Linderman & Uncoded Images

I have been thinking about our discussion of uncoded images in class and want to draw out some of the more "post-structuralist" theoretical implications of Linderman's text. I think there's a tendency when talking about an oppositional/counter discourse or an image as a site of resistance to think that there are two dominant discourses that are diametrically opposed. In other words, that there is a dominant narrative that a subversive narrative might displace.

I think that Linderman want's to be careful about thinking of uncoded images as something that might dialectically supersede or overcome the more questionable dominant image. As she notes, the metalanguage, against which uncoded images might be read, only exists immanently within the text. Heterogeneous textual elements do not somehow transcend the text or exist outside of their relation to every other present textual element. To put it in Deleuze's vocabulary, lines of flight do not necessarily constitute a radical rupture of a given structure. They do not transcend the textual space in which signification occurs. Topologically speaking, to the extent that a line of flight or an uncoded image may go "outside" the dominant metalanguage of the text, it is only to find a new territory or center for the text. Lines of flight flow in all directions and are not always necessarily subversive. More specifically, any deterritorialization of a network of signifiers is always accompanied by a corresponding reterritorialization, which may co-opt or recuperate the subversive elements of the uncoded image.

In less theoretical terms, resistance to power and the reification of that power are always two sides of the same coin. While Linderman want's to encourage a polyvocal reading of any filmic text, it is important to note that many of these readings can exist only in their differential relation to the meta-structure or code that the text wants to insist as a unified narrative. The sort of excessive surplus meaning or difference is only subversive through its difficulty in being incorporated in the dominant code. So while our particular reading of a film may constitute a more radical/progressive reading, Linderman's emphasis on polyvocity means that we also must take the illusory unified narrative as a text or code that can and should be examined.