Agustin Zarzosa - SUNY: Purchase College (original) (raw)
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Papers by Agustin Zarzosa
The article offers a survey of Deleuze's interest in images throughout his career. It suggests th... more The article offers a survey of Deleuze's interest in images throughout his career. It suggests that his enduring fascination with time is the driving force behind his relatively late preoccupation with images, which started with an essay on Lucretius, followed by his book on Bacon's paintings, his two famous books on the cinema and a brief piece on Beckett's TVplays. During the ten years of not discussing time at all, time has changed the medium of reflection: Deleuze stops conceiving time-as most structuralists do-as infinite, onedirectional successiveness, similar to how utterances work. After the gap years, time gets involved in an "evental logic" that is designed after the role-model of images. From now on, time incorporates divergent flight lines (to a past, that never existed, to a future, that will never come true etc.). Far from being only chronological, time becomes a code name for a "reservoir" of simultaneity that undermines and overrides the actual process of sensemaking through the consecutive use of words. Here, the visible and the utterable step in: as the graphic "counter-realization" of philosophical problems that have remained unsolved since Kant linked the sublime to a conflict between successive apprehension and its simultaneous comprehension. Mirjam Schaub explains why the moving image helps to understand the troubling effects of this discrepancy: Through Nouvelle Vague techniques such as false connections, boredom or ostentatious sight-and-sound-gaps it becomes obvious, that time remains a disruptive force. For Deleuze the asynchronical use of sight and sound in film reveals the inner logic of time as universal differentiator. While the utterable naturally generates contractions (such as A and Non-A cannot exist simultaneously), the visible in film easily embraces divergent events (such as Citizen Kane being old in the foreground and young in the background). What is to be believed? The moving-image as a "fusion of the tear" is celebrated as a process of exchange between intertwined time lines, virtual and actual images that become mutual look-alikes.
Gilles Deleuze explains the crisis of the movement-image and the ad-vent of the time-image as res... more Gilles Deleuze explains the crisis of the movement-image and the ad-vent of the time-image as results of World War II, the unsteadiness of the American dream, the new consciousness of minorities, and the influence of literary modes of narration on the cinema. This formulation of the time-image as a response to historical events obscures Deleuze s own insight that the time-image already works within the movement-image. In the pref-ace to the English edition of Cinema 2, Deleuze suggests that we look in silent cinema for a time-image that has always been breaking through, holding back or encompassing the movement-image. 1 Following this second formulation, I argue that a certain kind of time-image precedes and enables the movement-image. I call such image transcendental (in a Kantian sense) because its characteristic forking produces the two poles of the movement-image: the empirical (appearances) and the metaphysical (truth).
Melodrama and the Modes of the World
Discourse, 2010
... While Silvano (Pedro Infante) runs the family ranch, Cruz, his father, gets drunk and gambles... more ... While Silvano (Pedro Infante) runs the family ranch, Cruz, his father, gets drunk and gambles. ... After having been absent for two days and suffered gambling losses, Cruz returns home while his wife, Bibiana (Inés Íñiguez) and Silvano are having lunch. ...
The Case and its Modes
Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2012
Testo a Fronte, 2020
An adaptation of Naguib Mahbouz’s 1949 novel, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, Arturo ... more An adaptation of Naguib Mahbouz’s 1949 novel, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, Arturo Ripstein, 1993) transposes the plot of a family melodrama from Cairo during the late thirties to Mexico City during the early nineties. Why is this Egyptian family melodrama, along with its surprising twists and turns, legible in a Mexican context, fifty years apart? This essay contends that, to address this question, one need not presuppose a persistent melodramatic imagination. What persists across these contexts is the dominance of a market economy, that is, an economy in which money acts not only as a medium of exchange or as a means to store and measure value, but also as the primary vehicle of social mobility. The Egyptian novel and the Mexican film dramatize how the market economy puts pressure on the family unit in two very different contexts. Rather than conceiving of melodrama as a modern form of imagination, I propose a conception of melodrama as a speculative activity in relation to the market economy. Drawing from the myriad senses of the term, I develop a conception of melodramatic speculation that stacks several activities: first, exchange of valuables (things and people) as a means to succeed or survive within the market economy; second, the mirroring of valuables as a means of turning them into images to be reflected upon; and third, reflection on the realm of exchange from a vantage point, considering its nature and guarding its limits.
Angelaki-journal of The Theoretical Humanities, 2012
New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2010
The prevailing understanding of the melodramatic mode distinguishes between melodrama as a social... more The prevailing understanding of the melodramatic mode distinguishes between melodrama as a social sensibility and as an artistic representation. In this traditional model, the melodramatic mode mediates between social experience and artistic representations by inhabiting both of them. This paper argues that these two aspects (social experience and representation) derive from a more fundamental aspect of melodrama, constituted by acts of exchange. I analyze the acts of exchange in two melodramas – The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) and The Story of Adèle H. (François Truffaut, 1975) – explaining how the states of being and representations we associate with melodrama derive from unequal acts of exchange. Melodrama polices the boundary between exchange and the realm that lies beyond exchange, dramatizing the consequences of putting into circulation objects and ideas that should not be assigned an exchange value.
In "From One Image to Another," Jacques Rancière offers one of the most illuminating evaluations ... more In "From One Image to Another," Jacques Rancière offers one of the most illuminating evaluations of Gilles Deleuze's film philosophy. Taken as a whole, the chapter presents a devastating critique of Deleuze's theory of cinema. Rancière offers two distinct arguments: the first one addresses the connection between ontology and history; the second one involves the relationship between theory and its exemplification.
Books by Agustin Zarzosa
The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not... more The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not only as a dramatic genre pervaded by sensationalism, exaggerations, and moral polarities, but also as a cultural imaginary that shapes the emotional experience of modernity, characterized by anxiety, moral confusion, and the dissolution of hierarchy. Despite its usefulness, the notion of mode remains mystifying: What exactly are modes and how do they differ from genres? Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects argues that, whereas genres divide a universe in terms of similarities and differences, modes express or modify an indivisible whole. This study contends that the melodramatic mode is concerned with the expression of the social whole in terms of suffering. Zarzosa explains how melodrama is not a cultural imaginary that proclaims the existence of a defunct moral order in a post-sacred world, but an apparatus that shapes suffering and redistributes its visibility. The moral ideas we associate with melodrama are only a means to achieve this end.
To develop this conception of melodrama, Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television offers a novel conceptualization of the following aspects of melodrama theory: affect, interpretation, exchange, excess, sacrifice, and coincidence. These aspects of melodrama are coupled with the analysis of classic melodramas (Home from the Hill and The Story of Adele H.), contemporary films (The Piano, [Safe], and Year of the Dog), and television series (Torchwood and Lost). Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television provides an essential new look at melodrama and its function in popular culture and media.
Book Reviews by Agustin Zarzosa
The article offers a survey of Deleuze's interest in images throughout his career. It suggests th... more The article offers a survey of Deleuze's interest in images throughout his career. It suggests that his enduring fascination with time is the driving force behind his relatively late preoccupation with images, which started with an essay on Lucretius, followed by his book on Bacon's paintings, his two famous books on the cinema and a brief piece on Beckett's TVplays. During the ten years of not discussing time at all, time has changed the medium of reflection: Deleuze stops conceiving time-as most structuralists do-as infinite, onedirectional successiveness, similar to how utterances work. After the gap years, time gets involved in an "evental logic" that is designed after the role-model of images. From now on, time incorporates divergent flight lines (to a past, that never existed, to a future, that will never come true etc.). Far from being only chronological, time becomes a code name for a "reservoir" of simultaneity that undermines and overrides the actual process of sensemaking through the consecutive use of words. Here, the visible and the utterable step in: as the graphic "counter-realization" of philosophical problems that have remained unsolved since Kant linked the sublime to a conflict between successive apprehension and its simultaneous comprehension. Mirjam Schaub explains why the moving image helps to understand the troubling effects of this discrepancy: Through Nouvelle Vague techniques such as false connections, boredom or ostentatious sight-and-sound-gaps it becomes obvious, that time remains a disruptive force. For Deleuze the asynchronical use of sight and sound in film reveals the inner logic of time as universal differentiator. While the utterable naturally generates contractions (such as A and Non-A cannot exist simultaneously), the visible in film easily embraces divergent events (such as Citizen Kane being old in the foreground and young in the background). What is to be believed? The moving-image as a "fusion of the tear" is celebrated as a process of exchange between intertwined time lines, virtual and actual images that become mutual look-alikes.
Gilles Deleuze explains the crisis of the movement-image and the ad-vent of the time-image as res... more Gilles Deleuze explains the crisis of the movement-image and the ad-vent of the time-image as results of World War II, the unsteadiness of the American dream, the new consciousness of minorities, and the influence of literary modes of narration on the cinema. This formulation of the time-image as a response to historical events obscures Deleuze s own insight that the time-image already works within the movement-image. In the pref-ace to the English edition of Cinema 2, Deleuze suggests that we look in silent cinema for a time-image that has always been breaking through, holding back or encompassing the movement-image. 1 Following this second formulation, I argue that a certain kind of time-image precedes and enables the movement-image. I call such image transcendental (in a Kantian sense) because its characteristic forking produces the two poles of the movement-image: the empirical (appearances) and the metaphysical (truth).
Melodrama and the Modes of the World
Discourse, 2010
... While Silvano (Pedro Infante) runs the family ranch, Cruz, his father, gets drunk and gambles... more ... While Silvano (Pedro Infante) runs the family ranch, Cruz, his father, gets drunk and gambles. ... After having been absent for two days and suffered gambling losses, Cruz returns home while his wife, Bibiana (Inés Íñiguez) and Silvano are having lunch. ...
The Case and its Modes
Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2012
Testo a Fronte, 2020
An adaptation of Naguib Mahbouz’s 1949 novel, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, Arturo ... more An adaptation of Naguib Mahbouz’s 1949 novel, Principio y Fin (The Beginning and the End, Arturo Ripstein, 1993) transposes the plot of a family melodrama from Cairo during the late thirties to Mexico City during the early nineties. Why is this Egyptian family melodrama, along with its surprising twists and turns, legible in a Mexican context, fifty years apart? This essay contends that, to address this question, one need not presuppose a persistent melodramatic imagination. What persists across these contexts is the dominance of a market economy, that is, an economy in which money acts not only as a medium of exchange or as a means to store and measure value, but also as the primary vehicle of social mobility. The Egyptian novel and the Mexican film dramatize how the market economy puts pressure on the family unit in two very different contexts. Rather than conceiving of melodrama as a modern form of imagination, I propose a conception of melodrama as a speculative activity in relation to the market economy. Drawing from the myriad senses of the term, I develop a conception of melodramatic speculation that stacks several activities: first, exchange of valuables (things and people) as a means to succeed or survive within the market economy; second, the mirroring of valuables as a means of turning them into images to be reflected upon; and third, reflection on the realm of exchange from a vantage point, considering its nature and guarding its limits.
Angelaki-journal of The Theoretical Humanities, 2012
New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2010
The prevailing understanding of the melodramatic mode distinguishes between melodrama as a social... more The prevailing understanding of the melodramatic mode distinguishes between melodrama as a social sensibility and as an artistic representation. In this traditional model, the melodramatic mode mediates between social experience and artistic representations by inhabiting both of them. This paper argues that these two aspects (social experience and representation) derive from a more fundamental aspect of melodrama, constituted by acts of exchange. I analyze the acts of exchange in two melodramas – The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) and The Story of Adèle H. (François Truffaut, 1975) – explaining how the states of being and representations we associate with melodrama derive from unequal acts of exchange. Melodrama polices the boundary between exchange and the realm that lies beyond exchange, dramatizing the consequences of putting into circulation objects and ideas that should not be assigned an exchange value.
In "From One Image to Another," Jacques Rancière offers one of the most illuminating evaluations ... more In "From One Image to Another," Jacques Rancière offers one of the most illuminating evaluations of Gilles Deleuze's film philosophy. Taken as a whole, the chapter presents a devastating critique of Deleuze's theory of cinema. Rancière offers two distinct arguments: the first one addresses the connection between ontology and history; the second one involves the relationship between theory and its exemplification.
The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not... more The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not only as a dramatic genre pervaded by sensationalism, exaggerations, and moral polarities, but also as a cultural imaginary that shapes the emotional experience of modernity, characterized by anxiety, moral confusion, and the dissolution of hierarchy. Despite its usefulness, the notion of mode remains mystifying: What exactly are modes and how do they differ from genres? Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects argues that, whereas genres divide a universe in terms of similarities and differences, modes express or modify an indivisible whole. This study contends that the melodramatic mode is concerned with the expression of the social whole in terms of suffering. Zarzosa explains how melodrama is not a cultural imaginary that proclaims the existence of a defunct moral order in a post-sacred world, but an apparatus that shapes suffering and redistributes its visibility. The moral ideas we associate with melodrama are only a means to achieve this end.
To develop this conception of melodrama, Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television offers a novel conceptualization of the following aspects of melodrama theory: affect, interpretation, exchange, excess, sacrifice, and coincidence. These aspects of melodrama are coupled with the analysis of classic melodramas (Home from the Hill and The Story of Adele H.), contemporary films (The Piano, [Safe], and Year of the Dog), and television series (Torchwood and Lost). Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television provides an essential new look at melodrama and its function in popular culture and media.