Description
Karma is one of the most contested and misunderstood notions in Buddhist philosophy. Vernacularly, it refers to the phenomenon that an act, a speech, or a thought, once being actualized––and subsequently, extinguished––will produce a delayed or deferred consequence. Yet, the Buddhist notion of karma is closer to Baruch Spinoza’s understanding of affectus: an impulse that vocates––and is vocated by––the formational process of the consciousness. For Buddhist philosophers, all forms are dependently originated, from one moment to another, out of a layout of causes and conditions. In this light, imaging, which is a process of constituting a milieu that includes the body itself and the “external” forms, appears to be an actual process of becoming. Yet, such a process of actualization is an instantiation of a layout of interdependent conditions (potentialities), and this process of actualization-virtualization drives––and is driven by––karma.The concept of karma, I argue, is therefore crucial in our understanding of the technicity of the cinema, why we are so attached to the subject-object divide in our embodied experience, and in what way such a divide can be dismantled.
My talk is based on my forthcoming book Illuminating Reality: Cinematic Technicity-Consciousness through the Lens of Buddhism (Minnesota, 2021). In this monograph, I use Buddhist philosophy to locate the connection between what Gilbert Simondon (1924–89) calls technicity (the principles upon which technics operate), and what Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) calls the image-consciousness. Seen from Simondon’s perspective, the cinema is an anthropotechnical milieu. Seen from Deleuze’s point of view, the cinematographic image is a consciousness. Although we can say that Simondon and Deleuze offer a parallax view on how the cinema operates, how they are put into operation remains unanswered in their respective works. This is where Buddhism can intervene and illuminate.
| Period | 15 Apr 2021 |
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| Held at | University of Westminster, United Kingdom |