Chapter 2 Schizoanalysis and the Cinema of the Brain Gregg Lambert In his later works, Deleuze referred many times to what he described as ‘our new relationship to the Brain’. As he writes in Cinema 2: The Time- Image, because ‘the Brain is no more a reasonable system than the world is rationally constructed [. . .], the brain becomes our illness, our passion, rather than our mastery, our solution or decision’ (Deleuze, 1989: 202). In other words, there is a crack between the brain and the world; however, the crack is not ‘between’, as if the brain was on one side of a vast crevice or issure and the world was on the other side, since this would simply redupli- cate the old Cartesian dualism. Instead, we must now recognize that this crack is continuous and runs along a plane that stretches between both terms conceived as purely virtual points; moreover, it is full of hairline fractures that radiate outward on a plane of immanence that encompasses both brain and world. What is most remarkable in this remapping of the earlier divide between objective and subjective conditions of appercep- tion is Deleuze’s assertion that the ‘interval’ between brain and world, or between stimulus and response, is now governed by a logic of the irra- tional cut, which is responsible for creating points of uncertainty between inside and outside (perception or hallucination, associative memory or reminiscence). Accordingly, the relation between brain and world becomes a topological point between inside and outside in an uncertain, probabilis- tic and a-centered system. As Deleuze argues in Cinema 2, and later in What is Philosophy? (with Guattari), it is this character of uncertainty that governs our new relationship to the brain. Psychoanalysis also proposed the idea of consciousness as an a-centered and uncertain system by asking the question whether it is ‘I’ who thinks, perceives, wills, desires or rather an ‘Other’ who thinks in my place. But as Deleuze argues psychoanalysis is based on a rational cerebral model, that of a semiotic structure or language ; consequently, the relationship between Copyright © 2008. Continuum. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 5/30/2015 5:01 AM via SYRACUSE UNIV LIBRARY AN: 343939 ; MacCormack, Patricia, Buchanan, Ian.; Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema Account: s3372930