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Ph10 – Séance 1 – Temporalité de la conscience et objet temporel — Transcript

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0:01So today, I’m going to try with you
0:03to analyze the title of this course,
0:08which is called Phenomenology of
0:10Audiovisual Temporal Objects. Before
0:19that, I’ll do this clap. Are we
0:21agreed? OK, are you ready? That’s it,
0:25let’s get started. So, we’re going
0:27to analyze the title of PH10,
0:28Phenomenology of Audiovisual Temporal
0:30Objects. Phenomenology, as you know, I
0:33already mentioned in the introductory
0:35course, is a word that was we shouldn't
0:40say it was coined by Husserl, that
0:41philosopher, because that’s not true.
0:43It had already been used by others,
0:45notably a very famous philosopher named
0:48Hegel, who wrote nearly a century
0:50before. Husserl’s appearance, quite
0:53clearly, the Phenomenology of Spirit.
0:57It is in a quite different sense that
0:59one must understand Husserl's
1:01phenomenology well, quite different,
1:05not completely different, but still
1:07very different. For Husserl,
1:10phenomenology is a new method for
1:13philosophy, and initially, it is a
1:16method he develops as a mathematician,
1:19because he was primarily a
1:22mathematician first, and more precisely
1:25, someone interested in the foundations
1:29of arithmetic. You may perhaps know, I
1:33hope, that at the end of the 19th
1:34century, there was a crisis of
1:36foundations which is summarized here.
1:38It’s a Wikipedia notice that I simply
1:40took. This crisis of foundations led
1:44all sorts of mathematicians to rethink
1:46what axiomatics are and all sorts of
1:49dimensions of the epistemology of
1:51mathematics, and in particular, what
1:54happens within the mathematician’s
1:56own psychology. There was, therefore, a
2:01crisis in mathematics. Why are we
2:02interested in the psychology of
2:03mathematicians? Because mathematics is
2:06concepts, and nothing but concepts. In
2:09physics, one could say there is matter,
2:12there is, shall we say, reality, but
2:14math is only concepts. And concepts are
2:17produced in the psyche, in what the
2:19Greeks called the psyche, which means
2:21soul. So, mathematics at the end of the
2:2519th century turned toward philosophy,
2:27and philosophers also turned toward
2:29mathematics and the crisis of
2:31foundations to try to rethink the
2:32conditions of math. You know that very
2:35shortly after the crisis of mathematics
2:38, the foundations of mathematics, there
2:40would be a crisis in physics with the
2:42departure from Newtonianism, if I may
2:45put it that way, the philosophy of
2:47Newton. Just as there was a departure
2:50in the 19th century, before the crisis
2:52of foundations, from geometry, for
2:54example. Husserl, who is therefore a
2:59mathematician first, begins by writing
3:04this book, Philosophy of Arithmetic,
3:06which was published, if I remember
3:09correctly, in 1895. I'm not entirely
3:13sure about the date. and he writes, uh,
3:18for 40 years, a little over 40 years,
3:2142 years, he writes, uh, very many
3:29books, very many texts, articles,
3:31courses, lectures, seminars, and so on,
3:34up to this other book called The Origin
3:37of Geometry. And as you can see, from
3:40beginning to end, first arithmetic and
3:43then geometry are the horizon of his
3:46reflection. So, The Origin of Geometry
3:52is from 1936. It's a short text I'm
3:54mentioning here, not just for
3:56historical reasons, but because it is
3:58very important to me for the analysis I
4:01am about to offer you. I'm going to cut
4:03. So, we were there, and Husserl, uh,
4:15while developing his method, which he
4:18would formulate for the first time in
4:211901, was to reactivate a question that
4:26had been posed by Descartes in what we
4:28call, in what Descartes had called the
4:30Meditations, which Husserl, in this,
4:36this book here which dates from around
4:381930, I think 1929, revisits and
4:43redefines in this book, therefore,
4:45which is called Cartesian Meditations.
4:49I'm telling you this so that you
4:50understand two things. Firstly, Husserl
4:52takes up Cartesian questions, in
4:54particular concerning doubt, the evil
4:56genius, and everything at the heart of
4:58the constitution of what we have called
5:01the cogito since Descartes. But on the
5:06other hand, he also takes up Kantian
5:08questions, which themselves inherit
5:11Cartesian questions while transforming
5:13them, namely this position of Immanuel
5:16Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason,
5:18which says that the conditions of
5:20experience are not found within
5:22experience and are therefore, as Kant
5:25says, a priori conditions for being
5:27able to encounter the objects of
5:29experience. There are conditions that
5:34are not given by experience. Now, I'm
5:38not going to go back over all these
5:40subjects that you may have studied a
5:42little in high school, I hope, because
5:44for me, they are basic elements of
5:46philosophy. And if you haven't, too bad
5:48; we might come back to it in the
5:50discussion. If you need clarification,
5:52of course, you can ask me for it. I
5:55will give it to you as much as I can.
6:04That being said, in Immanuel Kant's
6:08work, in what is called transcendental
6:11philosophy, the Immanuel Kant that is
6:15presented in the Critique of Pure
6:16Reason. What needs to be found as a
6:19condition, these are the a priori
6:24conditions of the objects of experience
6:26as Kant says, as a subject. I am
6:29experiencing a certain number of
6:31objects. These objects can be real,
6:34they can be theoretical. For example,
6:36mathematical objects. Uh, since Newton,
6:39we've thought that we must go through
6:43physical objects to truly think and not
6:46just speculate. And when he says there
6:51are a priori conditions, that is to say
6:53, without which I wouldn't even be able
6:55to have the experience of these objects
6:56, which are not given by experience but
6:58precede it. OK. Husserl, he is not just
7:02interested in the a priori conditions
7:05of the experience of objects, but in
7:07the a priori conditions of what he
7:09calls the phenomena of objects. And it
7:12turns out that the phenomenon of the
7:13object is not the object itself. In a
7:17certain way, Husserl neutralizes the
7:19question of the object. That doesn't
7:21mean he considers it unimportant, but
7:23it means that in his method, it is not
7:24the primary question. The first
7:27question is the phenomenon. Phenomenon
7:31is a word that comes to us from the
7:33Greek "phainomenon." It is a present
7:39participle. It is the present
7:41participle of the verb "phainesthai,"
7:43which means to appear. "Phainomenon,"
7:47if you translate the Greek literally,
7:50is "that which is appearing." It means
7:53very, very specifically the appearing,
7:55that is to say, what is currently in
7:58the process of appearing. What Husserl
8:04will seek to study in his method, and
8:06you will understand quite quickly,
8:08quite soon, why it is very important
8:10for thinking about cinema. It is the
8:15conditions of the phenomenon, of the "
8:20phainomenon." Whatever this phenomenon
8:22may be. This phenomenon could be the
8:24phenomenon of a tree in nature that I
8:27am looking at and that I first mistake
8:30for a living being. A story told by
8:33Descartes, saying, "I am in nature, I
8:35am walking in the mist, and I see
8:37someone, and I realize as I approach,
8:39but no, it is not someone, it is a tree
8:41." What I took for a silhouette is
8:43actually a dead tree in the mist.
8:48Husserl is going to be interested in
8:50all forms of phenomena. Whether this
8:53phenomenon is completely legendary, for
8:57example, the Chimera, a mythological
9:00phenomenon—let's call it that instead
9:03—which Homer speaks of in the Iliad,
9:06then later in Works and Days, or rather
9:09in the Theogony. Or even, for example,
9:13this more well-known being, the
9:15Minotaur; it is much more well-known as
9:19the one Theseus fought. It is still
9:21part of children's imagination; we
9:23often find it in comic books, etc., but
9:25it is also in the imagination of Pablo
9:28Picasso. So it is still very present in
9:30our memory. What he studies, therefore,
9:37are the conditions under which, for
9:39example, the Minotaur appears to me,
9:41which does not exist, of course; it
9:44does not exist as an object, but it
9:46doesn't matter, it exists as a
9:48phenomenon that can appear to my memory
9:54, or to my consciousness, or to the
9:56consciousness of Pablo Picasso. And
9:59likewise, in the same way that Husserl
10:01for example studies the phenomena of
10:04the appearance of a glass, of a red
10:07ball, of any physical reality, but also
10:12of a feeling. What are the conditions
10:16for the emergence of the feeling of
10:17fear? For example, the feeling of fear
10:19is a phenomenon that happens to me.
10:21Something appears to me that is, in a
10:23way, my own fear. The study of
10:26phenomena, as conceived by Husserl's
10:28phenomenology, therefore rests on the
10:33idea, which this time comes from
10:35Descartes, that if I can doubt the
10:37experience of what presents itself to
10:39me—for example this tree, or rather
10:42this person I thought was a person, but
10:44realize is a tree, which proves I am
10:46mistaken—then I can doubt my senses.
10:50Or even this reality sent to me by the
10:52evil genius who made me believe things,
10:54who in fact makes me dream or deceives
10:56me. And I can, it can happen to me
11:01because I consumed a hallucinogenic
11:03mushroom without knowing it or because
11:06I consumed one while knowing it full
11:08well and to have hallucinations, etc.
11:10Or perhaps these imaginary
11:12representations produced by mythology
11:14that I mentioned earlier; this is a new
11:16representation of the unicorn, it is
11:19magnificent, pardon, not the unicorn,
11:21the chimera. All this that can happen
11:26to me as a phenomenon, I can doubt that
11:28it is really happening. I can doubt it
11:30for a thousand reasons. I can doubt
11:32that it exists, so to speak. But there
11:35is one thing I cannot doubt, he says—
11:37and here he almost takes up Descartes '
11:39position—and that is that it appears
11:41to me. Perhaps the chimera is a
11:43deception, perhaps this or that tree or
11:49person I think I see is a deception,
11:51but what is certain is that the fact
11:52that it appears to me there is not a
11:54deception. I am here, something appears
11:58to me as a phenomenological
12:00consciousness. From there, Husserl will
12:05try to radicalize Descartes' and Kant's
12:08position to try to refound what he
12:10calls a transcendental subject after
12:13the crisis in the foundations of
12:15mathematics. Do not forget that this is
12:17why he reasons this way. And in
12:19mathematics, objects are all imaginary
12:21in a certain way. They are all
12:22idealities, you see. And so, he no
12:25longer seeks to think in relation to
12:27physics, as was still primarily the
12:29case for Descartes, Newton, and Kant,
12:32but in relation to the appearing, that
12:34is, to what happens in my consciousness
12:36. The method of phenomenology will
12:40therefore consist, for Descartes, in
12:42neutralizing what Husserl calls the
12:44thesis of the world. He will say, since
12:47everything is doubtful, since I can
12:49doubt absolutely everything aside from
12:55the fact that I am doubting, for
12:56example, aside from the fact that
12:58something appears to me—and that I
12:59cannot doubt, since I am here to attest
13:01to it. So, I will start by neutralizing
13:05the question of whether what appears to
13:07me exists or does not exist. I will
13:11make it a totally secondary question.
13:12That is not what will guide my
13:14reflection. What will guide my
13:17reflection is the coherence of the
13:19phenomena of appearance that are
13:21constituted in my consciousness and the
13:26possibility that this coherence finally
13:29leads me, for example, to rigorously
13:31elaborate positions on these phenomena
13:34that will lead me, for instance, to say
13:36: "this phenomenon exists, this
13:38phenomenon is imaginary," etcetera, but
13:41I will not start from what exists. It
13:45is from the coherence of what Husserl
13:47will call the transcendental ego. He
13:50takes up an expression, the ego, the
13:53cogito, if you will, the Cartesian
13:55cogito. It is solely from the
13:58phenomenological coherence of what
14:00happens to the transcendental ego that
14:02we will decide whether something exists
14:04, does not exist, etcetera, and not
14:06from the world itself. Okay? So it is
14:10an absolutely transcendentalist
14:12position that grants no authority to
14:15experience in this foundational layer.
14:18Of course, I repeat that this concerns
14:20the foundations of mathematics, of
14:22thought, and so on. An extraordinary,
14:25extreme position. Moreover, if you ever
14:29have the time to read him yourself, you
14:31will see that, although it is a text,
14:33the language is quite austere, very
14:36difficult, and very demanding. At the
14:39same time, it is completely
14:40exhilarating when you get into it
14:42because it is an absolutely stunning
14:43intellectual adventure. But furthermore
14:46, in our time, it is very, very
14:47interesting. In our era, where we live
14:51more and more in the virtual, in
14:53artifice, in the increasing doubt of
14:56the real world, and so on, or the
14:58stability of the real world, it can be
15:01very useful to know. So, to summarize
15:08what Husserl's phenomenology seeks, it
15:11is to establish the conditions for the
15:14appearance of phenomena insofar as they
15:19are transcendental conditions; meaning
15:21they are not given by experience, but
15:23they make experience possible, and not
15:26simply the experience of existing
15:27objects, but phenomenological
15:29experience in general—the fact that
15:31things appear to me at all, for example
15:33, films in a cinema. From this position
15:40that will armor, if you'll forgive this
15:45somewhat informal expression, which he
15:48will try to absolutely guarantee will
15:50not be transgressed, and that is almost
15:53an obsession for him. He will say that
15:57one must distinguish between what he
15:59calls constituted things, on one hand,
16:02phenomena that can appear, whatever
16:04they may be: imaginary, empirical,
16:06formalized by apodictic experience,
16:09found in the ordinary world, et cetera;
16:11and on the other hand, what he calls
16:14the constituting sphere, that is to say
16:16, what constitutes what he calls the
16:18transcendental ego, which is not of the
16:21order of all these phenomena, but of
16:24another order. A fundamental rule of
16:30phenomenology, therefore, will be up
16:35until 1936. Because from 1936 onwards,
16:39I maintain that he will transform his
16:41position, and I will return to that at
16:44the end of this course. But until 1936,
16:49the rule of phenomenology in general
16:52will be to say that one can never rely
17:00on a constituted phenomenon to account
17:03for a constituting element. Which is
17:07obviously entirely logical. But if I
17:11insist on it, it's because I myself am
17:14going to call this position into
17:16question in the course of this semester
17:21. And I will try to show you that if I
17:25feel authorized to do so, it is because
17:27in reality he himself called this
17:30position into question in 1936 in The
17:32Origin of Geometry. And we will talk
17:36about that much later. So now, we have
17:44tried to understand how he came to
17:48reflect on what he calls temporal
17:52objects. And I remind you that our
17:59course is called phenomenology of
18:01audiovisual temporal objects. The
18:05temporal object is a concept that
18:09appeared in 1905 for Husserl. It
18:13appeared after the writing in 1901 of
18:20what we call the 5th Logical
18:21Investigation, which is found in this
18:24volume here, Logical Investigations,
18:26volume 2, and more precisely in the 6th
18:31paragraph of the 5th Logical
18:34Investigation, which is here the
18:38research: the Logical Investigations by
18:41Husserl, published in 1901, are the
18:43basis of all of Husserl's philosophy.
18:45The Philosophy of Arithmetic is not yet
18:47a strictly Husserlian text. It is a
18:50text by a philosopher who is trying to
18:52think about arithmetic but is not yet
18:54truly the master of his own thought.
18:57Whereas this, the Logical
18:59Investigations, is truly the foundation
19:01of Husserlian thought. It is the most
19:03important text of Husserl. If you had
19:05to read only one, this is the one you
19:06would have to read. very, very
19:08difficult. So in the 5th Logical
19:12Investigation and in paragraph 6 that
19:14you see there where he works on trying
19:19to conceive of this constituting sphere
19:21I was telling you about earlier, that
19:24is to say, the conditions for the
19:26appearance of phenomena. and to
19:29understand how this sphere, which is
19:31what he will later call the
19:33transcendental ego, so how it itself is
19:35constituted, he poses a problem that is
19:41quite fundamental for us. This problem
19:46is formulated mainly here, but when you
19:49review the lecture—because you will
19:51obviously review this lecture since it
19:54is recorded, it will be posted online,
19:56and you will take notes and refer back
19:59to them—you should try to read the
20:01entire paragraph if you have the time.
20:05In this paragraph, then, what he says
20:09is that when the transcendental
20:11constitutive sphere observes itself
20:14through the phenomena it studies, what
20:17it perceives is what he perceives.
20:20Because, in fact, these transcendental
20:22spheres are him himself, or Husserl,
20:24who is writing and who places us, as
20:26readers of his text, in the position of
20:28being the transcendental sphere
20:30ourselves by interpreting what he says
20:32—you...you understand what I mean,
20:34right? He says: what do we notice in
20:37ourselves as we are this transcendental
20:39sphere that does not refer to anything
20:41that exists in the world, that does not
20:43ask itself that question, but simply
20:45tries to observe, through the phenomena
20:47that appear to it, how it functions?
20:51Well, he says what we discover is that,
20:53obviously, in this sphere there are
20:55retentions. What does that mean? It
20:59means that this sphere has a memory. It
21:02has observed things previously and it
21:05remembers them. This is what we call
21:08retentions. And it tends to make
21:13anticipations based on the memories it
21:15has of a certain number of things; it
21:17tends to produce what he calls
21:19protentions, that is to say,
21:21anticipations that can present
21:22themselves in a thousand ways. A
21:25conjecture, a hypothesis, a desire, a
21:29will, a project, and so on and so forth
21:33. In other words, Husserl says it, but
21:38this transcendental sphere is both
21:40turned toward a past and oriented
21:42toward a future. In other words, it is
21:45temporal. I cannot help but notice when
21:49I observe myself that I am a temporal
21:52being. And this temporal sphere that
21:58constitutes transcendental
22:00consciousness, well, Husserl will say
22:02that it is retentional and protentional
22:04at the same time. This is what
22:09constitutes consciousness. That said,
22:13Husserl will seek to specifically study
22:15the temporal dimensions of this
22:17transcendental consciousness. He will
22:19not do it in the Logical Investigations
22:21for reasons that I will not explain
22:22here. The Logical Investigations, as
22:24their name indicates, are
22:25investigations that take up the great
22:27problems of logic, and so on, of
22:29language, and of what meaning is. Back
22:31then, with Frege, who was a great
22:33philosopher and mathematician of the
22:36time, there were very important
22:38exchanges; Frege is one of the founders
22:40of what we call logical positivism. So,
22:44Husserl's logical investigations are in
22:47that field. But in another text, which
22:50is not really a book published by
22:53Husserl himself, but a seminar he gave
22:55called "On the Phenomenology of the
22:58Consciousness of Internal Time." A
23:03seminar that was later transcribed from
23:06notes, like the ones you are taking
23:08right now, by two of Husserl's students
23:10, one who is very well known today,
23:12Martin Heidegger, a very important
23:15philosopher, the most important of his
23:17students, and another, a philosopher
23:19named Edith Stein, who took notes
23:22during Husserl's seminars devoted to
23:24temporality. There were several of them
23:27over the years, actually. They
23:28synthesized these notes and published
23:30them as this book, which was translated
23:32into French for the Presses
23:33Universitaires de France about 40 years
23:36ago. In that book, Husserl is going to
23:51study what he calls the*Zeitobjekt*,
23:55the temporal object in English. What is
24:00a temporal object? And by the way, why
24:09does Husserl study this temporal object
24:13? Well, I will come back to that next
24:16week. It is because Husserl posits as a
24:18principle that consciousness cannot
24:20study itself unless it gives itself a
24:22phenomenon other than itself to
24:23understand how it functions.
24:25Consciousness is empty, says Husserl,
24:28in itself; it contains nothing. It only
24:31appears to itself through phenomena
24:32that it organizes. There you go. And so
24:35it is only through phenomena that it
24:37can study itself. And Husserl says—I
24:40will come back to this point next week,
24:43as it is a bit complex, so don't worry,
24:45I will develop it further. Husserl
24:47therefore says in, uh, the lectures on
24:57time that there is a phenomenon which,
25:02like consciousness, is made of
25:04retention and protention, and it is the
25:06temporal object. What he calls the*
25:08Zeitobjekt*, the temporal object. What
25:10is the temporal object? I already spoke
25:12to you a little bit about it last
25:13Friday. It is an object that only
25:15appears by disappearing. Now, here is a
25:17temporal object, but it is represented
25:20not in a temporal way, but in a spatial
25:22way—that is, through a musical score.
25:26Do you know since when we have been
25:28able to write scores, create scores
25:29like this? Does anyone here know since
25:32when? Since since when have we been
25:36able to notate music? Sorry?
25:39Bach—anyone better? Do you have any
25:44idea? Actually, it's since the 11th
25:46century. It's since a monk named Guido
25:49of Arezzo Uh, Notker invented what is
25:54called diastematic notation, which is a
25:57scholarly way of talking about what we
25:59call the staff. That is a staff, and
26:04this staff, which allows for noting all
26:07Western scales, was invented in the
26:1011th century to replace what were
26:13called neumes. I won't explain what
26:17neumes are; it would take too long, but
26:20if you want to know, you can find it
26:22very easily on the web. Before that
26:27were neumes, which were attempts to
26:29spatialize the time of musical temporal
26:32objects. Why were the monks of the time
26:34seeking to spatialize them? Well,
26:36simply to be able to remember them. It
26:38was sacred music, and they were trying
26:41to preserve them so that these objects
26:44wouldn't be lost. To memory. Before
26:49that, there was no musical notation
26:52strictly speaking, and therefore,
26:55temporal objects were preserved only
26:57through transmission by memory and
27:00through musical practice in what we
27:02call the oral tradition. From the
27:07moment the score appeared, we were able
27:10to transform a temporal object into a
27:15spatial one. This melody is a spatial
27:19object as you see it here, but you can
27:22re-temporalize it if you know how to
27:24read music, if you know how to play the
27:27violin for instance—since this is a
27:29Gluck violin score—well, you can
27:31re-temporalize the score. So here, I am
27:36presenting a temporal object, but in a
27:37spatial form. I mention this because
27:39the temporal object as such, you don't
27:41see it there. You cannot see "temporal"
27:44; you can hear it. A musical temporal
27:47object, I mean. On the other hand, if
27:50you read music, you can re-temporalize
27:52it in your imagination while reading,
27:54and then eventually sing it for us.
27:56Does anyone want to sing it for us? You
27:58?
28:00Good question. We'll come back to that.
28:06We won't come back to it right away,
28:07maybe in three classes. We will come
28:10back to it. I can't answer you right
28:11now. Anyway, here you have a
28:15representation of what a melody is as a
28:18temporal object, and you can clearly
28:19see that the melody only appears by
28:21disappearing. Meaning that the notes
28:24you see here, the bars and the notes
28:26you see following each other there,
28:28well, for example, for us to reach the
28:305th bar here, the previous four bars
28:32must have disappeared, of course. This
28:37is a temporal object that I can view
28:39here synoptically because it has been
28:41spatialized, but in principle, a
28:43temporal object is not synoptically
28:44apprehensible because it is precisely
28:46temporal. "Sine optique" means that I
28:50grasp it at a single glance. All right?
28:53A temporal object cannot be grasped at
28:55a single glance, and that is why it is
28:57temporal. It is not spatial in that
28:59sense. Every temporal object, for
29:06example the lecture I am giving you
29:09right now, which is a temporal object,
29:11started a little late at 4:40 PM. It
29:16will end around 5:50 PM or so. It has a
29:22duration, like any temporal object.
29:24Every temporal object has a duration.
29:27It has a beginning, it has an end. And
29:29during this time, between the beginning
29:31and the end, it flows. This flow, which
29:34we call the flux of the temporal object
29:37, is the flow of appearances and
29:40disappearances that constitutes the
29:43temporal object. In the PH10 course,
29:51what we are going to study is not just
29:56temporal objects in general, such as
29:57melodies or the speech I am currently
29:59delivering to you here at this very
30:03moment; it is audiovisual temporal
30:06objects as they became over the course,
30:12as they appeared, one might say, during
30:15the beginning of the 20th century with
30:18silent cinema, which remained silent
30:21until 1929. Cinema roughly begins in
30:24the 20th century. The first two films
30:27that I showed you clips from the other
30:30day were filmed at the very end of the
30:3519th century, in 1895. But cinema, in
30:38the sense that we speak of cinema as an
30:41entertainment activity that would very
30:43quickly become an industry, is
30:45essentially established in the first 10
30:47years of the 20th century. That comes
30:49later, actually, right? Does anyone
30:51recognize this actor? Do you recognize
30:55him? A very, very, very great actor,
30:59and not just an actor, because at that
31:01time actors were also directors and
31:02they did pretty much everything. His
31:06name is Buster Keaton. And I recommend
31:09that you watch his films, in particular
31:14the famous The General, which is an
31:16absolute masterpiece of comedy cinema.
31:20And you may also know that Buster
31:22Keaton would act with Charlie Chaplin
31:24in Limelight. An extremely moving film,
31:29by the way, that Chaplin had Buster
31:31Keaton act in to help him out of
31:33poverty. Because Buster Keaton, who was
31:35an absolute genius—back then, actors
31:37'rights weren't defended and the
31:39companies stole everything from him;
31:41and naturally, at the end of his life,
31:43he was almost homeless, so Chaplin went
31:45to find him to get him working again.
31:49That was the harsh life of North
31:51America before 1933, that is to say,
31:53before Roosevelt. We saw that
32:01audiovisual temporal objects last
32:03Friday, we saw that it began with
32:04cinema, and continued with radio. I
32:07told you that radio appeared starting
32:09in 1920. Then television, which spread
32:13after the Second World War in all major
32:15industrial societies governed by what
32:17is called "consumer capitalism" in the
32:19United States. We will see in this
32:26course why consumer capitalism, as it
32:32is called today, found in audiovisual
32:34temporal objects a way to capture the
32:36attention of consumers. For example,
32:41iPhone 6 consumers, you remember, I
32:44showed you last time, in an extremely
32:46effective way made possible by the very
32:48structure of temporal objects. What I
32:52will try to show you is that
32:54audiovisual temporal objects, because
32:57they have a structure almost identical
32:59to consciousness, which is itself a
33:02temporal object—your consciousness,
33:05my consciousness, we are temporal
33:07objects ourselves. Well, using
33:10audiovisual temporal objects, one can
33:13manipulate consciousness and make them
33:15adopt behaviors, viewpoints, deceive
33:18them, lead them to vote, for example.
33:2290%for the Führer in 1934 in a
33:25referendum that Hitler held, which was
33:28voted for by 90%—I don't remember
33:31exactly, 92%—for Hitler. Does that
33:35mean that all Germans of that era in
33:371934 were Hitlerites? That’s not
33:41certain. But, on the other hand, they
33:44didn't all listen, but most listened to
33:45the radio where Hitler manipulated them
33:47. I could give you many other examples
33:51because it isn't just Hitler who
33:53manipulated. Everyone has manipulated,
33:55by the way, more or less. Even
33:57François Hollande manipulates our
33:59consciousness today, more or less. He
34:01has communication advisors who are
34:03there to say, "Don't say that, lie a
34:05little," but hey, everyone lies a
34:06little, and "you must say this," and
34:08it’s a way of manipulating us. If we
34:13want to understand these processes,
34:14first we must understand what cinema is
34:16, which, long before being a means of
34:18manipulating consciousness, is an art.
34:22And it is from art that we learn, as
34:24Nietzsche says at the end of the 19th
34:26century, the most about the
34:28possibilities the human soul has to
34:30become what it is. But we must also
34:34study or read paragraph 6 of the
34:36Logical Investigations and especially
34:38the lectures on time that I mentioned
34:41earlier. Rest assured, I won't ask you
34:43to read the lectures on time; I won't
34:44comment on them literally because it is
34:46one of the most difficult texts in the
34:48entire history of philosophy. So it is
34:50extremely austere, and if we were in a
34:52philosophy course strictly speaking—
34:54and I may do that with you, though
34:56it’s a great difficulty for the
34:58professor as well. So I don't know if I
35:01would do it if I had the opportunity,
35:03but in any case, we won't do it here
35:06because it's too difficult and it would
35:08deserve, it would require much more
35:10than 17 weeks of classes. I will
35:14translate what Husserl says into the
35:16field of cinema and I will give you the
35:18possibilities to refer to him directly
35:20if you wish, and I obviously encourage
35:22you to do so, and if you want me to
35:24help you with that, I will. So, I was
35:27telling you earlier, a temporal object
35:29has a beginning, like my lecture which
35:31started at 4:40 PM. Well, for example,
35:34an audiovisual temporal object begins
35:35with opening credits. And these credits
35:39, which by the way don't start like
35:41that in principle, they start more with
35:43this, that is to say with the
35:45producer's mark. This mark is the best
35:48known. Why? Because it's the La G...No,
35:52I was about to say something silly, the
35:54Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which dominated
35:57the great era of Hollywood. It is what
36:03opens a film and what ends a film; it
36:05is generally a card of this kind.
36:09Practically all films end with the word
36:11"the end," or well, not all, there are
36:13a few exceptions, but it is very rare.
36:19Between the beginning of the
36:21audiovisual temporal object and the end
36:23of the audiovisual temporal object,
36:26audiovisual temporal phenomena occur.
36:29We are going to study them through
36:31films in this course unit. We will
36:34study 12 films. Shortly, we will begin
36:38with Federico Fellini's Intervista. To
36:42understand the stakes of studying
36:44temporal objects, we must understand
36:47what it means that we ourselves are
36:49temporal. You are temporal, I am
36:52temporal. And we are caught in time
36:55together. Moreover, time passes. I
36:59don't know if you are fully aware that
37:01I have been speaking for three-quarters
37:02of an hour already, and those
37:03three-quarters of an hour, you will
37:05never get back. These three-quarters of
37:09an hour during which you have moved
37:11toward your end, that is to say, toward
37:14your death. And so have I; I am a
37:17little closer to my end than you are in
37:19principle, because you could always get
37:21run over leaving the university. And
37:24perhaps I will benefit from
37:25transhumanism, which promises to live
37:27for 300 years. I have no desire for
37:29that, by the way, I'm telling you right
37:30now. Well, in any case, we are temporal
37:32beings. That means we were born. One
37:35day we came into the world. For me, it
37:37was April 1st, 1952. Which also means
37:43that twins—I mean identical twins—
37:45what it means to be identical twins;
37:48maybe there are identical twins here.
37:51It’s happened that I’ve had
37:52students who were identical twins.
37:53It’s fantastic. There you go, two
37:56twins. Two identical twins, well, they
37:58weren't born at exactly the same time.
38:02One was born at 2:15 p.m., Grégoire,
38:04and the other, Augustine, at 2:35 p.m.
38:07A 20-minute difference. It is very
38:11important and certainly has an effect
38:14on the differentiation of their
38:16consciousness. If it is true that the
38:18human being is constituted essentially,
38:20and this is what I am going to show you
38:22, by the accumulation of lived
38:23experience, that is to say, the
38:25retentions that constitute them. What
38:27fascinates psychologists a lot in the
38:28study of twins is that one thinks, they
38:30have had a background of retention,
38:31they have all the same retentions at
38:33the start. Well no, not exactly. First
38:34of all, they were not born at exactly
38:36the same moment. And in any case, they
38:40do not die at the same moment, unless
38:41they commit suicide together, but in
38:43general, one dies differently from
38:47their twin. Very, very, very rare.
38:50Obviously, twins can die under a bomb,
38:52for example, together. Unfortunately,
38:55that happens often. Bombs again, there
38:58are many of them, by the way. But in
39:00principle, uh, we die each singularly,
39:04even when we are twins. This is what I
39:07call the end. It is also what Heidegger
39:10calls the end in*Being and Time*, which
39:12is a book fundamentally devoted to the
39:14temporality of being, of being as a
39:17living being that we are, we as what
39:19Heidegger calls*Dasein*, the "
39:21being-there" that we are. And as you
39:25can notice here, our end, well in this
39:28case, this is an obituary that dates
39:31from the 19th century. It's a sort of
39:35closing credits. At the closing credits
39:40, they added "De Profundis." So that
39:42lets us know that even though there is
39:44no cross on this obituary, but a skull
39:47and crossbones, that is very pagan.
39:49Nevertheless, "De Profundis," amen. Ah
39:52well no, it’s still a Christian.
39:54It’s still a Christian, but a strange
39:56Christian all the same, eh? Well, if I
39:58were a priest or a pope. And this end
40:04credits sequence, in the case of the
40:06end—that is to say, death in general
40:08—is carved onto a tombstone. Watching
40:15a movie, listening to a melody, is
40:21having a strange experience of living
40:26through the flow of a temporal object
40:27—the music, the film, this course you
40:29are following right now—and flowing
40:31along with that temporal object,
40:32because that is what is happening to
40:34you. You are listening to me, and as my
40:38lecture unfolds, flows by, you are
40:40flowing along with my lecture. And here
40:44, there are 25 of you in the room, and
40:46you are 25 flows that are flowing along
40:48with my lecture. If you were, say, 500
40:51people in a large movie theater, you
40:53would be 500 flows flowing along with
40:56the film, and so on and so forth. If
41:01you are a billion people following the
41:04Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky trial
41:06—that is to say, a billion people who
41:09followed that trial, one of the largest
41:12audiences in television history. Monica
41:17Lewinsky's panties were of great
41:18interest to the global population. Uh,
41:22it’s a synchronization of all those
41:23consciousnesses, and so on and so forth
41:25. You see that music, for example, has
41:31power. You mentioned Johann Sebastian
41:34Bach earlier. Johann Sebastian Bach
41:36wrote a new cantata every week. An
41:39incredible output for a musician. I
41:41don’t think any other musician has
41:43ever worked like that. To produce an
41:45original cantata every single week. He
41:48wasn't doing it just to make music; he
41:49was doing it to pray to God. Music as a
41:53way of being in the faith of Jesus
41:56Christ, and the life of Jesus Christ.
42:00And this cantata, which was sung by the
42:03faithful in Prussia, the people living
42:08where Johann Sebastian was in his
42:10parish, well, by singing, they
42:12synchronized themselves; they were at
42:15once consciousnesses and the temporal
42:18object itself, because not only did
42:20they hear the temporal object, but they
42:23produced it with the others. And that
42:28allows for synchronizing their
42:31consciousnesses to reach what, in
42:34Christian liturgy, is called communion.
42:42On the other hand, a bit later, a
42:45century or so later, you have, for
42:51instance, fifers playing in front of an
42:53advancing regiment. They are in the
42:56front row, playing like that. They are
42:59marching to their deaths. You’ve seen
43:01that in tons of films, for example, in
43:02Gone with the Wind. It is the great
43:05Civil War between the Yankees on one
43:06side and the Southerners on the other.
43:08They are waging a terrible war. And
43:11both sides have their bands to be able
43:13to intoxicate and synchronize the
43:15soldiers so they go to their deaths
43:17without flinching, without asking any
43:19questions. Later, the United States
43:21changed its tactics. They used pop
43:23music and heroin during the Vietnam War
43:27. But that's another story. What I want
43:32to tell you is that temporal objects
43:34have a power to synchronize the
43:38temporality of consciousness, which is
43:41clearly very significant and was not
43:44only used by US consumer capitalism
43:46through the culture industries of the
43:4920th century. But that this power of
43:52synchronization, in fact, has probably
43:54been used since the very origin of
43:56music. Music, which we think began
44:00about 40,000 years ago. In any case,
44:02the musical instruments, the first
44:04musical instruments we know of, which
44:05are extremely elementary, are called
44:07bullroarers. They are 40,000 years old.
44:12Musical instruments that were likely
44:14used to provide rhythm for collective
44:17work, which still exists in some
44:19countries where, for example, in the
44:21rice paddies of Vietnam, people still
44:24plant rice while singing and so on, to
44:27organize the collective. So, as I was
44:36telling you earlier, he posits that we
44:41cannot study consciousness itself, that
44:43we can only study it through the
44:45phenomena of which it is conscious,
44:47because consciousness only appears to
44:48itself through these objects and the
44:50phenomena they produce. This point of
44:56view is held by a philosopher named
44:59Brentano, Franz Brentano, who is a
45:04philosophy professor whose classes
45:08Husserl would attend around 1880–90.
45:14Brentano, who would also conduct
45:15extremely important experiments with
45:17other students, not just with him, in
45:19particular with a student named Wundt,
45:21who is one of the founders of what we
45:23call experimental psychology. I mention
45:27this to you because I will talk to you
45:29about it in more detail next week,
45:31because he and Brentano would study and
45:33found what they call experimental
45:35psychology. They would conduct
45:38psychology experiments, not just
45:40speculative and introspective
45:42psychology, trying to understand how
45:44the consciousness of time is
45:46constituted. For example, when I listen
45:49to a clock chiming, for instance, the
45:53belfry of the town hall or the church
45:55in Compiègne chiming midnight, how is
45:58it that I manage to understand that it
46:00is midnight and not 11 o'clock, for
46:02example? How is it that I manage to
46:08listen to time passing and to
46:10experience time passing? In fact,
46:14Brentano was already asking the
46:16questions that Husserl would ask in his
46:19seminar, about 20 years before that
46:21seminar. The reason I mention this is
46:24because you will see that Brentano
46:26already had an interpretation of what
46:28Husserl would call the temporal object,
46:30but perhaps it was Brentano who first
46:32truly tried to think about temporal
46:34objects, and you will see that they
46:36disagree. Husserl, notably by
46:39distancing himself from his teacher
46:40Brentano while remembering very well
46:42what he taught him. We will come back
46:44to this next week. In 1905, he searches
46:53for the object through which he can
46:55examine the temporality of
46:56consciousness. And this object, which
46:59he calls the temporal object, has the
47:01structure of a melody. The entire
47:03beginning of the seminar on time starts
47:05by studying what a melody is, what
47:07happens when listening to a melody. And
47:12he will argue that a melody is
47:14constituted only of retention and
47:17protention. There is nothing else. It
47:20is a purely temporal phenomenon, not at
47:22all spatial, and it is constituted only
47:24by things that are retained. And I will
47:28say, I’ll invent a verb, "protened."
47:33Protention, protened, to proten: to
47:36hold in advance, in a way. In a melody,
47:44when I listen to a melody, as soon as a
47:48note or a chord has appeared, it
47:50disappears to make room for another
47:53note or chord or another group of
47:55chords. Okay? Let's assume we are
47:59talking here about a monody, something
48:01very simple. By analyzing this sequence
48:07of appearance and disappearance of
48:09notes, chords, and measures that follow
48:11one another and by discovering the fact
48:17that protentions occur there, that is
48:22to say, expectations that I will come
48:25back to next week, he makes a
48:27fundamental discovery in my opinion. So
48:34when I say phenomena of expectation,
48:41there are all kinds of expectation
48:43phenomena musically speaking. I’ll
48:44give you a little example. That is an
48:49expectation. It is a rhythmic system.
48:53If I do this, you produce the sequence
48:56almost by yourselves. It follows almost
49:00automatically. Well, you would have to
49:04do some very detailed music psychology
49:06to see to what extent it would follow
49:09automatically. For example, in faraway
49:13lands, there are what we call gamelans
49:16in Bali. Does it in Bali generate that?
49:23I am not sure, I don't know. There are
49:29temporal phenomena of protention that
49:31are linked to our culture, to what we
49:33have already heard. If I say "ta ta"
49:38you continue it on your own, you
49:40provide the rest. Agreed? These are the
49:43structures that you are immersed in.
49:45You might not know at all what
49:46Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is, but you
49:48continue it anyway. We will see this
49:51through a particular film called "Same
49:53Old Song." Well, it haunts us. And
49:55sometimes we heard them even before we
49:57were born because in our mother's womb,
50:00we heard things. Starting with our
50:02mother's voice, and it structures
50:04things in advance. These early
50:07structures, for example, the
50:09gutturalization that those not born in
50:12North Africa or in the Middle East have
50:15a lot of trouble doing. Ratibi, for
50:18example—I had a friend with that name
50:19, Kibi. I never truly managed to
50:21pronounce his name, Kibi. There it is,
50:24it sounds like a' k 'but that’s not
50:26it. You have to be born in North Africa
50:29to be able to pronounce that. Why? Well
50:32, because our vocal cords are
50:35configured by an embryogenetic
50:37evolution that results in synaptic
50:40selections occurring even before birth.
50:46And in any case, it is a thesis
50:49developed by specialists in the
50:51psychology of the ear, so to speak,
50:54showing that we acquire retentions
50:57before we are even born into life.
51:02Fetal, as we call it. But these
51:05acquisitions predispose us to
51:07protentions. And in fact, every time we
51:13acquire a retention, we also acquire a
51:15protention by default. That is why, for
51:19example, in a very important text
51:21called "An Enquiry Concerning Human
51:23Understanding" by David Hume, Hume says
51:26, "It is from a series of experiences
51:28that we eventually deduce the principle
51:30of causality." Such a cause, therefore
51:34such an effect. A principle of
51:37causality that we verify in existence,
51:39which never contradicts itself, and
51:40which finally leads us, when we see
51:42such a cause, to deduce such an effect.
51:45It means that even if the effect is not
51:47current, we protend, that is to say, we
51:48anticipate that it will take place.
51:51Right? For example, coughing, having a
51:54fever, a headache, etc., equals the flu
51:57. These are just symptoms, we can be
51:59wrong, but there it is. Now, there are
52:01very empirical causalities and there
52:03are very formal causalities. I won't go
52:06into that question, but what I want to
52:08tell you is that at the epistemological
52:09foundation of philosophy, which are the
52:11great thoughts of Hume, of Newton, of
52:13all these, these questions exist but
52:15are formulated differently, not in the
52:17vocabulary of retentions and
52:18protentions, or, for example, in Hume,
52:20it is in the vocabulary of what he
52:21calls associations, contiguities,
52:23continuities, and so on. So, I tell you
52:31, he made a fundamental discovery by
52:34studying temporal objects. only
52:36discovers one note. For example, the
52:39note D which is here. This note D, it
52:49only sounds, it only sounds in its
52:55relationship to the A with which it
52:58forms an interval which is represented
53:02here. What do I mean by telling you
53:05this? I am reformulating what Housouser
53:08says much more precisely and in more
53:09detail than I do. What I want to tell
53:13you is that the A, what we call the A
53:14—which is incidentally the
53:16fundamental note of the tuning fork,
53:17because it is by giving the A that we
53:19tune instruments generally, at least
53:21instruments that can be tuned, because
53:23there are some that cannot. The A, in
53:27other words, all musicians keep a
53:28tuning fork in their pocket, which is a
53:30kind of metal prong they make vibrate.
53:34The A is only a note in relation to
53:36other notes. What I mean is that the A
53:39is not just a sound, it is not a simple
53:43frequency if you prefer. Of course,
53:47today and since 1953, to be precise, A
53:51is defined as a frequency. That
53:55frequency is 440 Hz. It was defined by
53:58several conventions, the last being the
54:00London convention. You will find this
54:03explained in detail in this Wikipedia
54:05entry. The first standardization of A
54:10took place in 1859 in France. Why was
54:13it necessary to standardize A, for
54:15example in Germany? As you know,
54:18Germany is a very musical country. Well
54:21, depending on the cities you went to,
54:23Leipzig, Hanover, etc., you didn't have
54:25the same A because it actually depended
54:26on the instrument makers. The A is
54:29purely empirical. You say the A is
54:32there. There you go, it's this A. And
54:34when you came from one place to go and
54:36play in another, you couldn't play with
54:38the other musicians. They weren't tuned
54:41like you. Their instruments were tuned
54:43and tempered completely differently. So
54:46, you had to play with an instrument
54:47other than your own. In France, we
54:51started to build an industrial musical
54:54instrument market. And so, a French
54:57convention was defined in 1859, and
54:59then, through a whole series of other
55:02conventions, there was finally an
55:04international convention in 1953 that
55:07stated that worldwide, the A is at 440
55:09Hz. And as you may know, it is also the
55:12dial tone of the telephone, of the PSTN
55:14(public switched telephone network),
55:16because on mobile phones, it is not at
55:18all 440 Hz. But what I am trying to
55:22tell you by saying this is that it is a
55:24very recent thing to define the note "A
55:26" by its frequency. In the past, there
55:28was no frequency. You had A's at 350 Hz
55:31, A's at 500 Hz. And that's because
55:34what constitutes the A is its
55:36relationship with other notes in scales
55:38. And in other words, it is the
55:42intervals and the scales of intervals
55:44that define the A. So, it is the
55:45relationships between the notes that
55:47define notes as notes. A note is only a
55:52note if it retains within itself the
55:55note that precedes it. Which itself
55:59must retain the note that precedes it
56:01and with which it forms a scale. If you
56:04change the scale along the way, it
56:05doesn't work. You are in dissonance.
56:07Now, since Schoenberg, we began writing
56:10in dissonance, but I will leave that
56:13aside. It's a question that is too
56:15complex for us. What I am trying to
56:20tell you in in describing this, is that
56:25Husserl, by studying the temporal
56:27object, discovered something that I
56:29will note like this, but it's my own
56:32notation, it's primary retention. He
56:36discovered that when I listen to a
56:38temporal object, for example, a guy
56:39named Stiegler who is giving a lecture
56:41called PH10. If I want to understand
56:45what Stiegler is saying, what Stiegler
56:46just said, I must retain from what he
56:48just said what he said in the previous
56:50sentence, that the previous sentence
56:52retains the one before it, and so on,
56:53going back to the beginning of the
56:55lecture. Otherwise, you won't
56:58understand what I am saying. What is he
57:01talking about? I don't understand
57:02anything. Now, you might tell me that
57:05in a moment, and you would be right if
57:06you said it to me. "Yes, but we don't
57:08remember what you said at the beginning
57:09of the lecture." You don't remember it,
57:12but at the same time, all the
57:13aggregations you've made of what you
57:15understand are made starting from the
57:16beginning of the lecture. So even if
57:18you don't remember it, something
57:20retains it in what you are perceiving
57:22right at this moment. Exactly as if you
57:25were listening to, for example, the
57:27beginning of, well, for instance, that
57:29piece by Gluck from earlier. You reach
57:32the end, you don't remember the
57:33beginning. But nonetheless, it plays a
57:36fundamental role in everything you have
57:37heard. That is what constitutes the
57:40musicality of music, and not a pile of
57:42more or less incoherent sounds, which
57:44would result in noise rather than music
57:47. In the same way, even if you do not
57:49remember what I said at the beginning
57:51of this lecture, you have retained it,
57:53and you are still retaining it without
57:55even being aware of it. Otherwise, what
57:57I am saying would be nothing but a
57:58jumble of incoherent remarks that you
58:00would understand absolutely nothing of.
58:04Now, you could also tell me that each
58:06and every one of you hears something
58:08quite different in what I am saying,
58:10and you would be right. And that is
58:12precisely what interests me, and we
58:14will talk about that in a moment when
58:16we discuss the problems of notation—I
58:18mean, of note-taking, the notes you are
58:20currently taking. Husserl therefore
58:25discovers something very important in
58:271905, which is called tertiary
58:30retention, which I denote as R3. In
58:36reality, in making this discovery, he
58:38takes up theses that date back well
58:41before him, from a philosopher who was
58:44also a great bishop of Christendom
58:47named Saint Augustine. Sorry? Primary.
58:53Primary attention. Saint Augustine, in
58:56his Confessions, had already explored a
59:00little bit of a temporal object that
59:02was the poem. The poem, which for Saint
59:04Augustine presents itself essentially
59:06in an oral form and not a written one.
59:08At the time of Augustine, poems were
59:12not written down. There were no poetry
59:15books. On the other hand, poems were
59:18sung or recited, for example, the Song
59:20of Songs, which is a great religious
59:23poem, and it played an extremely
59:25important role in the spiritual life of
59:27monks and religious people. And Saint
59:30Augustine was a religious man. He
59:33himself had discovered elements that
59:35strongly resemble what Husserl says,
59:37but he had not formalized them at all
59:39the way Husserl would. Now, I am not
59:44going to tell you today what secondary
59:46retention is, because if I talk to you
59:49about primary retention, it is because
59:51there are secondary retentions and even
59:53retentions that I call tertiary. I am
59:57not going to talk about that today; I
59:58will talk to you about it next week. I
1:00:00will be concluding shortly. What I
1:00:03would simply like to tell you to whet
1:00:05your appetite, to make you want to see
1:00:08the next episode—because I try to
1:00:10make my course work like a serial, I
1:00:12think it is a good technique: serials,
1:00:14that is how Dostoevsky wrote, Balzac,
1:00:19Eugène Sue, and that a good course is
1:00:22a sort of serial. You want to know what
1:00:24happens next. So, to whet your appetite
1:00:28, as they sometimes say, I would like
1:00:32to point out to you that, at the moment
1:00:35he reflects on the primary retention he
1:00:37discovers in the relationship between
1:00:39the notes I was telling you about
1:00:41earlier, the R and the and, by
1:00:45understanding that the R can only
1:00:47present itself as an R in its
1:00:48relationship to the A that follows it.
1:00:52Otherwise, it would only be a sound and
1:00:54not a note. Well, not at the exact same
1:00:58moment, a little later in reality to be
1:01:01precise, 18 years later in 1923 and in
1:01:05Russia, in Russia which had become
1:01:07Soviet, a guy named Kuleshov. This guy
1:01:15named Kuleshov conducts an experiment
1:01:18which is somewhat the basis of film
1:01:21theory. So, it's not him, Kuleshov.
1:01:24It's a very well-known Russian actor at
1:01:27the time named Mosjoukine. As you can
1:01:29see, by the way, he is wearing makeup.
1:01:32At that time, actors wore makeup.
1:01:35Mosjoukine, who is a theater actor,
1:01:40agrees to an experiment which will lead
1:01:48to what is called the K-effect or
1:01:50Kuleshov effect. The experiment in
1:01:56question has been described in various
1:01:59ways. In fact, only reconstructions of
1:02:02it exist. And by the way, some film
1:02:05historians like François Albera, for
1:02:07example, claim it never really happened
1:02:09. At least, that it wasn't Kuleshov who
1:02:12performed it. I cannot settle that. It
1:02:17is a historian's debate. Well, however,
1:02:19what I can tell you is that this
1:02:21experiment, whether it was performed by
1:02:23Kuleshov or someone else, is very
1:02:25interesting for us because you will
1:02:27find a description of it in various
1:02:33ways, also on the web. For example,
1:02:35this description which is due to
1:02:37Pudovkin, who is another filmmaker and
1:02:39who explains that uh Kuleshov had
1:02:47chosen a film in a film by someone
1:02:50named Bauer. Three fairly neutral
1:02:57close-ups of the actor Ivan Mosjoukine.
1:03:03The gaze directed off-screen.
1:03:04Off-screen means outside the image,
1:03:07outside the frame of the image which he
1:03:14edited before three different shots
1:03:17representing firstly, a bowl of soup on
1:03:21a table; secondly, a dead young woman
1:03:25lying in a coffin. That was reversed in
1:03:31the photo montage that I am showing you
1:03:32here. And thirdly, a little girl
1:03:35playing. The spectators, writes
1:03:41Pudovkin, admired the acting of
1:03:43Mosjoukine who knew marvelously how to
1:03:45express in the first case appetite, in
1:03:48the second case sadness, in the third
1:03:50case tenderness. Do you understand what
1:03:54Pudovkin is saying? He says that
1:03:56Mosjoukine, each time, fantastically
1:03:59expresses three totally different
1:04:02emotions. He is a great actor. It turns
1:04:04out that it is the same image, in fact,
1:04:06it is the same shot. Okay? So that's
1:04:10not Mozhukhin, the images I'm
1:04:11presenting here are a reconstruction of
1:04:14the experiment. It's not Mozhukhin. Now
1:04:18, there are several other versions, you
1:04:19see. There's one by Pudovkin, another
1:04:23version by Pudovkin. Uh well, which
1:04:27says more or less the same thing. So
1:04:31it's not very interesting to read it,
1:04:33but you can read it if you want to by
1:04:35reviewing the lecture. And then there's
1:04:38another version by Kuleshov himself,
1:04:40which is this one. But here, it is
1:04:42interesting to read it because
1:04:46apparently he recounts the formulation
1:04:48of the hypothesis to conduct the
1:04:50experiment as he presents it, it hasn't
1:04:53happened yet for Mozhukhin and by
1:04:57telling him uh here is what we are
1:05:02going to do. We will take the same
1:05:04image, we will edit it with three
1:05:06different shots, and it will produce
1:05:07totally different reactions from the
1:05:09audience. The actor's own reaction is
1:05:11to say—that's what the last sentence
1:05:13here says—it is an indignant response
1:05:16. It is obvious that the two reactions
1:05:18will be completely different. That is
1:05:21to say that one cannot assume that from
1:05:26the same shot, one will have different
1:05:33reactions. So uh I will stop here. I
1:05:43will take up all these questions in
1:05:45much more detail next week. I just
1:05:49wanted to tell you why primary
1:05:54retention is the fundamental question
1:05:57raised by Auer, and how we ourselves
1:06:00will try to grasp it to understand what
1:06:03happens when we watch a film, but also
1:06:06how we make films. I will stop now
1:06:14after simply returning to an issue that
1:06:17I completely forgot to prepare in my
1:06:26slides namely, note-taking and
1:06:32note-sharing. I would like to say a
1:06:34word about it now, it's important. This
1:06:41is a representation, it's an excerpt
1:06:46from the course I gave last year and at
1:06:51one point in the course, I displayed
1:06:53this, which you can see. What is it
1:06:57that I am showing there? It is written,
1:07:00I can enlarge it a little. In green,
1:07:03the elements of understanding; in red,
1:07:05the elements of confusion; in blue, the
1:07:07comments; in yellow, the keywords. I
1:07:09already told you about it the other day
1:07:10. You are taking notes there, you took
1:07:14notes during this lecture. You took
1:07:18them however you wanted. Practically
1:07:21everyone takes them by hand. Sometimes
1:07:23there are students who type them on a
1:07:25computer. I asked you to time-code. I
1:07:28don't know if you remembered to do it.
1:07:30I'm afraid not. Uh Anyway, what I'm
1:07:36going to ask you to do now is to review
1:07:38your notes. Not now, not today, not
1:07:41even tomorrow, but as soon as the first
1:07:43lecture from last Friday is posted
1:07:46online, you are to review your notes
1:07:48and plot them on a timeline like this
1:07:51one, that is to say, within the flow of
1:07:54my lecture, classifying them into these
1:07:57three categories: green, red, or blue.
1:08:01I've already told you this, I'm saying
1:08:03it again so you understand. So, Stigler
1:08:04explains that. You summarize it. You
1:08:08know very well that, for example, next
1:08:11week, I could very well ask any one of
1:08:14you to summarize for me in 5 minutes
1:08:16what we covered last week. Ask you that
1:08:19. There was a time when my lectures
1:08:21always started like that. In fact, I
1:08:23would always ask two students to
1:08:26summarize the previous week's lecture.
1:08:28I would warn them beforehand. They
1:08:31would create a kind of synthesis of a
1:08:34lecture that generally lasts an hour,
1:08:36or an hour and a half sometimes. They
1:08:40would present an hour and a half in 5
1:08:42minutes. It's a movie trailer, roughly
1:08:46the equivalent of a trailer, maybe a
1:08:48bit longer than a trailer, and it's
1:08:50also supposed to constitute the trailer
1:08:52you will create for yourselves if you
1:08:54ask, for example, next week, when I
1:08:56start the lecture: I will say "we said
1:08:59this" and you will reactivate, all at
1:09:01once, without even realizing it, your
1:09:03secondary retentions. That's what
1:09:05secondary retentions are. It's what you
1:09:07experienced that is no longer the
1:09:08present but the past of the previous
1:09:10lecture. You will try to remobilize the
1:09:13synaptic circuits you traced because,
1:09:15since I've been speaking to you,
1:09:16synaptic circuits have been produced in
1:09:18your brains. You have created
1:09:21connections. Otherwise, you wouldn't
1:09:23retain anything at all of what I'm
1:09:24telling you. We know that today. Memory
1:09:26is neural connections taking place.
1:09:29Over the course of the lectures I will
1:09:31give you. Some of these connections
1:09:33will strengthen. And what we can
1:09:36observe is that if we take, for example
1:09:40both of your copies of the notes you
1:09:42took and we compare them, you didn't
1:09:44take the same notes. So you didn't hear
1:09:46the same things in what I said. And
1:09:49that is very interesting. It is very
1:09:53interesting to observe that in what I
1:09:55say, what you retain from what I say,
1:09:57the retentions you make of what I say,
1:10:00well, they are not the same. Imagine,
1:10:05for example, that I collect 25 essays.
1:10:09Imagine that I tell you now, you have
1:10:11fifteen minutes to summarize what
1:10:13we’ve seen today. You do the work, I
1:10:16collect the 25 essays, and all 25 are
1:10:18identical. Can you imagine that? That
1:10:22exactly the same thing is written on
1:10:24all 25 copies, it would be quite
1:10:28strange. It would keep you up at night,
1:10:30and me too. Actually, it would feel a
1:10:34bit like something that happens in a
1:10:36movie called The Shining, by Stan...
1:10:38Stanley Kubrick, when suddenly the wife
1:10:40of the guy—a total madman she lives
1:10:42with in an isolated building—
1:10:44discovers that he’s supposedly
1:10:46writing books, but he’s actually been
1:10:48writing exactly the same thing for
1:10:50weeks; and she realizes he’s
1:10:52completely insane, and, by the way,
1:10:56he’s going to try to kill her, their
1:10:58son, and everyone else. Who has seen
1:11:02this movie? Did it scare you? It scared
1:11:07me very, very much. I don’t dare
1:11:08watch it again. Even though it’s a
1:11:11very important film, you don’t take
1:11:15the same notes. That means you don’t
1:11:17understand the same things from what I
1:11:19say. And that interests me greatly; it
1:11:22interests me to track it. That’s why
1:11:24I’m asking you to follow this
1:11:25protocol: note in green everything
1:11:27you’ve understood from what I say, or
1:11:29what you think you’ve understood. In
1:11:31red, what I call elements of "
1:11:35surprehension" or confusion, which is
1:11:38what you didn’t understand—not
1:11:40because you’re incapable of
1:11:41understanding, but because it exceeds
1:11:43your grasp. "Verstehen" in German, "
1:11:46understanding" in English—it goes
1:11:48beyond understanding. There are things
1:11:51that go beyond understanding, which
1:11:52don't fall under comprehension but
1:11:54under "surprehension." In my opinion,
1:11:57that’s what Socrates called anamnesis
1:11:59. And then in blue, I ask you to add
1:12:03comments if you wish, after the fact,
1:12:05regarding these elements of
1:12:06comprehension or surprehension. These
1:12:09comments can be objections,
1:12:11contradictions, expansions, or
1:12:13contributions from your own secondary
1:12:16retentions of my lecture. Once you’ve
1:12:21done that, I ask you to highlight them
1:12:23in yellow. These comments, annotations,
1:12:27etc., and to add keywords. And from
1:12:32there, we will work with two people I
1:12:38already mentioned last time to start
1:12:40comparing your work, your notes. And
1:12:44the point of doing this is to get you
1:12:47to look at what others have thought
1:12:50among yourselves, to get in touch with
1:12:52some of those who have thought either
1:12:55similarly to you or in opposition to
1:12:58you, to begin to set up a process of
1:13:00what Socrates called a dialectic.
1:13:03Dialectic is the confrontation of
1:13:05points of view in Socrates, which
1:13:08progresses toward what Socrates calls
1:13:11aletheia, the truth. And based on that,
1:13:15I'll talk to you about it a bit later,
1:13:17we'll try to develop processes for the
1:13:19editorialization of the course, but I
1:13:21won't talk to you about that now. Um
1:13:26we'll stop there. What I just told you,
1:13:28I repeat, is not an obligation. If you
1:13:31don't want to do it, don't do it. I
1:13:33won't penalize you for it at all. In my
1:13:36opinion, you're wrong because I think
1:13:38it's a truly interesting experience to
1:13:40have, and furthermore because these are
1:13:42approaches I've been cultivating for
1:13:44two years and which will begin to be
1:13:46developed on a large scale in contexts
1:13:48other than UTC. And I think it's very
1:13:52interesting to dwell on it. It's a way
1:13:55of trying to do something other than
1:13:57what we call MOOCs (Massive Open Online
1:13:59Courses), to do something much more
1:14:01interesting than these MOOCs, which for
1:14:03me are more like gadgets, but to really
1:14:06use temporal, spatial, audiovisual
1:14:07objects to transmit knowledge and even
1:14:10to elaborate it. Because here, what I'm
1:14:12asking you to do is also to elaborate
1:14:13your comments and therefore to produce
1:14:15knowledge, not just to receive
1:14:17knowledge. There, we can take some time
1:14:20for a short discussion if there are any
1:14:23students who want to say something,
1:14:25question, or object, or testify. And if
1:14:33there aren't, well, we'll have a little
1:14:34—do you want to say something? melody
1:14:39at someone is talking about it.
1:14:45Ah, that's a very good question. I'll
1:14:48come back to it a little bit next week.
1:14:50So, I'm rephrasing the question because
1:14:51I think the microphones...and since I
1:14:53don't have an operator, I can't turn
1:14:54the microphone and all that towards you
1:14:55. So your question was to know what
1:14:57relationship there might possibly be
1:14:59between the analyses on the link of the
1:15:02melody and the Bergsonian question of
1:15:04duration. It's a very, very good
1:15:06question. Actually, many people have
1:15:09asked themselves this question, myself
1:15:11included, and in fact, I'm planning to
1:15:13write a book where I'll talk about it a
1:15:16lot. I won't be able to answer it
1:15:20precisely today, but I won't leave you
1:15:22without an answer today either. I will
1:15:25give you a provisional answer, which we
1:15:26will explore a bit more not only next
1:15:28week, but in the coming classes. Hus we
1:15:35will soon see, next week, that Husserl
1:15:38distinguishes primary retention from
1:15:41what he calls secondary retention.
1:15:44Secondary retention, we will come back
1:15:46to this, is actually something that was
1:15:51once a primary retention and has become
1:15:53past. Primary retention is not the past
1:15:56. Right now, you are primarily
1:15:58retaining things I said at the
1:16:00beginning of this lecture, but what I
1:16:01said at the beginning is not yet past
1:16:03because the lecture isn't over. Like
1:16:06when you listen to a sonata or a violin
1:16:09piece like Gluck's earlier, until the
1:16:11very last note. The first note is not
1:16:14past; it still resonates within the
1:16:15last note. And that is fundamental.
1:16:19That is what constitutes the unity of
1:16:21the piece of music. So as long as a
1:16:24play, for instance, isn't finished, the
1:16:26beginning of the play is still present
1:16:28in the play. Otherwise, we wouldn't
1:16:30understand anything. Same thing with a
1:16:33film. When you watch a film, the first
1:16:35scene is still present in the last.
1:16:38Otherwise, you wouldn't understand the
1:16:39film. There are films where this is
1:16:40absolutely obvious. For example,
1:16:43detective films, well, mystery films
1:16:45and so on, or films like Memento, or
1:16:47others where it's less visible. But in
1:16:50any case, it is always the case. What
1:16:56constitutes the past is what is no
1:16:58longer present. So, for example, I gave
1:17:01a lecture last Friday. Those are
1:17:03retentions. At the time you retained
1:17:06these, they were primary retentions,
1:17:08they were present, but since then, they
1:17:10have become past. And besides, you have
1:17:13forgotten some things, you have lost
1:17:14some things. Husserl contrasts primary
1:17:18retention and secondary retention. He
1:17:21goes very far in this opposition. I am
1:17:23speaking of the book, *The
1:17:24Phenomenology of Internal
1:17:25Time-Consciousness*, that I mentioned
1:17:27earlier, because later on, he modified
1:17:29his point of view a bit. But in that
1:17:31book, in his, I would say, radical
1:17:33phenomenological position, he opposes
1:17:35primary retention and secondary
1:17:37retention. What does that mean? It
1:17:38means he posits that primary retention
1:17:41is not at all conditioned and
1:17:42determined by secondary retentions.
1:17:44That is to say that what I perceive is
1:17:48not conditioned by what I have already
1:17:50perceived in the past. It is exactly
1:17:57the opposite of what Bergson says. With
1:18:00Bergson, who also doesn't ask the
1:18:02question of the temporal object but
1:18:04rather, as you said, the question of
1:18:05duration. Quite the contrary, the
1:18:09present is only, as Bergson says, the
1:18:11contraction in perception of the entire
1:18:14past gathered at the moment of
1:18:15perception. So for Bergson, there is an
1:18:18organic, functional, and immediate link
1:18:20between the present and the past. And
1:18:23consequently the future, whereas with
1:18:26initially—because it changes later—
1:18:28there is a functional separation. We
1:18:32will see this in much greater detail,
1:18:34because it will actually be at the
1:18:35heart of the interpretation I'm going
1:18:37to offer you, starting from the films.
1:18:41But I will return to your question as
1:18:43early as next week. A question that
1:18:46also very much concerns a text by
1:18:53Gilles Deleuze that I will discuss in
1:18:56two weeks, called "Cinema 1: The
1:18:58Movement-Image." It is a text where
1:19:01Gilles Deleuze used Bergson, or rather
1:19:02refers a lot to Bergson to try and
1:19:04think about cinema, and precisely I
1:19:06refer a lot to Husserl to try and think
1:19:07about cinema. And so at some point, I
1:19:09will tell you a little bit about how I
1:19:11position myself in relation to Deleuze.
1:19:14Are there any other questions? No. In
1:19:17that case, let's take a 10-minute break
1:19:20if you don't mind. We will resume at
1:19:226:15 PM. Thank you. Okay.

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