the

rhar one may infer that the rhin thread holding the shors together visually

AIDS pandemic

is the Silver Lake neighborhood

was immediately

understood

in its own right to such a representational

as posing a dangerous

logic. Another

threat

and complemen-

of]oslin's apartment.
borhood functions

point out that the spectacle spectacularizes

unWitting yet undisputed

its representational

that which has the most poten-

logic, or, which is to say the same

thing, that which harbors the most potential

for the emergence

image. AIDS and its suffering had to be spectacularized

the threats it posed to dominant

at all costs because

forms of represenration-and

all to scienrific and medical representation-were

of the life-

bound

not least of
to gener:lte new

images that might challenge and evade the logic of the spectacle altogether.

in Los Angeles as viewed from the terrace

(The retroactive realizarion that the Silver Lake neigh-

rary way of telling the story of the spectacle of AIDS, in fact, would be to
tial to undermine

to

since the very

critiques,

"expression" as distinct yet indiscernible

painters, novelists, and poets attempted

is, utterly rei-

fied-images

such as his related attempts

but

extract the life-image from the viciously stcreotyped_that

beginning

as radically different from "copy" in

nor only as a

It is deep from within the spectacle of AIDS that a number of filmmak-

works that appeared between 1967 and

the first appendix

.\trike against the life-image and its future possibilities.

ers, video artists, photographers,

Society of the Spectacle and to Deleuze's

a concept of "simulacrum"

r F E _ I MAG

backlash against past and present critiques of representation

also as a preemptive

congruent

more implicit yet no less powerful

T Ii E

16,

1969.15 (1 am referring to Debord's

to produce

SON

In this sense, the spectacle of AIDS needs to be understood

around

1968, and, on the other hand, the spectacle of AIDS that unfolded
of the deployrnenr

SE

on the

as the cement of the whole sequence-and

protagonist_is

hence as its

crucially enabled by the strategic

inclusion of street signs, revealing that the scene takes place on Silver Lake
Boulevard, in the second, fifth, and tenth shots.) Rarely has a camcra been
ar once so distracted
shot, one is presented

and so focllsed, so scattered

and so keen: shot after

with now one view, now another,

[!Cet, now yet another, of the area surrounding

now one more

the terrace from which the

camera is zooming in Onto the familiar world of the neighborhood,

raking it apart and purring

at once

it back together inro a series of discrete yet ir-

,
r"

~,

CE S ARE

164

CAS

THREE

A R I N 0

reparably inseparable images. Or-to

has nothing

pur it differently-each

of that most aleatory yet most poignant

reverberations
and ontological

of signifiers: Silucrlal Life-whose

are most intensely felt perhaps in the voice-over. 'l hc scopic

and epistemological
patchwork

of these shots

or vcry little to do with any of the others, but they all partake

of Silver Lake slowly take shape in front of one's eyes, Joslin

re-animated,

sonic shadow-land

THE

LIFE-IMAGE

Ozu that Deleuz.e finds some of the first and paradigmatic

still lifes, which-much
neighborhood-always
Deleuze writes:

like Joslin's panoramic

portray the quotidian,

examples of such

snapshots

vital, and clear-and

at times trailing off into the

of whispers. This is what he tells us:

however,

do more than this: in them,

asks: "Do you hear that industrial sound in the background?"

more."

simultaneous

To put it quickly and all at once: in this complex sequence, we witness the
time-image giving rise to the life-image.
Let us now retrace our steps through
first ten of the thirteen
1.

the "banal."

The still life is time, for everything that changes is in time, but time does
not itself change, it could itself change only in another time, indefinitely ... Ozu's still lifes endure, have a duration, over ten seconds of [a]
vase: this duration of the vase is precisely the representation of that which
endures, through the succession of changing stares.!?
Joslin's time-images,

Silver Lake in slow motion.

The

shots of this sequence are steeped in the world of

as they exhibit five of its most crucial and defining features.

In each of these shots, on the one hand, there is some-often

mal-movement

of the familiar

the "ordinary,"

What is this that passes before my eyes every day? I spend most of my time
looking, seeing. Just watching ... this strange thing pass in front of me.
I am not much of a participant in life any more. I am a distant viewer.
Just watching it all pass by, knowing that. , . I am not going to have that
much longer to keep ... my eye on the ... on the prize. Do you hear that
industrial sound in the background? Another big dumpster is being pulled
up, someone re-building a house, more trash going to some dump that
doesn't have room for it, on a freeway that's full of cars. This civilization is
so strange. I've never felt much a pan of it. I think being gay separates you
a little. Certainly having AIDS and ... [almost laughing] being a walking
dead!-if you will-separates
one from the everyday world. [Singing to the
tune of Mister Rogers'Neighborhoods theme song:] It's a beautiful day in the
neighborhood!" It really is a beautiful day, by the way: wonderful sun, not
too hot, not too cold, new breeze. I don't know what anybody could ask for

the time-image,

165

aimlessness of the images, in fact, is echoed in the aural

aimlessness ofJoslin's words: as one watches such a singular

speaks in a tone of voice that is at times exhausted, at times halting, at times

suddenly

THESES

mini-

within the frame (such as a sparrow fluttering over a stop-

light, a car speeding by, a tarpaulin

hand, the hand-held

agitated by the wind), and, on the other

video camera is almost always completely

times wavering almost imperceptibly,

as if swaying under that very wind

that we see blowing in the shots themselves).

bear a close family resemblance

still (or at

These shots, in other words,

to those cinematic

identifies as the primal scene of the time-image.

still lifes that Dclcuzc

It is in the films ofYasujiro

endures is not merely a trash bin, a lamppost,

fragmented

cityscape. As the voice-over reveals to us, what endures against

all odds here is above all a life-Joslin's

dures ...

that which

a street sign, a building,

through

own life, which

indeed

"en-

the succession of changing states." Here, thus, one may

catch already a glimpse of what is to follow the first ten shots, as the lifeimage is heard buried alive and latent at the very heart of the time-image.
2.

Throughout

from one another:

this sequence,

sound and image are radically disjoined

each refers to the other in syncopation,

indirectly, if at all. Consider,

for example, a particularly

the eighth shot. As the image is saturated

stract, silvery, shimmering,

undulating

with the question,

in its entirety

re-building

by the nearly abAnd, indeed,

one does hear the sound of a revving en-

truck: "Another big dumpster

a house." Whereas

shot,

expanse of the lake, the voice-over

gine, which the voice-over proceeds immediately

of a dumpster

elliptically and

multilayered

to identify as the sound

is being pulled up, someone

one does hear the sound of the dumpster

truck, however, the truck itself does not enter the frame and hence the field
of vision, and, in fact, will remain forever in the our-or-field.
one does not see the house that is being rebuilt-nor,
one hear the presumably

ongoing construction

Moreover,

for that matter, does

work-there

from where the

dumpster is being pulled up. It is only later, in the tenth shot, that one does
see a building
has departed,

under construction:

by then, however, the dumpster

matters. For Deleuze, such complex disjunctions

constitute

truck

and the voice-over has gone on to relating and indexing other

one of the fundamental

3 Strip malls, construction

characteristics
sites, run-down

empty street after empty street, the beautiful

between sound and image

of the time-image.2o
buildings,
desolation

busy freeways,
of metropolitan

:.',

166

CE

s ARE

CAS A R I

xa
TH R E E THE

structures

...

'VC'hatunravels throughout

fers to as espace-quelconque, "whatever-space":

ban space-either

fragmented

cinema of Italian Neorealisrn,

direct insertion

To recapitulate:

most iconically by the

draws attention

must be driv-

in the presence of the people-from

precisely in drawing attention

knowing

.I

\~.1
~t\~\Z

political

import

to the conspicuous

of post-war

consists "not ...

absence of the people, in

of the cinema of the time-image

of addressing a people, which is presupposed

to the invention

In this

in

fact, to show that the people are missing cannot but also refer mournfully

to

the myriads of untimely and avoidable deaths as well as envision the coming
of a world without AIDS.

5. Deleuze remarks repeatedly

image corresponds
tivity. The manifold
mechanization
saturation
through
zation,
namely,

! . .t.,

of everyday life, automatization

of lived environment

n.~I('~O,

II<> t

without

'

'08111

of industrial

myriad forms of telecommunication-result

of the relation

between

knowing

the increasing

by the image, mediation

or, at times, even in the breakdown,

longer even experiences

..'"

of a new form of subjec-

processes of modernization-including

longer knows what perceptions

~ fl

on the fact that the cinema of the time-

to and records the emergence

perception
have triggered

such actions

production,
of experience

in the problernati-

of the sensory-motor
and action:

link,

the subject

its actions,

no

and hence no

as its own, that is, the subject acts

why; or, conversely,

the subject no longer knows how

to act on the basis of what it perceives,

no longer knows how to react

11'\

to a given situation.
time-image

why for Deleuze

is a cinema of entranced

ema populated
damaged

This explains

seers, observers,

the cinema
sleepwalkers:

of the
a cin-

by subjects who largely watch, stare, and bear witness to

life, to events so unbearable

as to be paralyzingY

And this is

precisely what Joslin's voice tells us during these first ten shots: he no lon-

under the sign of the time-image,

however, a
of which

see the shadow of the

recording apparatus,

assemblage of Joslin's

which consists of an indivisible

can be no distinction

video camera: in the shadow, they are one; there

between the two. After having expressed time in im-

age after image, the recording apparatus

already there,

of a people" to come. Such words reso-

of time

is Significantly longer than all the preceding oneS-we

body and his prosthetic

for Deleuze

nate all the more urgently here: in the context of the AIDS pandemic,

community

the subject

to the passing of time, that indexes the emergence

this sequence have unraveled

cinema lies

how to show that the people are that which is missing.

II but of contributing

1J0-

of that which endures, disjuncthe missing people,

singular event takes place: in the eleventh and twelfth shots-each

Sergei

22

sense, the political vocation

in

in the shot itself, that makes time visible as such. After the first ten shots of

in and out of the frame. For Deleuze, whereas the primary political import
to Frank Capra-the

16

traces that time leaves on the image, as well as the features of an image that

absence in these images is the human

ing all these cars, but we don't really see them clearly, as they whiz by rapidly

Eisenstein

as ,witness of life rather than as agent in life: such are at once the palpable

of time in the image."

cinema consisted

Still life as representation

rion of sound and image, whatever-space,

and which enables, among other things, the

form: there are no people here. One supposes that somebody

of pre-war

L I F E - I MAC

or vacuolized and deserted,

was captured

4. Possibly the most conspicuous

THE

ger acts-rarher,
he sits, stares, and records; he no longer participates
life-he
only looks at it from afar.

a certain type of post-war ur-

and disconnected

as well as always disorienting-which

SES 0 ~

this sequence is what Deleuze re-

its own power to record; it has nothing

has nothing

else left to record but

left to do but to enfold over itself,

to turn Onto itself, or, more precisely, to turn to its incorporeal,

immate-

rial, non-present existence-that

is, to its negative, to its shadow. Such is t .
the life-ima e: it does not merely re resent bod, matter, life er se;~;:
'7" V\I

e: ....:!,{

presses rather, a ure otential to be, to act, to record, to

body's ubiquitous shadow-image. If-as Deleuze claims-the

roduce as the /I .
f j..t
time-image

------------

-.

...

ex ress'
e absolute b activatin an infinite rela between the virtual and the actual, the life-image emerges from the time-image by expr~sin

the pow;(~f~

Owers or
be or to act.

absolute,

oteotials: the
24

or, rather, its two distinct

Here, the first potential

which the recording

et indiscernible

oteotial to think or to know and the

apparatus

corresponds

otential to

to the eleventh shot, in

records its power to know by recording

its

own shadow: here, in other words, the recording apparatus records the trace
of its Own recording, records the negative of itself in the process of knowing .
The second potential
ing apparatus

corresponds

to the twelfth shot, in which the record-

records its power to act by recording

its own moving hand

and its Own singing voice. In this last singular shadow, we see a body on
the verge of disappearance,

a life on the brink of death, asking itself what

more it can do. What this body can do is to turn a silly song and a campy
wave of the hand seamlessly into an arresting gesture of joyous valediction:
index finger raised pointing

to an absolute our-of-field,

waving good-bye to

the world and to life itself, this body basks COntent in the bright light of a
beautiful day, and expresses its power [0 be to the very end.

,~o~