Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

297 Pages·2001·3.63 MB·English

by  D. N.Rodowick

READING THE FIGURAL,
or, Philosophy after the New Media
D. N. Rodowick
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3 READING THE FIGURAL,
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or,PhilosophyaftertheNewMedia

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63 Post-ContemporaryInterventions
SeriesEditors:StanleyFish&FredricJameson

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6 or, Philosophy after the New Media D. N. Rodowick
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS DURHAM & LONDON 2001

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©DukeUniversityPress Allrightsreserved
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34 Preface/ix
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Acknowledgments/xvii
One PresentingtheFigural/
TheIdeaoftheFigural/
Lyotard’sLeapintotheVoid:
TheAestheticbeforetheNewMedia/
ParadoxesoftheVisual,or
PhilosophyaftertheNewMedia/
Two ReadingtheFigural/
RehearsingtheFigural/
FoucaultthroughDeleuze,or
TheDiagrammaticsofPower/
ReadingtheFigural/
TheEndofModernism/
Three TheFigureandtheText/
FilmandtheSceneofWriting/
‘‘Withdreamsdisplacedintoaforestofscript’’/
Hieroglyphics,Montage,Enunciation/

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AL Four TheEndsoftheAesthetic/
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6 Six AGenealogyofTime/
TwoStoriesof/
TwoAudiovisualRegimes:
TheMovement-ImageandTime-Image/
TheEndsoftheDialecticandtheReturn
ofHistory:HegelandNietzsche/
Genealogy,Countermemory,Event/
Seven AnUncertainUtopia—DigitalCulture/
AnImageofTechnologicalAbundance/
ADigressiononPostmodernism/
ThreeQuestionsconcerningDigitalCulture/
AnImpossibleIdealofPower/
Notes/
Bibliography/
Index/

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34 ‘‘Agoodbook,’’writesJean-FrançoisLyotardinDiscours,figure,‘‘would
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be one where linguistic time (the time of signification and of read-
ing) would itself be deconstructed: that the readercould start wher-
ever s/hewishes and in whateverorder, a book for grazing’’ (; my
translation).LikeLyotard’sDiscours,figure,thisisnotagoodbook,an
artist’sbook,butratherabookofphilosophythatstilldreamsofsigni-
fication.Butperhapsphilosophycanoperateitsownfiguraldiscourse:
that of the rhizome. In this book, the figural functions as a nomadic
conceptcirculatingbyknight’smovesamongsevenessayswhilemu-
tatinginitsformsanddimensionsthroughitsencounterswithdiverse
philosophers.Mostoftheessaysincludedherehaveappearedinsome
publishedform,thoughallhavebeenrewrittenandmostexpandedto
bringforwardtheirconceptuallinks.Theselinksaredetachable,how-
ever. The organization of the book is somewhat nonlinear, and the
orderingofchaptersisnonchronological,thoughnotrandom.Arhi-
zome, then, and not a book; each chapter may be read out of order,
and perhaps readers will want to find theirown paths. Consider the
following,then,asonemapforreadingthefigural.
Althoughtheseessayswerewrittenoveraperiodofseventeenyears,
they emerged from a common research project responding to what
was, for me, a fundamental intuition. Although I am a child of the
seventies, and thus of a visual semiology inspired by the linguistics
of Ferdinand de Saussure, a form of structural analysis inspired by
Claude Lévi-Strauss, and a theory of ideology forwarded by Screen,
my encounters with deconstruction and its critique of logocentrism
convincedmeearlyonthatalinguisticallyinspiredsemiologywasin-

adequateforthestudyofvisualculture.Moreover,withtheexplosive
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