Camering: Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image

Fernand Deligny, ‘poet and ethologist’, is mostly known for his work with autistic children, and for his influence on the revolutions in French post-war psychiatry. Though neither director, scriptwriter, historian of cinema nor a theorist of the image, cinema is constantly called into his social, pedagogical, and clinical experimentations. Also, he elaborates on the image to reflect on autistic perception and to radicalize his critique of humanism and discursive language. Deligny emphasizes that the camera is an apparatus mediating collective relationships. Furthermore, more interested in the processes of making, he distinguishes ‘camering’ from filming. Freed from the need to produce a finished film, it is a ‘film to come’ that is emphasized. The several film projects structure Deligny’s experimentations inasmuch as they emancipate them from their supposed aim — that of normalizing psychotic or re-educating deviant subjects.

This volume provides Fernand Deligny’s essential corpus on cinema and the image. It shows both the role played by cameras in many of his experimental ‘attempts’ with delinquents and autistic children, as well as his highly speculative reflections on image.

Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) was a French writer, communist, dissident, and pedagogue. He worked during more than fifty years with individuals living in the fringes of the society, considered socially maladjusted by the medical, social and juridical institutions. He played an important role in post-war philosophical, cinematographic, political, and clinical landscape.

Marlon Miguel works at the project ‘Madness, Media, Milieus’ at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. He holds a double PhD in Fine Arts (Université Paris 8) and Philosophy (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). He is responsible for the organization of Deligny’s archives stored at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine.

Sarah Moses is a Canadian writer and translator of French and Spanish. In addition to Camering: Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image, recent translations include Tender Is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica, and Die, My Love, by Ariana Harwicz, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among other awards.