ABSTRACT
Deleuze’s understanding of perception is one of the ways in which he strives to free thought from its foundation in distinct terms (such as the perceiving eye of man) in order to think the differential plane from which such terms emerge (all the micro-perceptions that make up life). Human perception—a perception that grasps the world and others as there to be interpreted—relies on a slowing down of molecular perceptions. If all life is perception—producing and connecting by attraction and repulsion—then certain assemblages are formed when perception slows down. But art and cinema can develop to create perceptions that are different in kind from those of the everyday stimulus–response mechanism. If early cinema for Deleuze is governed by the movement-image, which presents time indirectly, modern cinema creates the time-image. Modern cinema, by contrast, is dominated by the time-image rather than the movement-image.
