i think this notion of "remanences" corresponds in foucault to what he
calls "l'evenementiel" --the "event", which he discusses in his
article Theatrum Philosophicum in relation to Deleuze's Logic of the
Sense... and Difference and Repetition... For myself, I am inclined to
use the concept not so much independently from what Foucault
understood of it, but at any rate in direct connection to "documentary
film" (the "trace", not only the "representation" of "reality") about
which i am still working... there is, as i have already said, a
certain philosophical dimension of "remanescence": evident in Spinoza
--an image is a "trace" of a body affecting another body... or,
without this, even History (in Hegelian sense) could never be
possible... i don't care whether "remanences" are corporeal or
"incorporeal" (like would say a Stoician), but they are part of my
conceptual toolkit when I watch now --and "read"-- Godard's
"Histoire(s) du cinéma"... remanence(s) are always to be used in
plural... especially in physics, since they are measured as a
spectrum, a plurality of magnetic forces, and nhot simply as
"things"... in other words, they are already images, once identified
by Bergson as matter itself in his famous work Matter and Memory...
And in Spinozist philosophy (Deleuze knew it well, while Foucault
never referred to it, even in his Les Mots et les Choses (The Order of
Things, a title i believe he accepted since his knowledge of English
was bad, like me)--yes, in Spinoza's philosophy an "image" can only be
"removed" or "suppressed" by another image... but they can always be
"attached" (association) to a different "affect" --an image which can
cause grief could be attached to an idea which can create not a
sentiment of sorrow, but to a joy... at any rate, remanence as image
is never neutral, except as a transition stage.
And after all, in our cultures, what we do with "remnants"? --relics,
cults, archeological ruins, our past images and our dead... Foucault's
"heterotopic" treatment of the "cemetery" is essential... and for the
time being we need not to go into the depths of the anthropological
conception of the "sacred", of the "dead" and of "violence" of René
Girard...
Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinéma" (Hi(s)tories of Cinema???) , which, i
believe, was able to invent a new kind of image-sound, seems to me the
best "explication" (not explanation but "explicatio" in Latin) of the
phenomenon of "remanance"... after all, we have an entire century
"filmed", now in television, which is clearly both the anti-thesis and
the "child" of cinema... and cinema was able "to call things by their
own names", which is something quite difficult in "language", perhaps
with the exception of good poetry... there is something essentially
Foucaldian in Godard's approach, but of Foucault's "eventalization"
rather than "archeology": like the first theoreticians of cinema, he
assumes that montage is the essence of cinema (Griffith, Eisenstein
and Vertov)... or cinema did it badly in spite of the efforts of great
filmmakers of the montage... or montage was something beyond
cinematography --everything is montage in our life: working is montage
(since Taylorism and in a different manner, today in the so-called
"post-Fordist" reorganization of labour processes); art tends to
become montage (collage and installation... and even "performances"),
metropolis is a montage, industries, softwares and hardwares... all
are functioning as montage(s)... Even countries today are "mounted" in
order to establish Europe... Or, cinematography, whose "essence" is
montage, failed to elaborate it to lend it to all these other domains
(as a way of thinking)... Godard says that when a physician calls a
set of "symptoms" (images in presence) as "sinusitis", this is already
"montage"...
Hence there should be "montage-thought" and a "thought-montage" today,
appropriate to our conditions and experiences... When in one of his
excellent texts Foucault recalled the famous "this is not a pipe"
picture of Magritte, he was in fact doing nothing less or more than a
"montage"... the paradox established with the tension between the
image and the text (signifier and signified) is something "mounted"
elsewhere, say in an educational setting where the teacher is supposed
to teach the pupils "this is a pipe... father has a pipe... this is a
jacket... this is... etc."... hence for Foucault a kind of
"hypocrisy", characteristic of our modernity arises: we have a judge,
before a prison, saying "this is not a prison... we are not
punishing... this is only a therapy... to restore the convict to
social life..."... so why there is need for "hospitals" as
"therapeutic institutions"? and again, hospitals for doctors and
others, working there is nothing but a prison, or a workplace... just
as factories can simulate prisons, military barracks, and even
"cities"... so, it is not easy to define our metropolitan life as a
"domain of freedom"... just since it is a "domain"...
Remanescences are then images so powerful that their real extinction
is difficult... we need to create new images to be attached to new
affects...
ulus bake
calls "l'evenementiel" --the "event", which he discusses in his
article Theatrum Philosophicum in relation to Deleuze's Logic of the
Sense... and Difference and Repetition... For myself, I am inclined to
use the concept not so much independently from what Foucault
understood of it, but at any rate in direct connection to "documentary
film" (the "trace", not only the "representation" of "reality") about
which i am still working... there is, as i have already said, a
certain philosophical dimension of "remanescence": evident in Spinoza
--an image is a "trace" of a body affecting another body... or,
without this, even History (in Hegelian sense) could never be
possible... i don't care whether "remanences" are corporeal or
"incorporeal" (like would say a Stoician), but they are part of my
conceptual toolkit when I watch now --and "read"-- Godard's
"Histoire(s) du cinéma"... remanence(s) are always to be used in
plural... especially in physics, since they are measured as a
spectrum, a plurality of magnetic forces, and nhot simply as
"things"... in other words, they are already images, once identified
by Bergson as matter itself in his famous work Matter and Memory...
And in Spinozist philosophy (Deleuze knew it well, while Foucault
never referred to it, even in his Les Mots et les Choses (The Order of
Things, a title i believe he accepted since his knowledge of English
was bad, like me)--yes, in Spinoza's philosophy an "image" can only be
"removed" or "suppressed" by another image... but they can always be
"attached" (association) to a different "affect" --an image which can
cause grief could be attached to an idea which can create not a
sentiment of sorrow, but to a joy... at any rate, remanence as image
is never neutral, except as a transition stage.
And after all, in our cultures, what we do with "remnants"? --relics,
cults, archeological ruins, our past images and our dead... Foucault's
"heterotopic" treatment of the "cemetery" is essential... and for the
time being we need not to go into the depths of the anthropological
conception of the "sacred", of the "dead" and of "violence" of René
Girard...
Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinéma" (Hi(s)tories of Cinema???) , which, i
believe, was able to invent a new kind of image-sound, seems to me the
best "explication" (not explanation but "explicatio" in Latin) of the
phenomenon of "remanance"... after all, we have an entire century
"filmed", now in television, which is clearly both the anti-thesis and
the "child" of cinema... and cinema was able "to call things by their
own names", which is something quite difficult in "language", perhaps
with the exception of good poetry... there is something essentially
Foucaldian in Godard's approach, but of Foucault's "eventalization"
rather than "archeology": like the first theoreticians of cinema, he
assumes that montage is the essence of cinema (Griffith, Eisenstein
and Vertov)... or cinema did it badly in spite of the efforts of great
filmmakers of the montage... or montage was something beyond
cinematography --everything is montage in our life: working is montage
(since Taylorism and in a different manner, today in the so-called
"post-Fordist" reorganization of labour processes); art tends to
become montage (collage and installation... and even "performances"),
metropolis is a montage, industries, softwares and hardwares... all
are functioning as montage(s)... Even countries today are "mounted" in
order to establish Europe... Or, cinematography, whose "essence" is
montage, failed to elaborate it to lend it to all these other domains
(as a way of thinking)... Godard says that when a physician calls a
set of "symptoms" (images in presence) as "sinusitis", this is already
"montage"...
Hence there should be "montage-thought" and a "thought-montage" today,
appropriate to our conditions and experiences... When in one of his
excellent texts Foucault recalled the famous "this is not a pipe"
picture of Magritte, he was in fact doing nothing less or more than a
"montage"... the paradox established with the tension between the
image and the text (signifier and signified) is something "mounted"
elsewhere, say in an educational setting where the teacher is supposed
to teach the pupils "this is a pipe... father has a pipe... this is a
jacket... this is... etc."... hence for Foucault a kind of
"hypocrisy", characteristic of our modernity arises: we have a judge,
before a prison, saying "this is not a prison... we are not
punishing... this is only a therapy... to restore the convict to
social life..."... so why there is need for "hospitals" as
"therapeutic institutions"? and again, hospitals for doctors and
others, working there is nothing but a prison, or a workplace... just
as factories can simulate prisons, military barracks, and even
"cities"... so, it is not easy to define our metropolitan life as a
"domain of freedom"... just since it is a "domain"...
Remanescences are then images so powerful that their real extinction
is difficult... we need to create new images to be attached to new
affects...
ulus bake