Figuration The Cinematic in Literature

The visual aspects of literature are as central as non-visual ones, such as narrative, rhetorical, stylistic, plot, and characters. Subjectivity is formed by a perpetual adjustment of images passing before the reading subject, who, as a “focalizee” (the addressee of the focalized content), makes them into a whole that is comprehensible because, while constantly growing, it is continuous. Having a certain continuity in one’s thought depends, at a level more subliminal than conscious, on having a certain continuity in one’s images. But continuity is not the same thing as coherence. I am interested in those dimensions of literature that classical narratology has tended to think marginal and that pictorial narratology, unbounded by the presumption of linearity, would promote to the forefront or, at least, deploy as heuristic instruments with which to grasp structure outside linear plots. The primary source for this chapter is Lyotard’s concept of figuration, which is his attempt to overcome the word-image opposition. He invoked Freud’s visual inclination in support of his performatively inclined argument.