The Image
in French Philosophy
by Temenuga
Trifonova
Amsterdam/New York, NY, Rodopi 2007
Consciousness, Literature & The Arts
Series, vol. 5
316 pp. Paper, € 64 / US$ 90
ISBN: 978-90-420-2159-4.
Reviewed by Jan Baetens
University of Leuven
jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be
A book on the critique of vision and space
in 20th Century French philosophy
with no references to Martin Jay’s
Downcast Eyes (1993), the modern
classic in the field? Yes, this can only
be the proof of the nerve of a young author,
who is not afraid of thinking for herself,
although not without a profound knowledge
of the authors and theories that she studies
in this well structured and challenging
book.
Temenuga Trifonova, who teaches film studies
but has a background in philosophy, is
a fearless and intrepid thinker indeed.
The originality of her approach, which
will be welcomed by both philosophers
and film scholars, is threefold.
First, she reopens the debate on the role
of the image and visuality in a very innovative
way. Although the philosophers she analyzes
are among the usual suspects in this type
of reading (Bergson, Sartre, Lyotard,
Baudrillard, and Deleuze do not come here
as a surprise), the global methodology
on which the Trifonova’s study relies
is very innovative. Instead of gathering
five essays on these authors, she focuses
on a gradually complexified dialogue between
all of them. After the reading of Bergson,
we have the reading of Sartre completed
with the reading of Bergson by Sartre,
and so on, so that at the end of the argumentation
the reader can dispose of a mapping of
the conceptual relationships between the
most prominent thinkers of the image in
20th Century French philosophy
(this is not to say to Trifonova reduces
her scope to these five thinkers only,
for there is for instance room for a discussion
of Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty, but in
general her book is extremely well focused,
which may be considered a great achievement).
Second, Trifonova is not afraid of reading
her authors critically. In our times in
which Bergson and Deleuze have been hyped
to the extent that it is as difficult
to question them as it was to criticize
Lacan several decades ago, her scrupulous
but discerning readings do not only want
to get a better grip on the key concepts
of each of the authors she is examining,
they attempt even more at disclosing the
hesitations, the internal contradictions,
the confusions within texts that have
all obtained an absolutely canonical status.
In this regard, Trifonova’s book
should be an encouragement to all young
scholars doing interdisciplinary work
and confronted with the rigidity of many
notions and reputations. Moreover, The
Image in French Philosophy demonstrates
also that it is possible to discover new
topics even within areas that may seem
overexploited (Sartre’s discussion
of Bergson’s image and imagination
theory is a good example of such a rediscovery).
Third and finally, the perfect focus of
the book helps also to build a very strong
thesis, which can be summarized in the
following way. The thinkers gathered in
this book share a specific critique of
the role and status of the image, for
each of them has attempted to turn his
critique of the image (as a spatialized
and, therefore, rigid and derealizing
concept) into a more general critique
of metaphysics (which Trifonova redefines
in this context as the domination of space
and the spatialization of time and reality).
Yet The Image in French Philosophy
argues that this critique of metaphysics
is only superficial and that Bergson’s
pure memory, Sartre’s image-consciousness,
Lyotard’ sublime, Baudrillard’s
fatal object, and Deleuze’s time-image
are all forms of a new kind of metaphysics,
which she spells out as a metaphysics
of immanence. By turning away from the
image and the imagination, i.e. by turning
away from the gaze and subjectivity, these
French authors introduced a philosophy
of the impersonal which failed to grasp
what they thought was missing in the classic
views of image and imagination: subjectivity,
the body, temporal continuity, etc. Instead,
they fostered a kind of philosophy that
reinforced in its own way a new metaphysical
discourse of dis-embodiment, virtualization
of time and the world, and (inter)personal
subjectivity.
A final chapter proposes close readings
of some well-known self-reflexive or metafictional
movies such as Memento, The
Matrix, Twelve Monkeys, Mulholland
Drive, The Fight Club, Run
Lola Run and, more surprisingly, David
Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner
(even more surprisingly, French movies
are missing, although Chris Marker’s
seminal 1962 film The Jetty, so
badly remade by Twelve Monkeys,
could have provided the perfect example).
