Material Aspects of Subjectivity—A Deleuzian Reading of Images of the Flesh

Abstract

In this essay I investigate how Deleuze assigns a place to the body in relation to thinking and to questions of subjectivity. I situate the body on the plane of immanence, the plane of images, and ask in what ways the tool box of Deleuzian concepts can be used to analyze images in respect to subjectivity and what differences these tools can make perceptible. In his cinema books, The Movement‐Image and The Time‐Image, Deleuze develops Bergson's categories of perception: the different types of movement‐images (such as the perception‐image, action‐image, affection‐image) and time‐images (such as the recollection‐image, and the crystal‐image). I look at four films from the 1970s and early 1980s in which a central place is occupied by the body, but especially the flesh, which is even more material: Michael Crichton's Coma (1978), Paul Verhoeven's The Fourth Man (1983), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year with Thirteen Moons (1978) and Djibril Diop Mambety's Touki Bouki (1973). The body and the images of the flesh in these films are nevertheless very different; as images they constitute quite different subjectivities, or aspects of subjectivity. With the help of Deleuze's image‐categories I attempt to establish these differences. I propose a model for analyzing in a Deleuzian spirit by looking at the different assemblages formed by these films. On the horizontal axis of the assemblages I look at the forms of content and forms of expression, for which I will refer to the immanent concepts of images of the cinema books. On the vertical axis I look at the (re)territorial and deterritorial lines of the different films, for which I will refer to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus.