The image in French philosophy / / Temenuga Trifonova.

• Superior document: Consciousness, literature & the arts ; 5
• Author: Trifonova, Temenuga.
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Consciousness, literature & the arts ; 5.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (317 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The Image in French Philosophy challenges dominant interpretations of Bergson, Sartre, Lyotard, Baudrillard and Deleuze by arguing that their philosophy was not a critique but a revival of metaphysics as a thinking pertaining to impersonal forces and distinguished by an aversion to subjectivity and an aversion of the philosophical gaze away from the discourse of vision, and thus away from the image. Insofar as the image was part of the discourse of subjectivity/representation, getting rid of the subject involved smuggling the concept of the image out of the discourse of subjectivity/representation into a newly revived and ethically flavored metaphysical discourse—a metaphysics of immanence, which was more interested in consciousness rather than subjectivity, in the inhuman rather than the human, in the virtual rather than the real, in Time rather than temporalization, in Memory rather than memory-images, in Imagination rather than images, in sum, in impersonal forces, de-personalizing experiences, states of dis-embodiment characterized by the breaking down of sensory-motor schemata (Bergson’s pure memory, Sartre’s image-consciousness, Deleuze’s time-image) or, more generally, in that which remains beyond representation id est beyond subjectivity (Lyotard’s sublime, Baudrillard’s fatal object). The book would be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, aesthetics, and film theory.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- The New Metaphysics of Immanence -- Bergson’s Matter-Image: The Degradation of the Impersonal -- Sartre’s Image-Consciousness: The Allergic Reaction to Matter -- Lyotard’s Sublime: The Ontologization of the Image -- Baudrillard’s Simulacrum: The End of Visibility -- Deleuze’s Time-Image: Getting Rid of Ourselves -- Imaginary Time -- Bibliography -- Index.