#signifiance

[lameteodujour]

Xiao Yu/ Landscape No 5/ 2011 @ Paris Art Fair

[feelingpolitical]

The line of flight is like a tangent to the circles of signifiance and the center of the signifier. It is under a curse. The goat's anus stands opposite the face of the despot or god. Antyhign that threatens to put the system to flight will be killed or put to flight itself. Anythign that exceeds the excess of the signifier or passes beneath it will be marked with a negative value. [...] The complete system, then, consists of the paranoid face or body of the despot-god in the signifying center of the temple; the interpreting priests who continually recharge the signified in the temple, transforming it into signifier; the hysterical crowd of people outside, clumped in tight circles, who jump from one circle to another; the faceless, depressive scapegoat emanating from the center, chosen, treated, and adorned by the priests, cutting across the circles in its headlong flight into the desert. This excessively hasty overview is applicable not only to the imperial despotic regime but to all subjected, arborescent, hierarchical, centered groups: political parties, literary movements, psychoanalytic associations, families, conjugal units, etc. The photo, faciality, redundancy, signifiance, and interpretation are at work everywhere. The dreary world of the signifier; its archaism with an always contemporary function; its essential deception, connoting all of its aspects; its profound antics. The signifier reigns over every domestic squabble, an in every State apparatus.

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, "On Several Regimes of Signs," 116-7

[lameteodujour]

Pertinence.

Anne Collier @Anton Kern Gallery/ 2012 (source) Bonnes questions.

[a4rizm]

œil

Nous avions rencontré deux axes, de signifiance et de subjectivation. C'étaient deux sémiotiques très différentes, ou même deux strates. Mais la signifiance ne va pas sans un mur blanc sur lequel elle inscrit ses signes et ses redondances. La subjectivation ne va pas sans un trou noir où elle loge sa conscience, sa passion, ses redondances. Comme il n'y a que des sémiotiques mixtes, ou que les strates vont au moins par deux, on ne doit pas s'étonner du montage d'un dispositif très spécial à leur croisement. C'est pourtant curieux, un visage : système mur blanc-trou noir. Large visage aux joues blanches, visage de craie percé des yeux comme trou noir. Tête de clown, clown blanc, pierrot lunaire, ange de la mort, saint suaire. Le visage n'est pas une enveloppe extérieure à celui qui parle, qui pense ou qui ressent. La forme du signifiant dans le langage, ses unités mêmes resteraient indéterminées si l'auditeur éventuel ne guidait ses choix sur le visage de celui qui parle (« tiens, il a l'air en colère... », « il n'a pas pu dire cela... », «tu vois mon visage quand je te cause... », « regarde-moi bien...»). Un enfant, une femme, une mère de famille, un homme, un père, un chef, un instituteur, un policier ne parlent pas une langue en général, mais une langue dont les traits signifiants sont indexés sur des traits de visagéité spécifiques. Les visages ne sont pas d'abord individuels, ils définissent des zones de fréquence ou de probabilité, délimitent un champ qui neutralise d'avance les expressions et connexions rebelles aux significations conformes. De même la forme de la subjectivité, conscience ou passion, resterait absolument vide si les visages ne formaient des lieux de résonance qui sélectionnent le réel mental ou senti, le rendant d'avance conforme à une réalité dominante. Le visage est lui-même redondance. Et il fait lui-même redondance avec les redondances de signifiance ou de fréquence, comme avec celles de résonance ou de subjectivité. Le visage construit le mur dont le signifiant a besoin pour rebondir, il constitue le mur du signifiant, le cadre ou l'écran. Le visage creuse le trou dont la subjectivation a besoin pour percer, il constitue le trou noir de la subjectivité comme conscience ou passion, la caméra, le troisième œil.

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Mille plateaux, Paris, Les éditions de minuit, 1980, pp. 205-206.

Earlier, we encountered two axes, signifiance and subjectification. We saw that they were two very different semiotic systems, or even two strata. Signifiance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies. Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come at least in twos, it should come as no surprise that a very special mechanism is situated at their intersection. Oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system. A broad face with white cheeks, a chalk face with eyes cut in for a black hole. Clown head, white clown, moon-white mime, angel of death, Holy Shroud. The face is not an envelope exterior to the person who speaks, thinks, or feels. The form of the signifier in language, even its units, would remain indeterminate if the potential listener did not use the face of the speaker to guide his or her choices ("Hey, he seems angry ..."; "He couldn't say it..."; "You see my face when I'm talking to you ..."; "look at me carefully..."). A child, woman, mother, man, father, boss, teacher, police officer, does not speak a general language but one whose signifying traits are indexed to specific faciality traits. Faces are not basically individual; they define zones of frequency or probability, delimit a field that neutralizes in advance any expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations. Similarly, the form of subjectivity, whether consciousness or passion, would remain absolutely empty if faces did not form loci of resonance that select the sensed or mental reality and make it conform in advance to a dominant reality. The face itself is redundancy. It is itself in redundancy with the redundancies of signifiance or frequency, and those of resonance or subjectivity. The face constructs the wall that the signifier needs in order to bounce off of; it constitutes the wall of the signifier, the frame or screen. The face digs the hole that subjectification needs in order to break through; it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as consciousness or passion, the camera, the third eye.

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A thousand plateaus, translation and foreword by Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, 1987, pp. 188-189. (version PDF).

[berrrtrandd-blog]

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