F 2 F

This idea of the exteriority of language vis the processes of the Real is, of course, Lacanian in origin. However, Deleuze (in the Cinema books) moves closer to Barthes' notion (through Kristeva) of the perceivability, but non-articulability, of this Real. In Barthes' essay "The Third Meaning," he conceives of the filmic in this place of the Real "outside" traditional language (in the realm of signifiance); in fact, the filmic is so rare that the cinema, which seems to be caught in the webs of articulative language and technocratic analysis, fails to "film" it: "The filmic is that in the film which cannot be described, the representation which cannot be represented. The filmic begins only where language and metalanguage end" (64). For Barthes the "filmic" is the obtuse or third meaning, produced via the "signifying accidents" that characterize the camera's encounter with the real (and this "filmic" event is a close analog to Deleuze's time-image).

Of particular interest for me, is that Barthes discussion revolves around the problem of hair.