%0 Journal Article
%T (In)Animate Semiotics: Virtuality and Deleuzian Illusion(s) of Life
%A Spencer Roberts
%J Animation
%@ 1746-8485
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1746847719831398
%X It is well known that, despite his close engagement with cinema, Gilles Deleuze was less concerned with animated film, being somewhat dismissive of its capabilities. In recent years, however, a number of attempts have been made ¨C most notably by William Schaffer, Thomas Lamarre and Dan Torre ¨C to construct Deleuzian positions in animation theory. This article outlines some of these approaches, whilst engaging critically with Torre¡¯s writings. In particular, it foregrounds Torre¡¯s neglect of the post-structural, political dimension of Deleuzian thought through an examination of the concepts of faciality, the close-up, and relation as they occur in Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. This is in part facilitated through a comparison of Stuart Blackton¡¯s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) ¨C a work directly addressed by Torre, and Emile Cohl¡¯s Fantasmagorie (1908) ¨C a work which he largely passes by. It is claimed here that, despite a number of apparent similarities, the animations of Cohl and Blackton express a radically divergent series of ontological commitments. Cohl offers the audience an experience of chaotic, mutable, relational complexity that revels in its incoherence, whilst Blackton presents a series of more straightforward set pieces, dwelling for the most part upon object-centric representational form. The tension between representation and becoming that occurs between these works is employed to facilitate a critical engagement with Torre¡¯s process-cognitivism. It is suggested that Torre¡¯s work, though exceptional in its pedagogic value, is likewise expressive of this tension, and that in its effort firstly to combine a series of process-philosophical and cognitivist ideas, and secondly to unpack the radical ideas of Deleuze through the more conservative philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, it runs the risk of falling back into a quasi-Kantian philosophy of generality and representation
%K animation
%K becoming
%K cognition
%K Emile Cohl
%K Gilles Deleuze
%K faciality
%K F¨¦lix Guattari
%K Immanuel Kant
%K Nicholas Rescher
%K politics
%K process
%K representation
%K Stuart Blackton
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1746847719831398