Contents
Acknowledgments
0. Universes
"H¿ichi the Earless"-blindness and invisibility-exscription-atomic destruction and phantom visuality-catastrophic light, Japanese visual culture-Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" (1941)-the universal Library and secret archive-traces of the uninscribed and uninscribable-"the true story of your death"-atomism-the shadow archive-Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1995)-heterogeneity and psychoanalysis-a universe of the unarchivable
1. The Shadow Archive (A Secret Light)
"The secret is the very ash of the archive"-Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1934-39)-"into the light"-"the shadow of the god"-secrecy and pseudonymy-Tanizaki Jun'ichir¿, In Praise of Shadows (1933-34)-illumination and the archive-"the glow of grime"-radiation descends from above and assails the body like a fever-cinders and atomic writing-pellicular surfaces-X-rays and cinema, profound superficiality-secret visuality--avisuality-cinefaction
2. Modes of Avisuality: Psychoanalysis-X-ray-Cinema
"The dream of Irma's injection"-the secret of dreams and the secret dream-formlessness and interiority-"the very invisibility of the invisible within the visible"-Wilhelm Conrad R¿ntgen-Berthe's hand, X-rays-inside out-skiagraphy-penetrating light and the Visible Human Project-destructive visuality-anniversaries, apocalypse-x sign-the dream of cinema-an exemplary design
3. Cinema Surface Design
"The psychology of movement"-early cinema, making visible the invisible-Auguste and Louis Lumi¿re, the surface of the screen-imaginary depth-"unseen energy swallowing space"-screens and displaced collisions-"phantom rides"-invisible thresholds between life and death-"the metaphysical surface" (Gilles Deleuze)-James Williamson, The Big Swallow (circa 1901)-total visibility--the outer surface of consciousness-the phantasm
4. An Atomic Trace
"Eyes melted out of sheer ecstasy"-colorlessness-the wrathful light of atoms-invisible men-optical density and diffusion-allegories of atomic radiation-invisibility and transparency-H. G. Wells (1897) and James Whale (1933), The Invisible Man-"a black cavity"-racelessness-unimaginable destruction, catastrophic light-photographic sculptures-face and surface, facelessness-Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)-IM, "hypervisibility"-"outside of history"-atomic and anatomic-phonic atomism-the spaceless image
5. Exscription/Antigraphy
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "a blending of some sort"-painting and the universal image-Tanizaki's Japanese skin, which radiates darkness-"a bright shadow"-a dark writing-atomic, atopic-Ibuse Masuji, Black Rain (1965)-liquid atomic ash-interiorized world-emulsion, "an immiscible mixture"-Marguerite Duras and Alain Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour (1959), cinders and rain-an atomic trope, writing on skin-Mizoguchi Kenji, Ugetsu (1953), the searing surface-impressions-"eyes destined to weep"-Kobayashi Masaki, Kwaidan (1964), the invisible body-disturbance of the senses-d¿montage-catastrophic synthesis-antigraphy-Teshigahara Hiroshi, Woman in the Dunes (1964)-identity papers-a liquid desert-8:15 a.m.-water from sand-a smooth archive
6. Phantom Cures: Obscurity and Emptiness
Psychic visuality and displaced interiority-Kore-eda Hirokazu, Maborosi (1995)-"a beautiful light"-memory and dream, the acousmatic voice-passages and lines-a shadow optics-Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Cure (1997)-"x"-"I myself am empty"-memories returned from the outside-Roger Corman, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)-atomic vision-photographing emptiness-mesmerism-interiority constituted by the lack of interiority-circumcision, secret cuts-the cure/to cure-dark worlds-"sightless vision," a vision machine at the end of cinema-universe
Notes
Index