Percepts, affects, clinamen: Alienation and entanglement in What Time Is It There? (2001)

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point an uncanny dialectics of alienation, desire and connection that permeates Tsai Ming-liang’s oeuvre. Through approaching the non-intersecting parallel narratives in What Time Is It There? (2001) with the Epicurean and Lucretian notion of clinamen and the Deleuzian concepts of any-space-whatevers, percepts and affects, this article explores the relation between non-intersecting parallel spaces and times and a liminal, spectral cinematic space and time that is created by moving images themselves, which makes the dialectics of alienation and connection possible. This article argues that What Time involves Tsai’s meta-cinematic approach to cinema’s potentiality that enables both characters and spectators to engage directly with moving images and reimagine the world through its spectrality and non-human perception.