(In)Animate Semiotics : Virtuality and Deleuzian Illusion(s) of Life
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1177/1746847719831398
- Title of journal
- Animation
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 5
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 1746-8477
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This article provides a new reading of two seminal works of animation, a novel critical engagement with the work of the animation theorist Dan Torre, and a process-philosophical exploration of divergent animated traditions. It foregrounds Torre’s neglect of the post-structural, political dimension of Deleuzian thought and utilises an applied comparative philosophical approach to contrast seminal works of animation, drawing attention to differences with respect to their ontological and political commitments. The article provides a well-evidenced exploration of philosophy and animation theory. There has been a long tradition of ontological and phenomenological analysis with respect to the animated film, and in recent years, a number of attempts have been made to construct Deleuzian positions in animation theory. The critique of Torre facilitates a comparison of Stuart Blackton’s animated film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906), and Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (1908). It is claimed that despite a number of apparent similarities, the animations of Cohl andBlackton 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 in its effort to unpack the radical ideas of Deleuze through the more conservative process philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, Torre’s approach runs the risk of falling back into the quasi-Kantian philosophy of generality and representation that Deleuze found so distasteful.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -