"IT'S NOT BLOOD, IT'S RED": COLOR AS CATEGORY, COLOR AS SENSATION IN JEAN-LUC GODARD'S LE MEPRIS, PIERROT LE FOU, WEEKEND, AND PASSION

Through a close Deleuzian reading of Le Mepris, Pierrot le Fou, Weekend, and Passion, this essay explores Jean-Luc Godard's use of color as the vehicle for a nomadic ballade/ballad (trans. excursion or road trip/song and dance), categorized by a weakness of motor-linkages that is capable of releasing huge forces of disintegration. Color thus acts as a powerful form of deterritorialization and re-territorialization, creating new conjunctions between and across genres and images, forming new categories in the interstices between series. The result is a logic of sensation that induces a heteroglossia of potential subjectivities, whereby the body is always its own other, always in search of the next series that will make it manifest as something incommensurable, as pure sensation.