Antecedentes históricos del parlamentarismo

As the beginning of the chapter noted, discourse time has a particularly reciprocal relationship with movement. Thus, movement, especially in the light of Vivian Sobchack’s topology outlined in the previous chapter, can provide a further context for how comics manipulate their temporal modes in the way that they do. In this regard, movement can be seen to provide a specific link between both story and discourse time.

In most comics forms, especially print or direct digitisations, the implied movement of figures or objects in a given panel help in delineating

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the story time of that panel. However, the story time of a panel is never fully set unless it contains overt markers of chronological time (clock time, essentially).41 _{It remains partly open to a number of interpretative}

possibilities which cues in the visual field are involved in delimiting. The reader-agent makes an assumption based on this information. Certain types of panels and panel sequences expand the pool of possible interpretations by their minimised actions and lack of indexed text.

Consider the following page from Kieron Gillen’s and Stephanie Hans’ Die #4 (2019), illustrated in Fig. 33. This page can edify how non- automated movement opens up the interpretative possibilities of story time. Usefully, it can also be instructive in marking out an important distinction between story duration (see Bordwell): the span of chronological time in a given story segment; and the section of time at which a given story segment occurs, which can be called its temporal setting.

The panels rendered in a purple wash are flashbacks, while the others denote the present day. They have a clear temporal setting. The story duration of these purple panels, on the other hand, is indeterminate. It is this – the story duration – that movement has a particular bearing on. The panels themselves provide no information as to how long the hug lasts, how long the man weeps, or how long these parents sit at their child’s bedside. In principle, this is because story time is the time of diegetic action. Their stasis, the absence of any subject movement through the gestalt principles discussed in Chapter Four, creates a sense of timelessness in these panels.

41 _{One diegetic marker of chronological time would give an idea of story time but in}

principle there would need to be multiple markers in successive panels to give a full understanding of the rate at which story time passes.

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Figure 31. (Gillen, Kieron and Stephanie Hans. Die #4. Portland: Image Comics, 2019). In the panels

with speech balloons, story time and discourse time are equal. This is normally the case for dialogue when there is no additional movement that might cause ramification. In the purple panels, the text does not belong to the time of the scene and cannot ground us in the duration of its actions. The stasis of the scenes creates an indeterminate story time.

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The lack of movement in the purple panels thus allows for an

indefinite story duration. Their stasis, as well as opening up the possibilities of story time, also invites the reader-agent to pour over the image and protract their discourse time. This invitation is underscored by the volume of captions which, not being indexed to the visual matter of the panels, provide no frame of duration that could be used in delineating their story duration. In contrast, the story duration of the present-day panels is more readily discerned in that they contain indexed speech. Movement directs and vectorises the multi-panel and when that function is reduced through stasis, the boundaries of story time and discourse time become porous, highlighting the inherent capabilities of the comic to play with discourse and story time in a way other media cannot.

Subject movement can thus be seen to be instructive in helping to delineate a given story/discourse ratio by imposing diegetic markers of action. These are the cues in the visual field that the reader-agent enlists in delimiting the possible interpretations of how time passes in the story world. The ability of the reader-agent to vectorise the multi-panel through subject movement could thus be regarded as of special importance in facilitating the flexile ratios which are uniquely available to comic book storytellers. As such, this movement provides a signpost by which the relationship of discourse time to perlustration can be understood.

In other visual media the delineation of story time is governed and signalled primarily through another of Sobchack’s movement categories, specifically that of montage. In comics, the multi-panel tends to supervene these forms of movement in most print and direct digitisations. It

determines, though cannot rigidly enforce, the movement of the reader- agent between panels (this is order. More on this shortly), and the degree to which subject movement can be imaginatively perceived (though there is a fundamental reciprocity here). This relates to the concept of perlustration outlined in the previous chapter. Here perlustration was explained through the phenomenological concept of intentionality as the ‘conscious act’ of perception (Barker 17). This was seen to be critical to how movement could be imaginatively activated through pouring over the surface of the work.

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Thus, what the examination of movement offers here is the ability to determine the extent to which that intentionality depends on open discourse time and spatial order. The principle mechanism for this being to contrast how subject movement and montage differently order events, which in turn reflects the functioning of discourse time (particularly ramified discourse time) and perlustration.