Paris, July 17, 1998

Dear Tag,

You wanted a better understanding of what is involved in figurative analysis of cinema and I’m challenging myself to explain it to you in just a few words because, as you write threateningly in your e-mail with the subject line “Moving Medici”: “If you can't define it briefly in two or three words (and not two or three words in a figurative sense), you’d be better off considering another approach.” Although I do not see why an analytic desire should be summed up in a formula (partly watering it down), I will still force myself to do so because you and I like arguing and because we both agree on the basics: The attention given to the films is what matters most. Here is a possible abridgment, but you will see that at first glance it isn't necessarily going to illuminate you or satisfy you much: “To consider cinema from a figural angle.” So that the John Ford specialist does not jump on his high horse and the Rossellini biographer does not cover his face murmuring, “O Dio, grande Dio,” let me develop this a little.

First of all, figurative analysis is not a dogmatic method and it is not destined to become one. Its sole aim is to consider aspects and problems in films that have, paradoxically, been neglected. To this end, it relies on the application of several practical principles that do not form precepts. It is about analytic openness starting with the films themselves rather than terminological rules. (At most, its only irrevocable formula would be Gilles Deleuze's warning: “Experiment, never interpret.”) By means of introduction, here are four of its principles.

1. Figural Analysis. To consider, at least provisionally, that a film takes precedence over its context. This is a mere parenthetical in the infinite circulation that every image maintains with that which it is the image—but without it, we will never know what the image is telling us. Despite the great diversity of disciplinary approaches and ideological options, a powerful methodological doxa currently exists in the analysis of representations, a common adhesion to certain procedures stemming from a particular history of ideas.