Cinematic Time and Animal Worlds

Abstract

This chapter develops key aspects of the book’s theoretical framework, moving between philosophies of animal worlds and Deleuze’s account of cinematic time. It draws on the concept of the Umwelt proposed by Uexküll, and the different responses to this concept offered by Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari. Focusing in particular on Deleuze and Guattari’s reworking of the Umwelt as a process of ‘desubjectified’ assemblages, the chapter links this to Deleuze’s thinking of the time-image as a shift from subject to world, and as a realm that is intricately bound up with questions of differing, becoming and the virtual. While suggesting ways of thinking through links between Deleuze, cinema and the slow animal film, the chapter also turns to recent accounts of the relation between animals and film, by Burt, Pick, Lippit, Sobchack and others. Engaging with yet also moving beyond the recourse to Bazin that has tended to shape the field thus far, it emphasises what Deleuze’s theory of cinematic time can add to this developing body of work, as well as what a more detailed and wide-ranging account of Deleuze and Guattari’s model of animal worlds can contribute to the field of critical animal studies.