Admission requirements
Admission to this course is restricted to:
BA students in Filosofie, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including History of Modern Philosophy, Cultuurfilosofie, Continentale filosofie, Philosophy of Mind.
BA students in Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including World Philosophies: Modern Europe, Philosophy of Culture, Concepts of Selfhood, and at least one of the courses World Philosophies: China, World Philosophies: India, World Philosophies: Africa, World Philosophies: Middle East.
Pre-master’s students in Philosophy who are in possession of an admission statement and who have to complete an advanced seminar, to be selected from package A.
Description
Time, image, and cinema in the works of Bergson, Deleuze, and Rancière
This course delves into an elusive problem that has been a central concern in 20th-century French philosophy: the problem of time and its connection to the image. To elucidate and scrutinize this problem, French philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Rancière have turned to the ‘moving pictures’, or the cinema. The example of cinema allows these philosophers to position themselves vis-à-vis the Kantian critique of the conventional understanding of time.
As is widely known, Immanuel Kant was one of the first to fundamentally challenge the traditional tendency to subordinate time to movement. In his view, time should be comprehended as a pure and empty form in which all changes and all movements take place. Following Kant’s revolution, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the existence of an eternal, atemporal realm that provides a fixed and external measure of truth, thereby precipitating a crisis of truth, the consequences of which are still ongoing.
In this course, we will analyze how Bergson, Deleuze, and Rancière take up the Kantian challenge and relate it to one of the most significant innovations of the 20th century, the cinema.
Our main investigation will consist of staging a ‘conversation’ between Deleuze and Bergson, centered on the problem of the image and its relationship with time. Three central texts will be examined in this process. We will utilize Deleuze’s lucid and highly illuminating early work Bergsonism (Le Bergsonisme, 1966) to initiate the discussion, starting with an explanation of Bergson’s method of intuition.
Subsequently, we will analyze Bergson’s Matter and Memory (Matière et mémoire), which was intended as a response to the age-old problem of the connection between matter and spirit.
However, rather than approaching it from this perspective, we will concentrate on the problem of time and its connection to the image. Thus, we will not interpret Matter and Memory on its own terms, but will continually put it into discussion with Deleuze’s works. To this end, we will develop close readings of the remaining chapters of Bergsonism (focusing on multiplicity and memory) and of a few brief selections from his more complex and challenging books on cinema, namely Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (Cinéma I: L’image-mouvement) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Cinéma II: L’image-temps).
By doing so, we will explore Bergson’s philosophy as an interplay between three interrelated systems:
- The plane of matter.
- The center of indetermination. This is the basis of what Deleuze calls the movement-image.
- The cone of memory. This is the basis of what Deleuze calls the time-image.
By way of conclusion, we will examine a significant afterthought that enables us to assess the implications of the concept of time resulting from the interaction between Deleuze and Bergson. Our focus will be on the criticisms of Jacques Rancière, who disputes Deleuze’s assertion that there is a fundamental distinction between the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image’ and instead contends that their relationship should be understood dialectically.
We will demonstrate that Rancière’s objections can only be sustained by disregarding the Bergsonian context of Deleuze’s project and by reducing the ontological distinction between the movement- and the time-image to a historical distinction. Despite the flaws in Rancière’s critique, it will allow us to evaluate the implications of the Deleuze-Bergson encounter for our understanding of the nature of time, the conception of the image, and the role of cinema.
Course objectives
This course aims to provide students with a clear view of:
the different ways in which creative re-interpretations of predecessors and contemporaries can generate new philosophical ideas;
the new conception of time that is engendered through this practice in a specific trajectory in 20th-century French philosophy;
the rationale behind this conception of time.
Students who successfully complete the course will have a good understanding of:
the way in which Deleuze derives his own philosophy of time from the earlier insights of Bergson and illustrates it with the help of the cinema;
the twists and turns in this reshaping of Bergson’s conception of time;
the different ways in which these insights can be assessed depending on their historical and intellectual context.
Timetable
The timetables are available through MyTimetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminars.
Class attendance is required.
Assessment method
Assessment
Research project;
Final essay (3.500 words).
Non-graded practical exercises:
Each student has to prepare a set of comments/questions for at least one of the seminars.
Each student has to hand in a proposal for the final essay and discuss it in smaller groups.
These two exercises will not be graded, but are required for getting admission to the exam (final paper).
Weighing
Research project (20%);
Final essay (80%).
The final mark for the course is established by determination of the weighted average of the two subtests.
Resit
The resit consists of one examination for all parts at once (100%), consisting of an essay of 5,000 words. The mark for the resit will replace all previously earned marks for subtests. No separate resits will be offered for subtest. Class participation is required for taking the resit. Students who have obtained a satisfactory grade for the first examination cannot take the resit.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Selections from Deleuze’s Le Bergsonisme (Bergsonism);
Selections from Deleuze’s Différence et répétition (Difference and Repetition);
Selections from Deleuze’s Cinéma I: L’image-mouvement (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image);
Selections from Deleuze’s Cinéma II: L’image-temps (Cinema 2: The Time-Image);
Selections from Bergson’s Key Writings. (Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Ó Maoilearca);
Selections from Bergson’s Matière et mémoire (Matter and Memory);
Selections from Rancière’s La fable cinématographique (Film Fables);
Selected secondary material.
During the seminars, we will make use of the English translations of these sources, which can be easily procured. Students are permitted to utilize the French original or any other translation of their choosing; however, during the discussion, we will primarily reference the English edition (excluding certain obscure passages that warrant the use of the original French).
The selected texts will be distributed or can be accessed online via the library.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudymap is not possible for this course. Students are requested to submit their preferences for the third-year electives by means of an online registration form. They will receive the instruction and online registration form by email (uMail account); in June for courses scheduled in semester 1, and in December for courses scheduled in semester 2. Registration in uSis will be taken care of by the Education Administration Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga.
Remarks
Not applicable.