The Suture or the logic of the signifier in Cahiers du Cinma.

On the occasion of this meeting I propose to expound the arguments which are the first part of my PHD. The main hypothesis is that apparatus theory is following the structurals methods (developped during the sixties). To argue this idea, I am going to refer to the serial dfinition of the structure given by Deleuze in The Logic Of Sense. Deleuze answers the question How to recognise structuralism ? claiming that there is no structure without an empty square, which enables its functioning 1. Meaning that there would be a floating signifier, the function of which is to signify the significations limit. To examplify this idea, Deleuze alludes to many notions which assume this empty squares function : he refers to the words Mana used by Levi Strauss, or also the object a used by Jacques Lacan. In the same way, the Jacques-Alain Millers suture concept is also mentioned. This last example given by Deleuze fits with my basic hypothesis. As a matter of fact, the concept of suture has also been used in the Cahiers du cinma to develop arguments which are part of the apparatus theory 2. The concept of suture has been brought from the psychanalytic domain to the cinematographic one by J.P Oudart. A series of two articles titled Suture are published in the Cahiers du cinma at the end of the sixties3. The notion is articulated on two levels : on the one hand the strategical level and on the other hand the conceptual one. 1. On the strategical level, the concept sutures, the cinematographic field and the psychoanalitic one. The concept assumes the index function which was left empty by the deconstruction of the authors category. In fact, If the author is simply a structural function of the cultural production (as Foucault says)4, therefore the concepts play the index role instead of the proper nouns. By using the concept of suture Oudart proclaims the collaborative link with the psychoanalytical journal Cahiers pour lanalyse. 2. On the conceptual level, La Suture took the lacanian theory further by postulating the primacy of signifier over subject. The lacanians logic of the signifier is related with the main idea of the apparatus theory which postulates that the figurative codes (monocular perspective) define the subjects place included in representation. According to Oudart, the object which is figured on the
1 2

Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Paris, Minuit, 1969.

In his article titled The Tutor-Code Of Classical Cinema, Daniel Dayan describes the relation between La Suture and apparatus theory. Daniel Dayan, The Tutor-Code Of Classical Cinema , Film Quarterly, Vol. 28, (Autumn, 1974), p. 28. 3 Jean-Pierre Oudart, La Suture, Cahiers du cinma no 211-212, 1969. An English version of this text, translated by Kari Hanet, appeared in Screen 18, Winter 1978.
4

Michel Foucault, Quest-ce quun auteur ? in Dits et Ecrits I, Paris, Gallimard, Quarto , 2001 [1969] pp. 817-849.

screen is the signifier of the presence of a subject who is looking at it. Thus, figurative codes are ideological : masked by the imaginary subject, it becomes natural . Empty signifers are not only the affirmation of a lack in the structure, which makes its closure impossible, but also the rise of a banner, a call for a gathering (paradoxicaly) under this impossibility to make a synthesis into unity. This signifers are linked together and constitute a large network between several magazines sharing a similar theoric background: Cinthique, Cahiers du cinma, Tel Quel, Cahiers pour lanalyse. In fact, these journals share a same structural method by postulating that a blind spot constitutes the condition of (im)possibility5 of the structure.

An empty signifier can only emerge if there is a structural impossibility in signification as such, and only if this impossibility can signify itself as an interruption of the structure of the sign. Thus, we are left with the paradoxical situation that what constitutes the condition of possibility of a signifying system - its limits - is also what constitues its condition of impossibiliry a blockage of the continuous expansion of the process of signification. Ernesto Laclau, Emancpation(s), Verso, New Yoek, 1996. p. 37.