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which in German ideological criticism has become known as the «text-imagescissors » meaning that textual statements can be defamiliarized through their combination with contrasting images and visual evidence with opposing commentary.[21]

Deconstruction of the acousmatic effect of power

However, as text and image increasingly drift apart, Marker trusts the ability of his viewers to experience a heightening of critical consciousness. Precisely speaking, he shows (as none of the almost canonical sources have noted) the sequence four times: that is, it is shown once without any commentary at all, and he finishes with the remark that it is not possible to attain objectivity, but that instead the evocative effect of the voice is always one of deformed judgment, one of holding on to something, of establishing, and that it ought to, instead, attempt to invent, to suggest: «Yet objectivity itself is also not precise. It does not deform the reality of Siberia, but it stops it in a judgmental moment, and thus actually does deform it. What counts is the movement and the diversity. Walking through the streets of Jakutsk will not give you an understanding of

Siberia. In addition, one needs an imaginary newsreel, filmed in all four corners of the country. I will show you, for instance, the beautifully painted cinema in Jakutsk, and I will comment upon it with the help of some Siberian sayings, which are already pictures themselves.»[22] Marker then cites a series of what are already pictorial proverbs, in order to provide his Nietzschean position, so to speak, with a difference in the metaphorical cabinet of linguistic meaning, from which it can only be freed through the acceleration and «diversification» of similes. In this sense, the sequence can also be regarded as a deconstruction of the effect of acousmatic power, as an ideological, critical désacousmatisation of the authoritative voice, whose power of expression with regard to the images beyond truth and lies is made ridiculous, in a sense exceeding morals. His is a strategy that disempowers the voice through repetition, which is like movement, as Daney describes it. For Daney, the voix off (the soundtrack that is edited parallel to the images) is a parasitical structure placed over the images, which attempts to be the site where all semantic power is gathered. Opposing this, Daney writes of a strategy of