이미지-퍼포먼스로서의 영화: 랑시에르의 이미지론의 관점에서 본 장-뤽 고다르의 <언어와의 작별>

Abstract

This essay aims to explore the functions of the cinematic images which are discussed in Jean-Luc Godard's film Adieu au langage and Jacques Rancière's thought of imageness. Rancière argues, in Le destin des images, the collection of his essays on art and cinema, that the cinematic image itself functions like the language and this 'play' of the cinematic images is liberated from the simple relationship of resemblance between the object and the image. The two image-functions, presence and inscription are here displaced, so that the cinematic image becomes to 'the phrase-image', which is at the same time the sensible display and the communication of the meaning. Rancière proposes that we call this new relationship between the image and the object 'hyper-resemblance'. Hyper-resemblance defers the original resemblance, the resemblance that is not reality-defined but directly and non-mediatingly presents the elsewhere the reality derives. The cinematic image, which functions like this, is the image as performance and art-becoming-life. Godard's Adieu au langage is a cinematic essay on the relationship between the image and the language. This film is composed of two chapters, 'La nature' and 'La metaphore'. In 'La nature', Godard asserts that we can reach the truth of the object-reality only through 'seeing' without the linguistic consciousness The non-thought is the direct way to the true thought and the cinematic image itself functions without the mediating of the language. The way how the cinematic image functions is 'La metaphore'. The image itself presents the nature but at the same time, through that, something else as itself. Godard's concept of metaphor can be understand in the association with Rancière's concept of hyper-resemblance and the phrase-image. What the cinematic image presents is both 'the visible' and 'the invisible'. Beyond/before the identification and linguistic consciousness, the images themselves functions as the 'other' language, so that they needs no more language. Now, the cinematic image can say goodbye to language, because it, itself, functions like language, because it has its own system of communication. Adieu au langage explores the potential of the cinematic image that the cinema has incubated from its very first time. Rancière's thought of imageness gives us the relevant ground for understanding Godard's experimental attempt to rediscover the function of the cinematic image.