Cinema and Control

This thesis explores the political implications of Gilles Deleuze's two-volume work on the cinema (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [2005a] and Cinema 2: The Time-Image [2005b]). I argue that counter to the common reading of these works as being primarily concerned with aesthetics and philosophy, Deleuze's cinema books should be understood as a political critique of the operations of cinema. I outline the main arguments set out by these works as a political formulation and argue that they should be directly related to Deleuze's more explicitly political writings. In particular, I argue that these books should be read alongside Deleuze's later 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' (1992), which re-addresses some of the most significant aspects of his earlier work on cinema following a transforation in media technologies and social organisation. I argue that Deleuze's time-image and his later conceptualisation of control should be understood as forming the two poles of his theorisation of cinema and visual culture. When addressed as connected concepts, a significant political dimension emerges in this area of Deleuze's thought, focusing on a time-image that opens a range of possibilities for the future ordering of the world and a system of control that will recurrently close and eliminate these possibilities. Through a series of studies of film texts I will develop the political implications of Deleuze's thinking on cinema and visual culture in order ot show how the forces of control and the time-image operate and how these concepts can be systematised and further integrated into Deleuze's wider political thought