Deleuze Transcript 12 Faciality ASIDE 2

The only other system that comes anywhere near this general applicability involves the notion of a landscape. I must confess that I don't really see the significance of introducing landscapes here, and, from what I can see, most of the discussion is better developed in the Plateau on smooth and striated spaces. There is something about the argument which makes it look upside down to me: I think of landscapes as something artificially designed and laid out by humans, as in 'landscape gardening', but I think that in this text, the landscape can be seen as a smooth space as opposed to actual concrete territories as spaces which have been striated by various social and political forces. That would fit with deterritorialization, of course. Landscapes have been striated by human activity, whether this is via drawing national boundaries, or,more generally, using geographical terms to manage them. Sometimes they become 'the face of the nation' 

There are tighter 'correlations' with faciality (191) here and there when landscapes are seen as general worlds (maybe screens?) to be populated by human artefacts (have black holes put onto them?) , but this correlation is based largely on a particular example. Note 7 (p.588) talks of  pedagogic exercises by de la Salle and Loyola which invite kids to colour in landscapes and faces  relating to Christ and theological notions of hell etc. Colouring in these outlines is likened to imposing appropriate language upon them. Big generalization from this though!

Architecture and the other arts operate with punctuated landscapes and given significance by alternating between broad landscapes and various ‘close-ups’: film is the obvious example, but there is an equivalent of the close up in literature too. This is illustrated, not at all helpfully if you don’t know it (like me) , by a reference to an epic on mediaeval chivalry by Chretien de Troyes, no doubt something well-known in Paris in salons at the time.

The only link between faces and landscapes comes from Proust, discussed a bit here, but also admiringly treated by both D and G separately. Proust certainly uses faces and landscapes to manage and extend his insights,moving away from attempts to read events subjectively through characters as is conventional. Faces themselves can be deconstructed into elements and then recombined in ways which offer insights into subjectivity itself...

Landscapes are used not only as prompts to recall subjective memories but as ways of organizing perceptions. Proust organizes his thoughts and perceptions of early life in Combray by seeing them as cohering around different walks or 'ways' ('Swann's Way', 'The Guermantes Way'), and uses that metaphor later as well, to organize the different worldviews embodied in different salons in Paris -- the Guermantes way becomes the Guermantes way of doing things, characteristic patterns of behaviour and  stylistic choices, subtleties of manner and tone, and senses of humour seemingly shared and demonstrated effortlessly by members of the family, a Bourdieuvian habitus.

In other examples, train journeys through landscapes do offer prompts to help recall the people and incidents, and the trigger here is  the different stations on the familiar journey to Normandy. Earlier, though, the train journey helps Proust get the bigger picture, as it were -- he runs from one side of the train to the other, looking through windows on opposite sides as it winds though the countryside, literally seeing different, even opposite, aspects of the same landscape.