The
Matrix of Visual Culture:
Working with Deleuze in
Film Theory
by Patricia Pisters
Stanford University Press,
Palo Alto, California,
2003
303 pp., Paper, $24.95
ISBN 0-8047-4028-3.
Reviewed by David Surman
International Film School
of Wales
UWN, Caerleon Campus
david.surman@newport.ac.uk
In The Matrix of Visual
Culture Patricia Pisters
pragmatically applies
Gilles Deleuzes
film-philosophy in the
sustained critique of
various canonical, commercial
and contemporary films.
Translating Deleuzes
philosophical methodologies
into digestible terms
of engagement is an admirable
achievement in itself,
as I recall trying to
work with the dual volumescinema
1: movement-image
and cinema 2: the time-imagebeing
challenging, to say the
least.
Pisters final outcome
is admirable. Explanations
of the new Deleuzian terminology
are grounded with excellent
textual analysis of a
variety of moving-image
events. Importantly,
Pisters is not it seems
a Deleuze apologista
trait characterising many
defenders of his film-theory-philosophy.
Avoiding the relativism
of attempting to champion
all facets of Deleuzes
critical strategy, Pisters
makes clear that, for
the time being, certain
principles are more fruitful
in their application to
known films, whilst other
arguments are less developed.
Concepts such as the interconnection
of the virtual
and the actual,
and the notion of "becoming:"
a process and an attempt
to think differently,
to see or feel something
new in experience by entering
into a zone of proximity
with somebody or something
else" (106), are
particularly engaging.
By referring to popular
films, the accessibility
of this new approach to
Deleuzes film scholarship
is reiterated. Further,
and more interesting from
a disciplinary perspective,
is the positioning of
Deleuzian film theory
in subtle opposition to
contemporary psychoanalytic
theorywhich Pisters
exemplifies most notably
through the film criticism
of Slavoj Zizek.
Consequently (and arguably
rightly so) Pisters
Deleuzian methodology
does seem to make considerable
moves toward a viable
alternative to psychoanalysis,
specifically in the critique
of subjectivity and the
cinema. The knowing opposition
of post-structuralist
deconstructive approaches
with Deleuzes rhizomatic
generative methodology
(in crude summary the
study of networks rather
than isolated points)
does provide a welcome
respite from the deliberations
of certain strands of
film scholarship that
lack a developmental perspective.
In that sense, The
Matrix of Visual Culture
enters into the spectrum
of contemporary film scholarship
with the same agenda as
Vivian Sobchacks
landmark publication The
Address of the Eye: a
Phenomenology of the Film
Experience (1992)
as both a critique of
the discipline of film
studies, and its simultaneous
reinvigoration. Most importantly
in my view, Pisters reconstitutes
the apparent ruin of twentieth-century
film studies in such a
way that it accommodates
a variety of practices
that have largely been
excluded. Thus animationwhich
Pisters suggests, in her
final chapter, is predictive
of the future of cinemastands
alongside live-action
film, games, and other
aspects of our contemporary
visual culture.
Though the limits of space
warrant their absence,
I felt an urge to set
Pisters use of Deleuze
against other aspects
of film studies, such
as the cognitive agendaperhaps
as an antidote to the
trappings of constructing
a position in opposition
to the praxis of psychoanalytic
theory.
Ironically, it is in the
reworking of Deleuzes
film theory by other writers
that its potential is
unlockedfor
instance, in the way that
Pisters shifts away from
the auteur stance
of his publications toward
a contemporary attitude.
Such an emphasis on the
historical moment within
which Deleuze worked is
timely, with the application
of his philosophy present
at the cutting edge of
art, science, and technology.
For this reason, Deleuze
is not the film studies
panacea that some may
feel him to be. However,
there is little more Deleuzian
per se than the
reworking of his philosophy
for our contemporary cultural
climate, so eloquently
demonstrated by Pisters.
I had suspected prior
to reading The Matrix
of Visual Culture
that its subtitle"working
with Deleuze in film theory"
might have been something
of a misnomer, conscious
of Robert Stams
doubt about actually "working"
with Deleuze, and holding
similar reservations myself.
Thankfully, I have been
proven wrong, by a rigorous,
progressive, and thought-provoking
study.