Groensteen (1.7.2) The System of Comics, ‘The Separative Function'

 

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. My own comments are in brackets. Boldface is mine.]

 

 

Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.7.2
The Separative Function

 

Brief summary:
The second function of the comics frame is to separate one panel from the others. This is necessary for there to be segments that make up the series of scenes that constitutes a comics story. It also is inherently a part of the prior function of closure, since the operation that unifies the contents of a panel is also what makes one distinct from the others. This working of the frame is similar to how punctuation marks separate sentences, and in fact, frames may create the experiences of pauses or breaks in a similar manner. There are three main components in every conventional frame separation. There is (a) the boundary of one panel, (b) the boundary of a neighboring panel, and (c) the blank space between them. However, there are three unconventional sorts of framing that do not exhibit these three parts. There are (1) singular lines that divide two panels, (2) merely a blank space between panels, and (3) the interprenation of neighboring panels. Nonetheless, the separative function still holds in all three cases. In the first case, the visual separation is there even though it is quite narrow. In the second situation, the reader still regards the blank space as something dividing the opposing panel contents. And for the third case, other visual elements often work to indicate the frame separations, even though the way they operate becomes more difficult to discern immediately. Thus regardless of whether the frame is conventionally or unconventionally used, its separative function is found in all cases of comics stories.

Summary

 

We previously discussed the way that the comic’s panel frame encloses the contents within the panel. But it is not a reductive enclosing, like how film framing is a matter of selecting what in front of the camera is captured and what is left out of the image. Rather, what is shown is already a self-contained unity. However, there is still the out-of-panel, you might say, which is evoked as a virtual extension of what is shown. He now notes that in addition to this imagined or virtual out-of-panel, there is the actual visual out-of-panel which is the other panels surrounding any given one (43). But what will be under our analysis here is not the out-of-panel but rather the separative function of the panel frame. [Consider if there were no segments in the comics story. This is very hard to imagine. Can it still be a story if there is not different parts with different temporal meanings? It would seem to need temporally distinct parts in order to have the events that make up a story. The question we then ask is, are those events continuously variable or discretely variable? In a sense, film can show the continuous variation of story events through time, since the film medium is itself in continuous motion, and it also creates the illusion of continuous motion in the viewer’s visual perception. Printed comics, with the exception of those with a potential flip-book function (see the examples we discussed in section 1.6), are still (that is, motionless)  images. As such, their event parts would seem to be discrete units. This should not be seen as a limiting factor in their ability to tell a story, however. What is cut out and left as implied in the gutter between panels is still present in the experience of the story. Each panel normally gives us an abrupt difference from the prior panel (And even if two or more successive panels are identical and thereby give us the impression of eventless duration, they still probably have their effect in the context of surrounding panels which are not eventless. And thus it is their abrupt difference against that context which makes them stand out). As such, when reading comics panels, we experience a series of narrative ‘shocks’ or jumps. Phenomenologically speaking, comics are experienced like a strobe light, as a series of narrative flashes or glimpses. The lack of continuity is more than made up for in the intensification of each moment, as each panel presents a condensation of narrative material, and implies the narrative developments happening between the panels. But with regard to the point that we still read a discrete sequence even in a single panel with its own duration, we might consider this example from one of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. (Click and enlarge at photobucket if it is too small here).

The song that it evokes might progress continuously in our mind, and lend to the sense of a continuous duration in the panel. However, the staccato rhythm of the comics experience is still in some senses fundamental. This is evident with each little temporal jump in the series of song word ballons. But also the two forground character bubbles seem to present two more discrete units of story event perhaps occuring during the singing, but read afterward, as if the song provides a sonic background within which the primary dialogue takes place. Scott McCloud, in Understanding Comics, draws this panel to demonstrate one of the ways that dialogue helps constitute the thickened temporality in a comics panel.

Here he is discussing the constitution of continuous duration in the panel. (To be more clear, the structure of the time that we experience as being in the comics panel is different than the temporal pattern of our experience of the panel. We might ascribe to the panel a continuous duration of a block of a couple seconds. Furthermore, we might read a panel while experiencing the continuous passage of time. And so during this duration for example we might imagine the branches of a depicted tree swaying continuously in the wind. Or we might imagine the figures’ lips moving continously as they speak the dialogue in the bubble. However, insofar as one panel presents segments of action within it or insofar as a series of panels does so, we experience the panel’s continuous duration by means of a discrete series of mental experiences, which clear breaks between each segment of that story experience. Again, refer to the McCay panel above where we might have in mind the continuous playing of the song, but we experience the song’s parts by discrete steps.)  Yet, regarding the experience of each balloon in McCloud’s panel, like in the Nemo Slumberland example, we have a series of discrete experiences of the story, which could if the author wanted, involve placing more panel lines within the larger panel to designate those narrative sub-partitions. But this is superfluous, since those subdividing framing lines are inherent to our experience of the panel’s contents. At times, however, that superfluous line is in fact drawn into a scene, to notable effect. Consider this panel below from a superhero comic.

Now, for further comparison, consider also some interesting instances of framing in Dave Sim’s and Gerhard’s Cerebus #75, “Terrible Analogies.”

In the first panel, we have what appear to be two moments in Cerebus’ seemingly slow and crestfallen pacing away from the woman, sitting on the bed, who just then gave Cerebus heartbreaking news. In this first panel, no frame is used to determine that there are segments of movement and time, although those segments are still discerned in their discreteness. The last panel, however, shows a blur of continuous motion. We might experience it as one unified event. Or perhaps we divide it into two different moments for each time the blade strikes the ground, as impact makes its own sound. At any rate, in the first place we have discrete phases of motion and discrete moments of time presented in continuous visual space, but that discreteness carries with it an implied and invisible frame. Following Groensteen’s analysis in the prior section, we would say for the first panel that the internal sub-framing is implied but still present, because the contents of the panel contains two seperate unities. The first pose gives us one coherent distinct event or phase of the event, and the second pose gives us the other one. But what is notable in this panel and in others that we will examine is the way the framing alters our experience of the temporality. Even though the frame here is implied, we still juxtapose the moments, perhaps giving the event more of a timeless or eternal feel to it.

Now consider many pages later, after Cerebus offers a sack of valuables to the woman with whom he must part ways.

Consider especially panels 3 and 4. With regard to the background, it is almost as if both panels are spatially continuous, and the panel divider was placed overtop of that unified setting. (Note also that there are no outer boundaries on those panels, which perhaps emphasizes the role of the visible boundary in the center.) However, the contents of the panels do not suggest that the frame only spatially divides a singular moment, even though it visually divides a singular space. There is the offer and then the rejection. The frame boundary in the center both divides the event into two poles of motion, and at the same time, it places into the forground two different characters. So on the one hand, as we go from one frame to the next, it is as if the “camera” stayed in the same place, since the background does not change. But since we get two different moments of the action, it is as if the “camera” has changed positions to give a close up of each character individually. This of course creates this potent tension between their intimate relational bond that at the same time is being split apart into two different directions. Now finally let us look at page 17, after the woman has departed, and Cerebus watches her leave from the window. In the central panels, we seem to have something like a mixture between what we saw on page 6 and also on page 15. Like on page 15, we have what seems to be a singular background underlying the panel divisions. The four window panels seem to be the same as those shown in the prior panel of Cerebus looking out the window. And like from page 6, we have different moments of the walking motion, shown independently and without indication of the movement between those moments. But here we have the panel divisions (the two virtical black lines that might be mistaken for window frames), which perhaps make the moments seem more segmented and temporally sequential. It might give us the impression that every moment of her leaving held great weight for Cerebus.

] As Groensteen explains, the panel frame function of isolating panels is like punctuation that divides sentences into complete discrete units.

If the panel is equipped with a virtual diegetic off-screen, it also possesses a physical off-screen, which is composed of the bordering panels.²⁶ Also, it is a condition of reading that the panels are physically isolated from each other, or cognitively isolatable, of the sort that they can be read separately. In this consideration, the panel frame plays an analogous role to that of punctuation marks in language (here comprised of the elementary sign that is the blank white space that separates two words), these signs that divide, within a continuum, the pertinent units, thus allowing—or facilitating—the comprehension of the text.
(43)
[Footnote 26: Benoît Peeters suggests giving this surrounding space the name “péri-field,” cf. Case, planche, récit, op. cit., p. 15. (“Notes” p.171)]
[From footnote 7 of chapter 1: Benoît Peeters’ book, Case, planche, récit. Comment lire une bande dessinée (Tournai-Paris, Casterman, 1991). (“Notes” p.169)]

 

 

There is a convention for panel separation. We have the boundaries of each panel and the third element, the blank space between them.

The dominant usage similarly rests on an insistent separation, to the limit of the tautology. That which separates two panels is indeed nothing less than the triple frontier constituted by the frame of the first panel, the inter-iconic blank space that follows, and the frame of the second panel. Undoubtedly, frames are so well perceived as an integral part of panels that it is necessary to distinguish the one from the other; it is initially to the interstitial space (notably termed, depending on the author, “intericonic space,” “interframes,” “between images,” or “gutter”)²⁷ that the reader recognizes a separative virtue. But it would not appear like this if it was not bordered, on both sides, by the thin lines of the frames of the panels. Gutters are not framed themselves, but all the same they are calibrated with precision and, it can be said, “protected” against the hegemonic pressure of the image.
(44)
[Footnote 27:  Cf. Jan Baetens, “Pour une poétique de la gouttière,” Word & Image, vol. 7, no. 4, October– December 1991, pp. 365–376. (“Notes” p.171)]

[Recall from section 1.3 that the “multiframe” is the system of interrelated panels in a comics work, and the panels in the multiframe may be nested within enlarging scales of organization.] Now, this “ordinary apparatus of compartmentalization in the ‘multiframe’” that we mentioned above need not have the three parts we identified (the two borders of neighboring panels and the space lying between them). Rather, the structure may be simplified or bypassed. Groensteen then identifies “three important breaks with respect to the dominant usage” (44).

1. The first break with the conventional panel separative structure is a simple outline that “simultaneously and indistinctly belongs to the frames of each of the two adjacent panels” (44). He cites Töpffer as a historical case.

Groensteen also mentions Mutt and Jeff.

And as well he cites Krazy Kat.

He also mentions the more recent example of Claire Bretécher.

 

2. Another unconventional framing technique is merely to rely on the white space between the panels.

Similarly, often nothing tangible separates the different elements of the narrative sequence, nothing except the white of the paper, or the space that the drawing does not occupy. In Reiser, Copi or Wolinski, the narration concentrates itself generally only in the characters, solitary figures developed in an empty décor or one that is minimally suggested by a few elements. The repetition of the same figure suffices to signify the passage from one “panel” to another (if we can be allowed to use this term).
(44)

Here for example is a page of Copi.

Here below is one of Reiser.

And lastly here is Wolinski.

3. The third possibility is that the different panels on the page interpenetrate one another, and Groensteen cites recent works by Will Eisner. [Below are some pages from his The Name of the Game. On the first page shown,  at the top right we see two moments of the man entering the room. It is almost as if in the right-most panel he is introding into the panel happening sequentially prior. As well, in the rest of the panels we see word balloons and other visual elements crossing into other panels. In the second page displayed below, the intepenetration is so continuous that it even appears as if the man is entering the floor of the panel above him, since that floor above seamlessly becomes the wall below.]

Groensteen still thinks that even in these cases of interpenetration, the function of panel separation remains, for the following four reasons. (a) The pages often still have at least one framed panel, “where the regular form structures the totality of the surrouding space of the page. (b) Certain elements of décor, like door and window frames, often serve the panel separation function. (c) And, “the contrasts between the background blacks, whites, and greys (gross-hatched) reinforces the differentiation of the images.” Also, (d) we still read the panels left to right and top to bottom, and that ordering sequence also helps segment the interpenetrating images. [In the case of the floor of one panel becoming the wall of the panel below it, we come to the lower panel after reading through other panels to the above right, and so the distinction is made more clearly].

 

Groensteen then notes that just like Eisner, Wollinski’s panels lack the “artificial” and superfluous framing border that signifies which parts are “organic units”. However, such a boundary still exists as an implicit outline, even if it is not visually rendered (45).

So after showing the separative function of the frame in both obvious and non-obvious cases, we are led to conclude that it is found in all cases of comics, no matter what. This function is also essential for the way that the parts of comics connect like joints (anthrology); for, you can only have connecting parts if in the first place you have distinct parts that can be connected.

Thus, the principle of the separation of images can never be truly denied. The spatio-topia, let us not forget, is a part and a condition of arthrology: one could not connect the visual utterances if they were not distinct. The separative function is always in the work, even if the frame, which is ordinarily its privileged instrument, finds itself deliberately dismissed.
(45)

[I think Groensteen’s final point is something like the following. The prior panel function of closure was the principle that coheres the panel contents into a unity. As such, closure also makes one unit distinct from other such unities, for otherwise it would not be a coherent whole unto itself (even though it serves as a part in a larger system of other self-sufficient unities). Therefore, these two functions in a sense are one in the same, since to enclose a unity is in the same operation to separate one unity from another actual or possible one.]

The function of closure and the separative function are, in truth, nothing but the same function, successively envisaged as it exerts itself on the interior space of the frame and toward the exterior field.
(45)

 

 

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

 

 

Images taken gratefully from:

Winsor McCay. Little Nemo in Slumberland. 1906-07-01. Obtained gratefully from the Comic Strip Library.
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19060701-l.jpeg

Dan Jurgens (story and layouts), Trevor Scott (finishes), John Costanza (letterer), and Glenn Whitmore (colorist). "Vanishing Point.” In The Legacy of Superman #1. March 1993. DC Comics.

Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.

Dave Sim and Gerhard. Cerebus #75. "Terrible Analogies." June 1985. Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Rodolphe Töpffer. Histoire de M. Jabot. Genève. 1833. Available online at the Internet Archive.
http://archive.org/details/gri_33125008487627

Bud Fisher. Mutt and Jeff. 3-Nov-1911. "If Someone Doesn't Turn off the Gas, It's All off with Mutt and Jeff." Obtained gratefully from Ben Welter's article at the Star Tribune.
http://www.startribune.com/nov-3-1911-suicide-in-the-funnies/133043843/

George Herriman. Krazy Kat. 30-April-1916. Obtained gratefully from the Comic Strip Library.
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/krazy-kat/krazy-kat-19160430-l.png

 

Claire Bretécher. Les mères. Copyright Claire Bretécher, 1982.

Jean-Marc Reiser. C'est beau, une femme! Copyright Reiser and Albin Michel, 1996.

Copi. Vive les pédés et autres fantaisies. Éditions de l'Oliver, 2014. Here taken gratefully from Cornélius.
http://www.cornelius.fr/blog/index.php?post/2014/11/04/Vive-les-p%C3%A9d%C3%A9s

 

Will Eisner. The Name of the Game. Copyright Will Eisner and DC Comics, 2001.

Georges Wolinski. Je ne veux pas mourir idiot. Copyright Wolinski and Éditions Denoël, 1968.

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by Corry Shores

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Groensteen (1.7.1) The System of Comics, ‘The Function of Closure'

 

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. My own comments are in brackets. Boldface is mine.]

 

 

Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.7.1
The Function of Closure

 

Brief summary:
The first function of the comics frame is to enclose the contents. But this is not a reductive or subtractive enclosing  function, like in film framing. When the contents of the film frame are chosen, at the same time, one is deciding which surrounding contents of the set or scenery will be excluded. In the mind of the cartoonist, however, comics images are not conceived in a similar manner. Instead, she conceives all the contents she wants to show, which together have a coherence and unity, and thus they already express an implicit frame that contains this unity. Then, when the frame is visually depicted on the page, it is superfluous to the implied frame contained already in the contents. In this sense, the comics frame is world-creating rather than world-concealing like the film frame is.

 

Summary

 

Groensteen explains that the comics panel’s first function is to “close the panel and, also, to confer upon it a particular form” (40).

Groensteen then contrasts the comics frame with the cinematographic frame. [His point of distinction seems to be the size and shape of the outline of the film’s projected image. Films have a non-varying frame, but comics artists can change the panel frame however they want. Of course filmmakers have experimented with using multiple aspect ratios in one film and also to have images go outside the supposed frame. This wonderful video essay shows some examples: https://youtu.be/R26_F7pecqo. The point still stands perhaps that the comics artist has much more freedom to vary the shape and size of the frame than does the filmmaker. Let me quote, as I may have misread him.]

In the exercise of this function, the comics frame is opposed to the cinematographic frame. This opposition is first of all technical. The flexibility afforded to comics with regard to the form of its frames, the “elasticity” of the drawn panels, highlights the rigidity of the cinematographic apparatus, which is practically condemned to equip the projected image with a fixed and constant form (even if other systems theoretically exist—and have existed historically).
(40)

Groensteen further discusses the differences between filmic and comics framing. [His next point, spread over a number of paragraphs, is that filmic and comics framings are “ontologically” different, in the sense I think that they perform representation in two very different ways. It seems we might think of filmic framing as like actually holding a picture frame up to the scenery or set standing before the camera, and the question of what to put in the frame is at the same time the question of what must be left out. This leaving out of the frame is central to the story-telling in film, because the excised elements are still evoked within the captured elements. But comics, he seems to be arguing, does not need to treat the situation as if their frame is a limiting factor which brings into dialogue the presented contents with the excised elements. The comics creator instead sees the frame as something that opens an area to put everything they want to show. May I comment for a moment. The difference right now might still not seem too pronounced. The comics creator must choose what is in and also what is not in the panel. And what they show in the panel evokes parts that are not shown. We make assumptions about the rest of the story world merely on what is shown in the panels. I think this “ontologic” difference has to do with the fact that the filmmaker (one who is recording a set or scenery, not one who is making animations, as is clarified in the footnotes) has an actual world in front of their camera, and they must choose what in that world is excluded. The cartoonist however merely has space to put whatever they want into it, without always being explicitly aware of what is left out in that process of filling the panel space.]

In the exercise of this function, the comics frame is opposed to the cinematographic frame. This opposition is first of all technical. The flexibility afforded to comics with regard to the form of its frames, the “elasticity” of the drawn panels, highlights the rigidity of the cinematographic apparatus, which is practically condemned to equip the projected image with a fixed and constant form (even if other systems theoretically exist—and have existed historically).

The difference, it follows, can be qualified as ontologic, and I want, for the instant, to linger a bit longer on this second aspect. If one agrees with Guy Gauthier that “to choose, for a figurative image, is not only to decide what is going to be visible, but also what must be concealed,”²⁰ one must immediately add that the question of choice is posed differently to the filmmaker (to the camera operator, to the framer) and to the cartoonist. In cinema, the frame is, from the moment of shooting,²¹ the instrument of an extraction, of a deduction. It cuts up a pertinent zone called the “field” within a profilmic continuum that overflows it, drawing a mask around material that, not being printed on the film, will be absent from the screen, that is to say, the “off-screen.”

The frame assigns limits to the profusion of the represented elements, and it elects a privileged fragment. The frame of a comics panel does not remove anything; it is contented to circumscribe. It delimits an area offered to the inscription of a drawing and, if need be, to verbal statements.
[Footnote 20: Vingt leçons sur l’image et le sens (Paris: Edilig, “Médiatheque,” 1982), p. 11. (170)] [Footnote 21: I make allusion here to nothing but the cinema with a realist perspective, while not ignoring the fact that it works differently in animated cinema. (170)]
(40)

Groensteen’s next observation seems to be that closing the panel with a visual frame is meant to create a unit of time-space that may enter into coherent relations with other such units in the story. Its purpose is not to prevent the contents from getting confused with the contents of other panels, since for the most part the contents of each panel already cohere. The evidence for this is that when cartoonists change the features of the frame, the reader takes this to mean a change in space and/or time. [I am not sure how to think of this, because I do not know what sorts of changes to the frame would alter the way we understand that story part’s spatio-temporal features. Perhaps by making the frame wavy or in some way indicative of a dream would suggest that it is a memory or anticipation of the future dreamt in the mind of a character, but I am not sure. Possibly Eisner says that by making the panel longer it signifies more time taking place in the panel.]

To close the panel is not to stop the drawing. The graphic materiality cannot flee or flow out; no need, then, to limit it through coercive means. To close the panel is to enclose a fragment of space-time belonging to the diegesis, to signify the coherence. (To change the frame is often the equivalent, for the reader, of causing a displacement in space, then in time — or in these two dimensions at the same time.)
(40)

Groensteen then seems to further this argument that the comics frame does not limit the imagery the way filmic framing does with the following point. When the cartoonist draws the frame around the panel, this is not what brings the contents into one coherent unit, separate from the contents of the other panels. For, the mental image on which the contents are based is already one unit of mental visualization that is separate from other such mental images in the cartoonist’s mind. Groensteen then uses the metaphor of tailoring the frame to suit the panel. The implication seems to be that the contents were already self-contained and the visually drawn frame merely puts a visible dressing on that already present but invisible boundary.

In concrete terms, the frame can be outlined before or after the elaboration of the drawing — it must then enclose the already drawn image, crimp it — but the alternative has hardly an effect, since the mental image that inspires the drawing hand is always already framed, grosso modo. With connection to the first implicit frame, spontaneously meeting and without study, the effective frame that is finally inscribed on the present page is generally of little difference: it is at most adjusted to the “body of the image,” in the manner of a piece of clothing (tailoring). | In resorting to tracing (that can be to ink on tracing paper, as it is notably done by Alex Varenne, or in order to transfer the sketch to the original, as with Hergé and Jacobs), certain artists provide themselves a supplementary facility to adjust the frame to the nearest millimeter.
(40-41)

[I am not sure I get the next point. It seems Groensteen is saying that even though the frame is a superfluous addition to an already self-contained unit, still the cartoonist often begins by drawing the frame first and then secondly to fill it with the visual contents that they mentally imagine. I am guessing, but his reasoning for this might be that the mental image is not an exact copy of what comes to be drawn. There is apparently a translation process where the image needs to take on a different visual form, and by drawing the frame, that establishes the visual “language” into which the mental image must be translated. I am not sure of examples. Perhaps motion might be one example. Maybe the cartoonist in their mind has some image of the motion in the scene. But to draw it, they might need to use indicators like motion lines, which were not imagined necessarily. I will quote this paragraph below.] Often the cartoonist first draws the frames and secondly fills them with iconic content, and that first step Groensteen calls gridding.

When it transcribes a mental image, the panel is first of all an image without a body. In elaborating it on the page, the artist almost necessarily begins by creating the frame, however approximate and provisional. All this occurs as if the frame, having structured the space, will then favor the emergence of the icon. I later give the name of gridding to this preliminary appropriation of space.
(41)

Groensteen’s next point is that the artist is most concerned with what is included in the presented images. [I might be misrepresenting the following idea here, as I am a little confused by the wording. I reproduce this paragraph below. It seems he is saying that in a film, whatever is not shown in the actual images is meant to be non-existent somehow, or at least virtual, a phantom, a spirit, or something like that. If that is the case, I am not certain about that. Is it not possible that when a film has traffic sounds without showing traffic that we are still to ascribe to the traffic the same level of existence as what is shown? It is also possible that he is saying that even filmic out-of-frame, like voice-offs, is meant to evoke the presence of the unshown things and not their absence. Let me quote:]

An artist is essentially preoccupied by what he wants to put in his image (that is, in his frame), not by what he must exclude. When even, by some effect of decentering or of the arbitrary cut of a pattern, or again by the writing of a voice off, he makes sure that we will be led to presuppose the existence off screen of an element that has become invisible, what is not represented has never had any physical existence within the story (as in the filmic off-screen or profilmic at the moment of shooting):²² it will remain a pure construction of the spirit, a virtuality. [From footnote 22: “The off-screen suggested by film (the filmic off-screen) cannot have any reality — thus when they have constructed nothing but the fragment of the decor that occupies the frame — the physical (profilmic) off-screen does not exist except the one that merges with the entire space of the studio or of the chosen place of filming” (170)]
(41)

[I am not certain, but it seems that the next point is that framing in cartooning is automatically a part of the process of composing the image, as he said above. However, framing in filmmaking is something that is done after the set has been completed. Once the scene is set, the director may make framing decisions while filming, like close-ups of specific parts of the set, and so on. Further proof of the fact that cartoon framing is inherent to the drawing process is that in order to know better how the framing of the film scene will be conducted, filmmakers often make drawn story-boards in advance of shooting to create pictures that help determine the shots’ framing.]

In film, the operations that exist to construct or to locate a setting, to light it, to choose the actors, dress them, supervise their staging, in short all of the dimensions of the direction, fully participate in the preparation of the image, and this preparation starts well before the actual filming. As for the framing (choice of the lens, site—and eventual movement—of the camera, framing), it can be conceived at the last minute, in the moments that immediately proceed the shooting. It is significant that the filmmakers least inclined to improvise these filming decisions are compelled to create elaborate storyboards, that is, to draw (or to have drawn on their instructions) each of the shots that will be filmed. In the economy of the seventh art, it is the mediation of drawing that allows, better than any other method, to preconceive the framing.
(41)

So far, Groensteen has been been drawing a clear distinction between the cinematic framing device and the comics framing device. The filmic frame “rejects as much as it elects,” by which he refers to the limiting function of the film frame. The comics frame, however, “is content to host or, better, to accompany (since, from the initial instant of conception, the frame and the icon are interdependent and consubstantial),” by which he means that the comics frame both opens the space for the comics image, rather than cuts out pre-existing visual material, and it accompanies the contents in the sense that it is already there implicitly as the the element of coherence that makes those contents from the beginning in the imagination a complete self-contained unit. This is all review. But now he says that this sharp distinction is blurred in a certain case (41). A cartoonist might begin with a photograph, and then decide what in the photograph to draw and what to leave out. “Indeed, sometimes the panel is not a pure translation of the mental image, a product of the imagination; it takes up or integrates, with or without modification, an earlier, generally photographic, document” (41). It seems the entirety of the photographic image Groensteen calls the “prographic” material. The filmmaker has the profilmic material in front of the camera, and she chooses which parts to place in the frame and which to exclude. Similarly, the cartoonist working with a photograph chooses where to place the frame and how to depict what lies inside the panel. [By the way, in his “Glossary of Film Terms,” David Sorfa defines pro-filmic space as  “The area in front of the camera’s recording field.”]

This document, selected in the library of the author or drawn on the spot of the diegesis, constitutes what can be called a “prographic” material. The cartoonist is quite free to take only, by an operation of reframing, the pertinent area that will be drawn. The initial frame of the document has no | definitive character; its status is that of a simple proposition.
(41-42)

[Groensteen does not cite this example, but we might consider for instance Joe Sacco’s Palestine. It is a non-fiction piece in a journalistic style, and he based a number of panels from photographs. In the introductory material to the “Special Edition”, he writes regarding this: “For visual reference, I relied on a few dozen photographs – all I could afford, really, and taken on a borrowed camera” (Sacco xxi); “As I mentioned, I relied primarily on photos for visual reference. My camera wasn’t particularly good, but, then again, I am not a particularly good photographer” (xxiii). He shows some side-by-side comparisons of the photographic material he used placed next to the final drawn panels. Below I show one of those comparisons, and below that I show the entire page of panel. The caption reads: “The Isreal Defense forces camp and observation tower in Gaza’s Jabalie refugee camp” (xxv). As we can see, Sacco, like Groensteen claims, cropped out parts of the photo that he did not want to include in the story imagery.

]

Another way that the comics panel can be a reduction is if one panel shows a part of a prior one, as if by zooming in. He calls this “reframing” (42). Yet, despite its obvious similarities, Groensteen opposes it still to filmic framing. [I do not follow his reasoning behind the distinction very well. It seems he is saying that you cannot reframe what is already framed. (You can only reproduce that same frame another time). And each part of the original panel were already framed. And perhaps the reasoning goes that since the original framing was not reductive, and since the close-up keeps the original framing somehow, then the close-up also is not reductive or subtractive. Even if that is the reasoning, I still do not quite understand.  Perhaps the idea is that when a close-up is made in comics, we are not subtracting all the other material that was previously shown. Instead, we are just highlighting some part of it. Let me quote, since I probably got this wrong:]

The preexisting image that inspires the panel can also be another panel originating from the same hand, belonging to the same work, or even the same page: in this case, the variant that the reframing introduces produces an analogous effect to what is produced in a film, a zoom or a movement of the camera (traveling, panorama). It is only when the cartoonist reframes that he attributes to the comics frame the extractive function that is particular to the cinematographic frame. Again, is it not the same thing to frame a profilmic element and to reframe a prographic fragment. (The profilmic opposes itself to the prographic just as the monument opposes itself to the document—to use a terminology dear to Michel Foucault.)²⁴ The distinction is taken from the fact that the prographic is always already framed. There exists no icon that does not camp within borders, which are always more or less arbitrary. To intervene on this first frame is to return to a first enunciative gesture; it is inevitably to produce a second degree utterance, an image of the image, a citation. [From footnote 24: Cf., notably, L’Archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines,” 1969, pp. 14–15. (footnote p.170)]
(42)

[I am not certain about the next point either. It seems he is further making the point that framing in comics is not reductive. His next way of making this point is to implicitly consider either filmic cuts-aways to wider shots or zoom-outs and then to contrast them to a similar sort of effect in comics, namely, making additions to enlarge a previous comics panel and to show parts of that scene which were previously not visible. In the case of film, this is like lessoning the subtraction. So it is still the subtractive operation where parts are excised. Only a little less is being excluded. In the case of comics, however, it is the creation of new visible things that were only virtual previously. It is like creating more of that story world, and thus Groensteen calls it the “demiurgic potential”. Throughout this section, Groensteen’s portrayal of framing with regard to cinematography reminds me of  ideas in Bazin’s “Ontology of the Photographic Image”.]

It is necessary to specify that this intervention does not necessarily move in the sense of a reduction of the cited icon. To reframe is not like tailoring a suit out of a single piece of cloth. The possibility also exists to enlarge the frame, to add to it one (or several) portion(s)—since this expansion is carried out on one or several side(s)—that belong to the virtual off-screen of the previous image. The drawing fully manifests, in this case, its demiurgic potential: there where there never was anything (there where the document is stopped), it has the power to generate a depiction that, although not informed by a referent, will manifest, if the cartoonist wants it, the same qualities of precision and veracity as the adjacent documented parts.
(42)

[Groensteen then briefly digresses and discusses how certain comics try to merge photography and comics. I will quote, as I will not be able to paraphrase very well.]

This point calls for a brief digression. An important aspect of modern comics is the mixture of imaginary drawings and documented drawings, fusing these two categories almost to the point where they become identical. The dichotomy is not pertinent except in regard to its genesis (the reason that I have called for it in the midst of a reflection on framing as a constitutive gesture of the image). The usage desires that comics delete every trace of its double origin, that it conceal it behind a homogeneous execution: at once a production of the imagination and a recycling of icons from every provenance—in eminently variable proportions. The Hergéan line, unifier par excellence, is exemplary of this natural direction. | Largely dominant (for the simple reason that it reinforces the credibility of the fiction), this tendency entertains only certain exceptions, about which I do not believe I have to extend myself here.²⁵ [From footnote 25: I will recall simply that the dogma of the graphic homogeneity does not exist in Japanese comics, where the “the rule of the style of facets” reigns, cf. Thierry Groensteen, L’Univers des mangas (Tournai, Casterman, 1991), pp. 47–48. (p.171)]
(42-43)

Groensteen then emphasizes his point regarding comics framing and prographic photographic material. It seems to be that the photograph has its frame, but what matters in the framing of the photograph-based comics image is that the comics framing is bound up with the mental imagery that is finally drawn. Thus the final comics image is not subtractive but rather inherently part of that mental imagery and also world-opening rather than world-concealing.]

Allow me to repeat: the mental image comes from the imagination along with its frame, equally a mental product, while the prographic document necessarily camps within the interior of a real frame. But the materiality of the frame does not at all guarantee that it will be preserved; on the contrary, the real frame has a greater chance to be altered than the mental frame accompanying an image conceived ex nihilo and all of one piece.
(43)

Groensteen then specifies that “when a mental image is given birth by a cartoonist, the preconceived parameters of its frame are principally its proportions and its form” (43). [So the cartoonist in her mind when conceiving the mental image already has conceived its unity and coherence, which means she knows what is included and how it is arranged. She therefore has in mind implicitly already the frame which contains that unity.] [However, the dimensions might vary in the sense that it is not as important how large the image is drawn on the page, so long as it keeps the proportions and form. Nonetheless, even such variations in dimension normally vary only slightly from what was originally imagined. I might have that wrong, so let me quote again.]

It is advisable, on the other hand, to be precise: when a mental image is given birth by a cartoonist, the preconceived parameters of its frame are principally its proportions and its form (precisely the issue that the cinema, for its part, has always already resolved). The dimensions of the frame can vary; one knows of cartoonists who make miniscule sketches and do not create the image in its real size except at the moment that they carry out the transfer to the final page. But these are the exception: The variations of the frame, between the mental conception, the draft(s) and the final execution, are generally of a weak amplitude.
(43)

[I think the next point is that although the frame is implied in the unity of the panel, the contents of the panel might later be modified so to better interact with the other panels. Perhaps the concern here is that one might object that the frame stayed the same, but the organization and unity of the contents changed, and therefore the frame was never really inherent to the contents. I am not sure, so let me again quote if I may.]

If, in the mental image, the frame and the contents are immediately interdependent and consubstantial, that does not mean to say that, even if they were thought of first, they so remain in the completed image. They can later be modified together, in order to satisfy the superior exigencies of the page layout— which I will speak about in the coming pages. Indeed, the frame of a panel will not be definitively concluded without consideration for the surrounding panels. Bound to the contents that it encloses, the frame is no less attached to the frames that surround it.
(43)

 

 

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

Or if otherwise indicated:

David Sorfa. “A Glossary of Film Terms.” Printed under the letterhead of The University of Edinburgh, School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures. Made available by the author at:

 https://www.academia.edu/1739157/A_Glossary_of_Film_Terms

 

Images and some quotation taken gratefully from:

Joe Sacco. Palestine. The Special Edition. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books, 2007.

This entry’s URL:

http://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2016/01/groensteen-171-system-of-comics.html

 

 

 

Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art, entry directory

 

by Corry Shores

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Ch.3
Timing 

3.1
[Introductory section of the chapter]

 

3.2
Framing Speech

3.3
Framing Time

 

 

 

 

 

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

Will Eisner, entry directory

 

by Corry Shores

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Groensteen (1.7) The System of Comics, ‘The Functions of the Frame'

 

by Corry Shores

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Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.7
The Functions of the Frame

 

Brief summary:
The frame in comics performs six important functions: 1) closure, 2) separation, 3) rhythm, 4) structure, 5) expression, and 6) readerliness. These functions affect both the visual contents of and the reader’s experience of the panels. Authors also may use these functions uniquely in accordance with their own stylistic choices.

 

Summary

 

Groensteen thinks that there are six important functions of the comics frame: 1) the function of closure, 2) the separative function, 3) the rhythmic function, 4) the structural function, 5) the expressive function, and 6) the readerly function. These functions influence both the reader’s experience of the comic book and as well the actual visual contents of the panels. These functions also provide different avenues for the author to create their comic book under their own unique stylistic preferences. [I will quote this paragraph in case I paraphrased inaccurately:]

There are six important functions of the frame, which I call the function of closure, the separative function, the rhythmic function, the structural function, the expressive function, and the readerly function. All of these functions exert their effects on the contents of the panel (a voluntarily general expression, by which I mean the totality of the figurative elements within the frame) and, especially, on the perceptive and cognitive processes of the reader. Most of the functions also open up a range of formal possibilities, allowing the frame to fully participate in the specific rhetoric of each author.
(39)

 

 

 

 

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

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Comics and Narration

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Priest, Ch9 of Logic: A Very Short Introduction, “Identity and Change. Is Anything Ever the Same?”, summary

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Summary of

Graham Priest

Logic: A Very Short Introduction

Ch.9
Identity and Change. Is Anything Ever the Same? 

 

Brief Summary:
Over time, something’s properties might change. But it might either keep its identity or it might take on another one altogether. This presents a difficulty for philosophy and logic, especially since identity is a foundational concept in our thinking. We first distinguish objects and their properties, and we note that the properties may be variable while the objects remain constant. The ‘is’ of predication (x is red, or Rx) is different from the ‘is’ of identity (x is y, or x=y). However, Leibniz’s Law [of indiscernibles] uses properties to define identity. If two things share the same properties, then they are identical, and vice versa. This is a useful law in most applications, as for example when we use it for substituting terms in algebra. There are some other instances that at first seem to cast doubts on the applicability of the law, but these cases can be shown in the end to be mistaken for other reasons. However, there is one case that presents a big problem for the Law. We assume that identical things always were and always will be identical. When an amoeba A splits into amoebae B and C, then A has transformed into two other things in the sense of it having taken on new guises. This means that before the split, B and C  were identical to A and thus were identical to each other. However, after the split they are non-identical. This contradicts the assumption that things that are identical always are so.

 

Summary

We look now at “what is to be said about the identity of objects that change through time” (63).

The problem is that things might change but remain the same thing, or they might change into something completely different. It is not obvious then what to say on the topic of identity and temporal variation in things.

Here is an example. We all think that objects can survive through change. For example, when I paint a cupboard, although its colour may change, it is still the same cupboard. Or when you change your hair style, or if you are unfortunate enough to lose a limb, you are still you. But how can anything survive change? After all, when you change your hairstyle, the person that results is different, not the same at all. And if the person is different, it is a different person; so the old you has gone out of existence. In exactly the same way, it may be argued, no object persists through any change whatsoever. For any change means that the old object goes out of existence, and is replaced by a quite different object.
(63)

Logicians see this problem arising from an ambiguity between the object and its properties.

Arguments like this appear at various places in the history of philosophy, but it would be generally agreed by logicians, now, that they are mistaken, and rest on a simple ambiguity. We must distinguish between an object and its properties. When we say that you, with a different hairstyle, are different, we are saying that you have different | properties. It does not follow that you are literally a different person, in the way that I am a different person from you.
(63-64)

Priest says this confusion arises because we use the verb “to be” for both designating identity as well as predicating properties to objects. Symbolically, however, it is easy to distinguish these two sorts of relation. The identity relation uses the equals symbol, =, while predication places upper and lower-case letters directly beside one another, like Hm [see chapter 3].

One reason why one may fail to distinguish between being a certain object and having certain properties is that, in English, the verb ‘to be’ and its various grammatical forms – ‘is’, ‘am’, and so on – can be used to express both of these things. (And the same goes for similar words in other languages.) If we say ‘The table is red’, ‘Your hair is now short’, and similar things, we are attributing a property to an object. But if someone says ‘I am Graham Priest’, ‘The person who won the race is the same person who won it last year’, and so on, then they are identifying an object in a certain way. That is, they are stating its identity.

Logicians call the first use of ‘is’ the ‘is’ of predication; they call the second use of ‘is’ the ‘is’ of identity. And because these have somewhat different properties, they write them in different ways. The ‘is’ of predication we have already met in Chapter 3. ‘John is red’ is typically written in the form jR. (Actually, as I noted in Chapter 3, it is more common to write this the other way round, as Rj.) The ‘is’ of identity is written with =, familiar from school mathematics. Thus, ‘John is the person who won the race’ is written: j=w. (The name w is a description here; but this is of no significance in the present matter.) Sentences like this are called identities.
(64)

[This next part is interesting and perhaps controversial. Identity is a relation held between something and itself. The idea that something can have a self-relation is presented as something non-problematic, as with the example of someone seeing themselves in the mirror. I am not entirely convinced yet that a relation, especially identity, can hold for something regarded as having singularity in an absolute sense. There seems to be a tension in the concept of identity, that in order to think of something having self-identity, we need in some sense to conceive it, if ever so slightly, as being apart from itself so that it may be related to itself. (Even in the mirror example of seeing oneself, we are seeing our reflection). When we take into account the flow of time, we might see the self-relation of identity as being a matter of two temporal instantiations of a thing as belonging to one identical thing that endured through time. But what does it mean to say that something within one instant is self-identical? How is that relation of self to self to be conceived, if not by multiplying that self in one way or another in our conceptualization of it? I wonder for example when we say something is identical to itself if we first conceive it hypothetically as distinct from itself, and then negate that distinction, and then say that it and itself (its two potentially distinct instantiations) are not really two different things after all. Even when we symbolically represent identity, we use two symbolic instantiations of the thing in question (x=x). Another issue is the question of self-identity and external differentiation. When we say something has an identity, do we also thereby mean that it is not reducible to other things that do not share in its identity, in other words, that it is unique? If so, then a self-relation of identity is thereby an external relation of non-identity with other things. Then to conceive something’s identity involves not just the conception of one thing but necessarily a conception of other things, potential or real, which would not identify with the self-relating thing. Let me return to Priest.]

What properties does identity have? First, it is a relation. A relation is something that relates two objects. For example, seeing is a relation. If we say 'john sees Mary' we are stating a relation between them. The objects related by a relation do not necessarily have to be different. If we say John sees himself’ (maybe in a mirror), we are stating a relation that John bears to John. Now, identity is a very special relation. It is a relation that every object bears to itself and to nothing else.
(64)

Priest then observes that propositions of identity are not limited to useless affirmations that the thing in question is itself, or that names and objects are assigned to each other. We can obtain new information from statements of identity, as in the proposition, “John is the person who won the race”.

Priest says that what is most important about identity are the inferences that they can be part of. He gives this example:

John is the person who won the race.
The person who won the race got a prize.
So John got a prize.
(65)

This can be formulated symbolically as:

j = w    wP
        jP

(p.65) The reasoning is that if something is identical to something else, then they share the same properties. This is Leibniz’s Law [of Indiscernibles]. As we saw above, we may apply Leibniz’s Law by first stating the identity between two things, then saying one term has certain properties, and finally concluding the other term has those properties as well.

This inference is valid in virtue of the fact that, for any objects, x and y, if x=y, then x has any properties that y has, and vice versa. One and the same object either has the property in question, or it doesn’t. This is usually called Leibniz’s Law, after Leibniz, whom we met in Chapter 6. In an application of Leibniz’s law, one premiss is an identity statement, say m=n; the second premiss is a sentence containing one of the names that flanks the identity sign, say m; and the conclusion is obtained by substituting n for m in this.
(65)

Priest explains that Leibniz’s Law is quite important. And for the most part, it is applied without creating any problems. He gives the example of substitution in algebra.

For example, high school algebra assures us that (x+y)(x-y)=x²-y². So if you are solving a problem, and establish that, x²-y²=3, you can apply Leibniz’s Law to infer that (x+y)(x-y)=3·
(page 65)

But in fact, there are many problematic applications. He has us consider this inference, for example:

John is the person who won the race.
Mary knows that the person who won the race got a prize.
So Mary knows that John got a prize.
(66)

Here the premises are true, but it is quite possible that the conclusion is false, which calls into question the validity of the substitution. However, it is a misapplication of the Law. [I might be misunderstanding this next part. Suppose we use these abbreviations from above: j=w, Mary knows that wP, thus Mary knows that jP. Priest’s  point is that ‘Mary knows that x got a prize’ is not a  property of x but rather a property of Mary. I am not sure how to work that into the formulation. I guess the basic idea is that j=w, wP, thus jP is a valid inference and a correct application of the Law. But when we deal with people’s knowledge of such facts, we are  not dealing with properties of the things being known and thus those properties cannot be said to be shared necessarily by the substitutable terms. Perhaps if I knew how to formulate “knowing that,” I could see better how it is mistakenly treated as a property of the known thing in this example.]

Yet it is clear that the premisses could well be true without the conclusion being true: Mary might not know that John is the person who won the race. Is this a violation of Leibniz’s Law? Not | necessarily. The law says that if x=y then any property of x is a property of y. Now, does the condition ‘Mary knows that x got a prize’ express a property of x? Not really: it would seem, rather, to express a property of Mary. If Mary were suddenly to go out of existence, this would not change x at all! (The logic of phrases such as ‘knows that’ is still very much sub judice in logic.)
(67)

In the next example, we have two things connecting and forming one larger thing. We might misapply Leibniz’s Law to say that the properties of the one part are held by the other part. But this would merely to be lacking precision in our language.

Another sort of problem is as follows. Here is a road: it is a tarmac road; call it t. And here is a road; it is a dirt road; call it d. The two roads, though, are the same road, t=d. It is just that the tarmac runs out towards the end of the road. So Leibniz’s Law tells us that t is a dirt road, and d is a tarmac road – which they are not. What has gone wrong here? We cannot say that being dirt or tarmac are not really properties of the road. They certainly are. What has gone wrong (arguably) is this: we are not being precise enough in our specification of properties. The relevant it properties are being tarmac at such and such a point, and being dirt at a  such and such a point. Since t and d are the same road, they have both properties, and we do not have a violation of Leibniz’s Law. 
(67)

So the above two cases seem to call into question the validity Leibniz Law in certain inferences, and Priest showed in each case that there was really no problem with the Law itself but rather with how it is thought to be applied. The next example is much more problematic. We first recall the tense operators from chapter 8. Recall G: ‘it is always going to be the case that’. We first note that something has the property of being identical to itself. Thus: x=x. We also note that something which is self-identical is such despite the passage of time. [I am not sure that part is so obvious, since things it seems in many senses differ from themselves as time goes on. Perhaps the idea is that if something comes to differ from itself so much that it no longer is identical with its prior instantiation, then it would not really be the same thing after all and instead has a new self-consistent identity. Yet I also wonder if things can change from one identity to another, but do so very gradually and thus also without us being able to say that at every moment it was only one or the other identity.] This means that the identity will hold for all times in the future. Then, we will consider an inference where we use Leibniz’s Law to substitute terms, using this temporal formulation.

Let x be anything you like, a tree, a person; and consider the statement x=x. This says that x has the property of being identical to x – which is obviously true: it’s part of the very meaning of identity. And this is so, regardless of time. It is true now, true at all times future, and true at all times past. In particular, then , Gx=x is true. Now, here is an instance of Leibniz’s Law:

x=y   Gx=x
    Gx=y

(p.67, boldface on G, as in all cases, is not mine, but is the convention)

Priest then makes a point in parentheses. It seems that we might have expected the conclusion to be Gy=y. But he gives an example which assures us that we do not need to substitute both instances. “Just consider: ‘John is the person who won the race; John sees John; so John sees the person who won the race’ ” (68). Priest that clarifies what this inference [the prior one] is saying.

What the inference shows is that if x is identical to y, and x has the property of being identical to x at all future times, so does y. And since the second premiss is true, as we have just noted, it follows that if two things are identical, they will always be identical.
(68)

But there are many obvious counter examples to this claim. [The instance he gives is a little bit confusing for me. Let me quote it first.]

For example, consider an amoeba. Amoebas are single-celled water creatures that multiply by fission: an amoeba will split down the middle to become two amoebas. Now, take some amoeba, A, that divides to become two amoebas, B and C. Before the split, both B and C were A. So before the split, B=C. After the split, though, B and C are distinct amoebas, ¬B=C. So if two things are the same, it does not necessarily follow that they are always going to be the same.
(68)

[What is confusing for me is how that last sentence applies to the example: “if two things [B and C] are the same, it does not necessarily follow that they are always going to be the same.” What I do not understand is how they are understood to exist before they were created through the splitting. Priest deals with this objection later. It seems the idea is that A is identical to both B and C. A has merely taken on new properties. This furthermore means that B and C do not originate. They were still there as A back before the split. ]

According to Priest, we cannot easily escape this problem, because if something is self-identical, it must be so for all future times (68).

One response is to say that before the split, B was just a part of A, and thus B was never identical to A. However, since A is a single-celled amoeba, it cannot have more cells within it. Thus B cannot be a part of A [and therefore we are still left to conclude that B was identical to A before the split] (68).

[Priest’s next consideration responds to my above confusion.] We might also say that B an C did not exist before the split. Rather, they only came into existence when the split happened. And, “If they did not exist before the split, then they were not A before the split. So it’s not the case that B=C before the split” (68). [I might misunderstand, but I think the insight he gives next is the following. B and C had to exist before the split, because they are both A under a new guise. Since A existed before the split, so too did its guised manifestations B and C that were only explicitly obvious after the split. In other words, Priest seems to be saying that A transforms into two things, B and C. This furthermore implies that B and C are still identical to A after the split, even though they are not identical to each other. I will quote below, as I might have that wrong. Putting aside the interpretation, we will need to conclude from this that we cannot object that we are being imprecise with our language. B and C really did exist before the split, and they really were identical to A, and thus they really were identical to each other before the split but non-identical after the split.]

More radically, one might suggest that B and C did not really exist before the split, that they came into existence then. If they did not exist before the split, then they were not A before the split. So it’s not the case that B=C before the split. But that seems wrong too. B is not a new amoeba; it is simply A, though some of its properties have changed. If this is not clear, just imagine that C were to die at the split. In this case, we would have no hesitation in saying that B is A. (It would just be like a | snake shedding its skin.) Now, the identity of something can’t be affected by whether there are other things around. So A is B. Likewise, A is C.
(68-69)

[I might misunderstand the final point. I think the idea is the following. We might say that when A becomes B and C, then it has taken on new properties. We might also then say that it is a different thing, and thus after the split, A is not B or C. Furthermore, that might suggest that we cannot, as we seem to have done above, consider B and C to be identical to A before the split. And therefore we need not think of B and C ever at one time being identical. I am not entirely sure what the problem is with this alternate explanation. Perhaps it is the following. Suppose we take that line of reasoning. This means that we seem to be assuming that any change of property changes the things itself. But we can think of many examples of something taking only relatively small alterations without losing its identity. Thus we cannot say that B and C are non-identical to A just because they have different properties than A. Thus furthermore, we cannot dissolve the problem by trying to disidentify B and C with A.]

Of course, one might insist that just because A takes on new properties, it is, strictly speaking, a new object; not merely an old object with new properties. So B is not really A. Likewise C. But now we are back with the problem with which we started the chapter.
(69)

 

 

[The following is quotation.]

Main Ideas of the Chapter

● m = n is true just if the names m and n refer to the same object.
● If two objects are the same, any property of one is a property of the other (Leibniz’s Law).

(quoted from Priest, 69, boldface his)

From:

Priest, Graham. Logic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University, 2000.