PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA The Imaginary Signifier Christian metz Translated by Celia Briton, Annuyl Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti M MACMILLAN PRESS LONDON
LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY Editors: Stephen Heath and Colin Mac cabe Published titles Norman bryson Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze Jane gallop Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter's Seduction Paul hirst On Law and Ideology Colin MacCabe James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word Colin MacCabe(editor) The Talking Cure: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language Christian Metz Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier Michel pecheux Language, Semantics and Ideology Jacqueline re The Case of peter Pan or the Impossibility of children's Fiction David trotter The Making of the reader: Language and subjectivity in Modern american, English and Irish Pc Forthcoming titles Beverley Brown and State of Nature: Ethnography and Judith Ennew Origa Elizabeth Cowie To Represent Woman? The Representation of Sexual Diferences in the visual media Alan durant Conditions of music Alan durant Colin MacCabe and Paul Abbott(editors) The Meanings of language Peter Gidal Understanding beckett Stephen Heath Three Essays on Subjectivity Jeffrey Minor The Genealogy of Moral forms Foucault. Nietzsche. Donzelot Jean-Michel Abate Pound's Nomanclatter: language, Sexuality and Ideology in the Cantos Ri Feminisms: A Conceptual History
C Union Generale d'Editions 1977 English translation, Part I C Society for Education in Film and Television 1975 English translation, Part Ii C Celia Britton and Annwyl williams 1982 English translation, Part Ill c Johns Hopkins University Press 1976 English translation, Part IV C Celia Britton and Annwyl Williams 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in'any form or by any means, without permission first edition 1982 Reprinted 1983 Published b THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world IsBN 0 333 27805 4(hardcover) ISBN0333366409(1 Printed in Hong Kong
Contents Acknowledgements PART I THE IMAGINARY SIGNIFIER I The Imaginary and the Good Object' in the Cinema and in the Theory of the Ci nema Going to the cinema Talking about the cinema Loving the cinema 2 The Investigators Imaginary 369477 Psychoanalysis, linguistics, history Freudian psychoanalysis and other psychoanalyses various kinds of psychoanalytic study of the cinema 25 Psychoanalysis of the film scri 27 Psychoanalysis of the textual system 32 Psychoanalysis of the cinema-signifier 33 The major regimes of the signifier 37 3 Identification, Mirror 42 Perception, imaginary The all-perceiving subject 45 Identification with the camera 49 On the idealistic theory of the cinema 52 On some sub-codes of identification 54 Seeing afl 56 4 The Passion for Perceiving 58 The scopic regime of the cinema 61 Theatre fiction, cinema fiction 66 5 Disavowal. Fetishism 69 Structures of belief 71 The cinema as technique 74 Fetish and frame 77
CONTENTS Theorise, he says .(Provisional Conclusion) 79 Notes and References to Part I 81 PART II STORY/DISCOURSE (A NOTE ON TWO KINDS OF VOYEURISM) Notes and References to Part II PART III THE FICTION FILM AND ITS SPECTATOR: A METAPSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY 99 6 Film and Dream: the Knowledge of the Subject 101 7 Film and Dream: Perception and hallucination 109 8 Film and Dream: Degrees of Secondarisation 120 9 Film and Phantasy 129 10 The Filmic visee 138 Notes and References to part III 143 PART IV METAPHOR/METONYMY OR THE IMAGINARY REFERENT 149 11 Primary'Figure, Secondary? Figure 154 On worn'figures 156 Figural, linguistic: the figure embedded in g 158 On emergent figures 16l The metalinguistic illusion 163 12 Small-scale'Figures, 'Large-scale'Figures 168 Status and list 171 13 Rhetoric and Linguistics: Jakobsons Contribution l74 14 Referential Discursive 183 intersections of the referential and the discursive 186 Figure and the Editing, the superimposition and the close-up 193 15 Metaphor/Metonymy: a Dissymmetrical Symmetry 197 From metonymy to metaphor l99 From metaphor to metonymy? 201 On the distribution of metaphor and metonymy 203
CONTENTS 16 Figure and Substitution 207 17 The Problem of the Word 212 Figure/trope 213 The rhetorical and the iconic 217 The isolating 'nature ofthe word 222 18 Force and meaning 229 19 Condensation 235 Condensation in the language system 236 Short-circuit, short circuit 240 Condensation-metonymy 242 20 From the Dream-work'to the Primary Process 245 21'Censorship: Barrier or Deviation? 253 Uncensored marks of censorship 254 Getting past or not getting past: the gap between the conscious and the unconscious 256 Primary/secondary refraction 260 Confict, compromise, degrees 263 22 Displacement 266 Meaning as transit, meaning as encounter 267 Displacement-metaphor 270 23 Crossings and Interweavings in Film: the Lap-dissolve as an Example of a figuration 274 24 Condensations and Displacements of the Signifier 281 On the notion of the operation of the signifier 282 Condensation/metaphor, displacement/metonymy overspill 286 The spilling over of the image 28 25 Paradigm/ Syntagm in the Text of the Cure 293 Notes and References to Part Iv 298 ndex 315
Acknowledgements The four texts which make up this book were written between 1973 and 1976. the first in 1974, the second and third in 1973 and the fourth in 1975-6. They first appeared in book form under the title le signifiant imaginaire. Psychanalyse et cinema(Paris: Union Generale d Editions, 10/18)in 1977 Part I, 'Le signifiant imaginaire,, and Part III, 'Le film de fiction et son spectateur, were first published in Communications, 23(1975), pp 3-55 and pp. 108-35. Part II, Histoire/discours was first published in Langue, Discours, Societe- Pour Emile benve niste(Paris: Editions du Seuil)1975, pp. 301-6. 'Metaphose Metonymic ou le referent imaginaire appeared for the first time in Le signifiant imaginaire. Part I, 'The Imaginary Signifier, is translated by Ben Brewster; Part II, ' Story/Discourse(A Note on Two Kinds of Voyeurism) by celia britton and annwyl williams; Part Iil, ' The Fiction Film and its Spectator: a metapsychological study, by alfred Guzzetti; and Part IV, 'Metaphor/Metonymy, or the Imaginary Referent, by Celia Britton and Annwyl Williams. The index was compiled by Ben Brewster Part I, The Imaginary Signifier, was first published in Screen vol. 16, no. 2( 1975)pp. 14-76; Part Ill,"The Fiction Film and its Spectator: a Metapsychological Study, in New Literary History vol. VIIL, no. 1(1976)pp. 75-105. Both of these translations appear here in a marginally revised form
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The Imaginary and the 'good object in the Cinema and in the Theory of the cinema Reduced to its most fundamental procedures, any psychoana- lytic reflection on the cinema might be defined in Lacanian terms as an attempt to disengage the cinema-object from the imaginary and to win it for the symbolic, in the hope of extending the latter by a new province: an enterprise of displacement, a territorial enterprise, a symbolising advance; that is to say, in the field of films as in other fields, the psychoanalytic itinerary is from the outset a semiological one, even(above all)if in comparison with the discourse of a more classical semiology it shifts its point of focus from the statement [the nonce] to the enunciation [the enunciation f Those who look superficially or who share the ritual eagerness to detect changes'as often as possible will perhaps think that i have abandoned certain positions or turned away from them when in fact, more simply -less simply, of course-I am accept- ing the temptation(the attempt) to drive a little deeper into the very procedures of knowledge, which constantly symbolises new fragments of the real in order to annex them to reality.There are formulae that are not imagined For a time at least they range themselves with the real. For a time, at least: let us there fore attempt to imagine some of them It has very often, and rightly been said that the cinema is a tech- nique of the imaginary. A technique, on the other hand, which is peculiar to a historical epoch(that of capitalism)and a state of society so-called industrial civilisation a technique of the imaginary but in two senses. In the ordi- nary sense of the word, as a whole critical tendency culminating
THE IMAGINARY SIGNIFIER in the work of edgar Morin has demonstrated because most films consist of fictional narratives and because all films depend even for their signifier on the primary imaginary of photography and phonography. In the Lacanian sense, too, in which the im aginary, opposed to the symbolic but constantly imbricated with it, designates the basic lure of the ego, the definitive imprint of a stage before the Oedipus complex(which also continues after it the durable mark of the mirror which alienates man in his own reflection and makes him the double of his double the subter- ranean persistence of the exclusive relation to the mother, desire as a pure effect of lack and endless pursuit, the initial core of the unconscious (primal repression). All this is undoubtedly reacti vated by the play of that other mirror, the cinema screen, in this respect a veritable psychical substitute, a prosthesis for our pri mally dislocated limbs. But our difficulty-the same one as every where else- will be that of grasping in any detail the intimately ramifying articulation of this imaginary with the feats of the sig nifier, with the semiotic imprint of the law(here the cinematic codes )which also marks the unconscious, and thereby man's pro- ductions, including films The symbolic is at work not only in these films but equally in the discourse of anyone who discusses them, and hence in the articl I am just beginning. This certainly does not mean that the sym- bolic is enough to produce a knowledge, since the uninterpreted dream, the phantasy the symptom, are all symbolic operations Nevertheless, it is in its wake that we can find hope for a little more knowledge, it is one of its avatars that introduces under standing, whereas the imaginary is the site of an unsurpassable opacity, almost by definition. Thus as a beginning it is absolutely essential to tear the symbolic from its own imaginary and to return it to it as a look to tear it from it but not completely or at east not in the sense of ignoring it and fleeing from it( fearing it) the imaginary is also what has to be rediscovered precisely in order to avoid being swallowed up by it: a never-ending task. If here I could manage a small part of this task(in the cinematic field),I should by no means be displeased For the problem of the cinema is always reduplicated as a problem of the theory of the cinema and we can only extract knowledge from what we are(what we are as persons, what we