3 - On the Pragmatics of Enunciation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
In Francesco Casetti’s pragmatist theory, enunciation becomes entirely a matter of deictic point-of-view configurations between pronominally defined positions of “I” “you” and “he.” Casetti turns the negativity of the speaking subject into a performative speech act. In contrast to Casetti, the late Metz comes closest to the original impulse of Oudart: against the presentism of Casetti’s deictic model, Metz pleads for the impersonality of the instance of enunciation similar to that of writing. However, Metz tends to allow enunciation and text to fall into one another despite their alleged splitting. The next step is a critique of Godard’s political modernism from the perspective of suture theory. I refer to his use of the paradigmatic selfreflexive figure of the “look at the camera” to explain that Godard remains caught in the deictic addressing of spectator, author and apparatus.
Keywords: Deixis, Speech Act, Writing, Textuality, Look at the camera
At the end of Psycho, Norman Bates’ psychotic grin seems to turn directly towards the viewer. Yet the final deterioration of his mental health leaves us in doubt as to whether the gaze actually is intended for the viewer as a secret accomplice, or whether it is simply an empty gaze, which, in the isolation of madness, has been denuded of any communicative affinity. The You which the gaze of the character addresses is in Psycho as little embodied as the place of the enunciator. Both the source of the sender and that of the receiver remain precarious: the enunciator cannot be unconditionally equated with Hitchcock (as Bellour does), but nor is the concrete spectator the unambiguous addressee of Norman Bates’ last gaze.
Every form of enunciation is necessarily also an utterance addressed to an enunciatee, but this basic pragmatic embedding of enunciation was initially brushed aside by Metz’s conflation of sender and receiver. In the 1980s, the debate surrounding filmic enunciation underwent a pragmatic turn, which saw an increasing preoccupation with the linguistic roots of the concept. The Italian film theorist Francesco Casetti can be considered the main representative of this turn towards the historicization of theory. In his seminal book Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and its Spectator, the implications these debates had for psychoanalysis and the critique of ideology disappear in favor of a performative theory of enunciation, in whose center stands the concept of “deixis.”
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- Information
- Towards a Political Aesthetics of CinemaThe Outside of Film, pp. 89 - 116Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020