After Being Seen, Do We Still Own Ourselves?

本文为基于影片与既有资料的研究阐释；历史版本中的判断不等于现实人物事实或已获外部审稿确认的结论。

# After Being Seen, Do We Still Own Ourselves?

本文为研究档案公开版，保留来源版本的论述与限制。公开时间：2026-09-07；不表示已完成同行评审。

来源版本日期：2026-07-14

证据边界：本文为基于影片与既有资料的研究阐释；历史版本中的判断不等于现实人物事实或已获外部审稿确认的结论。

# After Being Seen, Do We Still Own Ourselves?

## *Human Surrender*, the Spectralization of the Living, and Afterlife Before Death

## Abstract

This essay proposes a reading of the Chinese experimental feature and performance film *Human Surrender* (*Shoot Self with You*) through hauntology and death studies. The film depicts neither ghosts, death, nor supernatural return in any conventional sense, and it does not organize itself around a plot that can be summarized in a few sentences. Instead, it behaves like a film about how people come to appear. Its figures do not exist first as complete subjects whom the camera subsequently records. They are gradually produced through light, orientation, rehearsal, camera, sensation, dream, audience, backstage space, lists of names, and silence.

For readers unfamiliar with the film, the essay first traces its overall movement. In the opening, the camera carries intimate speech beyond the relation between two people while figures are developed into view through lighting positions, orientation, and rotation. In Part Two, rehearsal ceases to prepare for a final performance and becomes a mechanism through which failure, deviation, interruption, and unfinished versions continually return. In Part Three, when language can no longer prove a relation, a bed, water, white light, bodies, glasses, a fan, dreams, and games become provisional witnesses. In Part Four, the presence of an audience means that spacing out, skipping, blankness, invisibility, and delegated speech no longer belong only to the individual. Parts Five and Six transfer the overheated front of the performance into a backstage sound field, the credits, logos, black screen, and silence, allowing the film to learn how to preserve without continuing to possess.

I argue that *Human Surrender* moves hauntology from the “return of the dead” toward the **spectralization of the living**. Its specter is not an invisible corpse but a person who remains alive, visible, and capable of speech while losing the ability to own, alone, the conditions of their appearance. Death, in turn, is no longer understood only as biological cessation. It also names a change in the format of existence. When a person’s voice, dream, blankness, silence, pain, and manner of ending are continually taken up by other people, materials, audiences, procedures, and records, that person has already entered a kind of afterlife before death. The film thus poses a wider contemporary question: after being seen, do we still own ourselves?

**Keywords:** *Human Surrender*; hauntology; death studies; visibility; performance; spectralization of the living; ethics of stopping

## Introduction: A Sentence Carried Away by the Camera

The opening of *Human Surrender* performs an almost cruel operation. A sentence that should, for a moment, have enclosed two people within an intimate relation is carried away from them by the camera. Someone says, “I love you,” but the film refuses to let the words settle inside love. The camera continues to rotate counterclockwise, drawing the room, lighting positions, a third person, the camera operator, and the film’s title into its movement. From the first moment, the spectator is made to understand that intimacy is not a sealed space here, and that a voice is not the speaker’s private property. The instant someone speaks, their words enter light, orientation, the lens, and the gaze of others.

This opening matters not because it establishes a reproducible plot but because it establishes a cinematic rule. A person does not exist first as a complete subject and then become recorded. The person is developed into view within a set of conditions. How does the light fall? How does the lens turn? Who is present? Who holds the camera? Who is pulled into the movement, and who appears a moment late? Conditions that narrative cinema ordinarily conceals become the film itself. *Human Surrender* does not hurry to tell us who these people are or what has happened to them. It asks first: how is a person permitted to appear? How is a sentence permitted to become someone’s sentence? When spectatorship is already present, can the subject still possess the appearance as wholly their own?

For most readers, *Human Surrender* will be an unfamiliar film. It resists secure placement within any single category: narrative feature, documentary, filmed theater, or experimental cinema. It contains relations but refuses to reduce them to psychological motivation. It contains performance but refuses to separate performance cleanly from reality. It contains an audience but does not treat that audience as a mere observer. It contains credits, logos, and silence but does not make preservation its final answer. More precisely, this is a film about how a live situation produces a person: someone emerges through orientation, veers away in rehearsal, seeks evidence through sensation, discovers in public that they cannot retreat into private possession, and is finally preserved—but also released from further possession—through backstage space, lists of names, and silence.

I will not, therefore, introduce *Human Surrender* simply as a “film about ghosts.” That description arrives too quickly and misleads us into looking for a recognizable spirit, apparition, or supernatural return. The film’s spectrality comes instead from the living. It does not ask how the dead return. It asks how living people, in the process of being seen, rehearsed, recorded, spoken for, thanked, named, and preserved, gradually lose the ability to own themselves alone. Its specter is not the invisible being but the person who remains unpossessable after an excess of visibility.

The central claim of this essay is that *Human Surrender* pushes hauntology from the return of the dead toward the spectralization of the living. Spectrality need not belong only to what follows death; it can name a mode of existence entered while one is still alive. A person remains alive, speaks, and is seen. They may still become silent, refuse, stare into space, skip something, hide, or allow another person to speak. Yet their voice, body, dream, blankness, pain, and mode of ending are continually taken up by other people, materials, audiences, procedures, cameras, and recording systems. The subject has not vanished, but can no longer serve as the sole custodian of the self.

This shift also requires death studies to move its boundary. Death should not be understood exclusively through biological cessation, the treatment of remains, funeral ritual, cemetery memory, or archival preservation. It may also be understood as a change in the format of existence. When a person’s words continue elsewhere, when a dream is played publicly, when blankness is spoken on someone’s behalf, when a wish for invisibility is preserved as an image, when an ending is prolonged by backstage sound and the silence of the credits, the subject has entered an afterlife before death. The importance of *Human Surrender* lies in its ability to enter death studies without a narrative of death and hauntology without an image of a ghost. It films afterlife before death from within visibility, rehearsal, sensation, public performance, and the conditions of recording.

The final question, then, is not whether the film contains a ghost. It lies closer to the contemporary politics of visibility: after being seen, does a person still own themselves? From its first sentence, *Human Surrender* refuses an optimistic answer. Being seen is not necessarily being understood. Being recorded is not necessarily being preserved. Being articulated is not necessarily being possessed. The specter is not an exception that appears after death. It is the ordinary shadow cast by the modern subject among light, cameras, other people, procedures, and archives.

## 1. The Opening Is Not an Introduction to Characters but an Apparatus of Development

It is easy to mistake the opening for atmosphere. Darkness, light, slowly emerging people, a rotating lens, and the appearance of the title may look to an unfamiliar viewer like a stylized entrance into experimental cinema. But the opening of *Human Surrender* does not simply add an aura of mystery to its figures. It behaves more like an apparatus of photographic development. The room comes first. The light comes first. The movement of the lens comes first. Only then do the figures surface from those conditions. We are not merely shown faces, bodies, and entrances. A less visible question has been opened: before someone becomes a figure, what must illuminate them, what position must receive them, and what mode of viewing must permit them to appear?

Conventional narrative cinema often assumes that the character is already there. We meet a character, then learn their desires, relations, and actions. *Human Surrender* delays this recognition from the outset. It does not rush to hand its figures over to the audience or supply them with psychological backgrounds. Space, light, and lens begin working first. The figures seem to be summoned by the room rather than to walk naturally out of an interior life. This distinction determines how the entire film must be watched. It is not enough to ask who appears. We must ask how appearance has been organized.

This is why the opening “I love you” cannot be treated simply as a declaration of love. It is certainly intimate speech, but the film does not allow it to complete a world for two. The camera neither stops for an answer nor encloses the sentence within a character’s psychology. Instead, it continues to turn, carrying the intimate words away from speaker and addressee while drawing a third person, the camera operator, the room, and the title into the same movement. Love does not disappear, but it loses its enclosure from the beginning. Orientation, light, camera, and an observing position open it up.

The opening therefore establishes a crucial rule of spectatorship. No sentence in this film can belong entirely to its speaker, and no intimacy can belong entirely to two people. Once a voice leaves the mouth, it enters space. Once a body is developed into view, it enters an orientation. Once a relation becomes visible, it enters the gaze of others. The subject is not something that first possesses itself and is subsequently influenced by the outside. From the moment of appearance, subject and external conditions are produced together.

This is the earliest form of what I call the spectralization of the living. There is no ghost, no death, and no overt supernatural event. Spectrality is nevertheless already present: position precedes body, spectatorship precedes selfhood, condition precedes character. A person is seen without thereby possessing their own appearance in full. A sentence is spoken without thereby belonging wholly to the speaker. Like a specter, the person begins to be summoned, distributed, and retained by conditions beyond the self.

From this perspective, the opening camera’s one-and-a-half rotations are not formal display but an ontological arrangement. Everything that follows must be understood through more than the question “What did this person do?” We must also ask which conditions made that action possible as an action. Part Two continues the problem through rehearsal: when an actor cannot perform successfully, has the actor failed, or has the situation begun to produce reality? Part Three carries it into sensation: when language cannot prove a relation, how do a bed, water, white light, dreams, and a fan become witnesses? Part Four carries it into public performance: when someone stares into space, skips, goes blank, or wishes to disappear, how do the audience, materials, and procedures take over? The opening compresses all these later questions into a primitive spatial operation: no one ever appears alone.

The first step of this essay is therefore not to define the figures but to acknowledge a more basic fact: in *Human Surrender*, appearance itself is the problem. People are not introduced but developed into view. They do not move from interiority toward the lens; they acquire provisional form within the joint arrangement of camera, light, orientation, other people, and space. From the beginning, the film forces us to rewrite “Who is this person?” as “Under what conditions does this person become visible?” This is the starting point of the film’s hauntological force.

## 2. Rehearsal Is Not Preparation but the Return of Unfinished Versions

If the opening develops people through orientation and light, Part Two brings them into rehearsal. Rehearsal is conventionally a form of preparation: actors experiment, directors adjust, and the event approaches a finished version. In *Human Surrender*, rehearsal does not lead toward a completed form cleared of error. It resembles a machine through which unfinished things continually return. A person enters a role and runs back out of it; enters the script and is pulled away by an everyday gesture, an incidental sound, or bodily hesitation; enters an intimate scene and is interrupted again by a door, equipment, system prompts, the reverse side of the camera, and an onlooker.

This gives rehearsal a spectral quality. Each failure does more than fail: it recalls an unfinished version. A misspoken line does not disappear completely, nor is a failed gesture wiped clean. They remain like afterimages behind the next attempt. When someone speaks again, the trace of the earlier failure to continue is still present. When a body moves again, its recent hesitation still affects the movement. When a scene tries to become more theatrical, the event pulls it back toward the reality occurring there. Rehearsal is not reset but accumulation. It lets unfinished things return again and again.

Part Two consequently converts “failure in performance” from a defect into cinematic material. An ordinary production would treat an actor’s inability to perform as a problem requiring correction. *Human Surrender* permits the problem to remain and deepen. Does the line belong to the character or the actor? Is the gesture required by the script or improvised by the body as an exit? Is the pause a forgotten line, a refusal, or the moment when the live situation suddenly exceeds what performance can bear? The film does not hurry to answer. It retains the vertigo in which figure, character, actor, and event can no longer be separated cleanly.

The camera is no longer a device that simply records rehearsal. It becomes entangled in rehearsal itself. When the lens faces forward, someone appears to be performing. When it touches the reverse side, the conditions of performance begin to appear. Who is looking? Who is filming? Who is being questioned? Who stood offscreen and then suddenly entered the relation? Such questions move rehearsal beyond the interior of a stage. Rehearsal drags its supposed exterior into the event: camera operator, observer, sound beyond the door, system prompt, and the gaps of the room may all become forces through which it continues.

Part Two thus extends the opening question while shifting it from how a person appears to how an action belongs to someone. The opening tells us that a person never appears alone. Rehearsal tells us that an action never belongs to the actor alone either. The performer wants the action to obey the role. The script wants the body to arrive at a prescribed position. The live situation repeatedly carries it elsewhere. Action is distributed among too many forces: character, actor, script, body, sound, camera, door, procedure, and the return of other people. The person continues to act, but the source of action has become impure.

This impurity is the film’s second movement toward hauntology. A specter need not be only the past returning to the present. It can also be a version that should have disappeared but did not. Failed versions, deviant versions, abandoned versions, and versions rejected only to return immediately wander through rehearsal. They are no longer waste left by the work; they become the work’s own shadow. The film does not travel from failure toward success. It lets failure change form until we recognize that completion may be no more than the temporary suppression of everything left unfinished.

This is why Part Two cannot be treated as a transitional passage. It does not merely bridge the opening and Parts Three and Four; it changes the nature of action for the entire film. Later, when language cannot prove a relation, sensation and material will take over. When someone spaces out, skips, or goes blank in public, the audience, procedures, and other voices will continue to process what occurs. After the performance is declared over, backstage space and silence will continue to bear its effects. Every later movement already has a prototype in rehearsal: what one person cannot finish, the event will continue on their behalf.

Rehearsal, then, is not preparation but generation. The film ceases to pursue a clean official version and lets every official version remain haunted by the unfinished. The person wants to perform well, while the film is more interested in how failure exposes the relation between person and event. The actor wants to enter a role, while the film is more interested in how body and reality tear the role open. The person wants the action to belong to them, while the film shows action being taken up jointly by many conditions. In the opening, people are developed through light and orientation. In rehearsal, they are overtaken by their own unfinished versions.

## 3. When Language Cannot Prove a Relation, Sensation Becomes the Witness

Part Two destabilizes the ownership of action. Part Three carries that instability into the relation itself. Someone says, “I’m here.” Someone says, “I love you.” Such words ought to prove that a relation exists. But if language has already been interrupted too many times by performance, rehearsal, camera, and event, is it still enough? If the other person still cannot feel that they have truly been seen, can language bear the burden of proof alone?

This section is easily misread as a dream sequence, an emotional interlude, or a chain of symbols. The bed appears to symbolize intimacy, water trauma, white light amnesia or blankness, and dream the unconscious. Such readings may capture something, but they translate the film into symbols too quickly. What is moving in Part Three is not what any single object represents. It is the film’s repeated substitution of one medium of testimony for another once language can no longer confirm a relation. The bed is not merely a bed, water not merely water, white light not merely light, and dream not merely dream. Each is compelled to answer the same question: what can prove that one person once existed in another person’s world?

The bed is called first. Few spaces seem to offer more immediate evidence of intimacy: proximity, reclining bodies, bodies side by side, lowered voices. Each appears to testify that a relation has been established. Yet the bed in *Human Surrender* offers no secure intimacy. Sound brings water into it, pressing words such as fish tank, swimming, falling into water, and not knowing how to swim against its surface. The bed ceases to be only a soft place and becomes a body of water without water. A person lies there as though placed inside a form of proof in which they cannot breathe. Intimacy has not disappeared, but it has become unreliable. The closer two people come, the more they resemble figures separated by glass; the more they are together, the more something else is required to prove that “being together” ever took place.

Light enters next. White light is neither a simple transition nor a dreamlike filter applied to intimacy. It acts more like a clearing operation. It drives what could just have been called bed, body, and room toward an overbright blankness in which both looking and proof become difficult. We usually trust light to disclose things. Here it can also dissolve their contours. Excessive brightness does not mean greater clarity. The film quietly refutes an optimistic account of visibility: not everything illuminated is understood, and not everything admitted into the light acquires evidentiary force.

When bed and light both fail to complete the proof, bodies and ordinary objects take over. Eating, breathing, heartbeat, shoes, clothes, trash, sink, blanket, temperature, exhaustion, a painful neck: these low and minor things repeatedly rise to the surface. They seem trivial, yet they pull the relation down from abstraction into body and matter. Love, memory, trauma, waiting, and rescue—if they cannot remain within language—must fall upon mouth, skin, eyes, posture, and object. Part Three draws feeling out of psychological depth and makes it bear the weight of everyday materials.

The act of looking is dismantled as well. Glasses, astigmatism, lighting, breath, and bodily adjustment make sight less a natural capacity than a process requiring conditions. Whether one person sees another does not depend only on whether their eyes are open. It depends on how the light falls, how the eyes lose focus, what the body can endure, whether breath keeps pace, and whether distance can be maintained. Part Three continually reminds us that seeing is not a straight road to understanding. Vision is itself fragile, adjustable, error-prone, and reorganized by body and environment.

Dream, too, leaves the private interior. A dream is usually understood as the most secret theater of the self, but the film lets sound, a fan, song, subtitles, and public space carry it away. Once narrated, translated, and played, the dream no longer belongs only to the dreamer. It becomes public material: audible and open to misunderstanding; usable as testimony and altered by new conditions of spectatorship. Interiority is no final refuge. Even a dream can leave the dreamer and enter the space between people.

Here lies the spectrality of Part Three. The specter is not a dead person who suddenly appears, but everything that cannot be proved securely and yet refuses to vanish. Did a relation occur? Was a person truly seen? Does a dream still belong to its dreamer? Did an act of intimacy reach the other person? None of these questions receives a final answer. They keep returning in new bodies: now a bed, now water, now white light, now glasses, now a fan, now a dream. Each return resolves nothing and instead calls for another witness.

Late in this part, proof begins to slide toward play. Searching, catching in the light, following, falling asleep, dying, and continuing the game introduce more dangerous rules into the relation. “Finding,” which seemed like rescue, may become capture. “Catching someone in the light,” which seemed like care, may become possession. “Go to sleep,” which seemed soothing, may approach abandonment. The film gives the spectator no easy distinction between care and control, search and pursuit, accompaniment and detention. It allows these acts to contaminate one another until the form of intimacy itself begins to fail.

This explains why Part Three must follow rehearsal. Part Two has already shown that the source of an action is impure. Part Three shows that the evidence of a relation is impure as well. A person cannot prove their presence by speech alone, nor their arrival in another person’s world by proximity alone. Once the relation passes through bed, water, light, body, dream, and game, those media change it. They are not neutral containers; they redistribute the forces within a relation. When language fails, sensation takes over. Sensation does not guarantee that the relation will be recovered. It merely lets the relation continue in a different and less stable form.

Part Three is therefore neither a passage from reality into dream nor from narrative into symbol. It is a slow failure of evidence. Each witness is summoned, and each can testify only provisionally. The bed cannot prove completely. Neither can light, body, dream, or game. Precisely because none can finish the proof, they appear one after another in a relay of sensation. The spectralization of the living has reached another stage. A person no longer fails only to own their appearance and action in full. They also begin to lose exclusive possession of their relations, dreams, and manner of being seen.

## 4. Making It Public Does Not Make It Clear: The Living Can No Longer Retreat into Themselves

Part Three asks bed, water, white light, body, dream, and game to testify to an unstable relation. Part Four pushes those relations into a public performance. There is an audience, a performance space, materials, lights, microphones, an ongoing sound field, and language repeatedly proposed, interrupted, and carried away. Everything appears finally to have been brought into the open. But *Human Surrender* never assumes that the open is where truth becomes clear. Being made public means something else: whatever might once have retreated into interiority, into the relation between two people, or behind performance has now lost its route of withdrawal.

The decisive change in Part Four is not simply the appearance of an audience. It is the way that presence alters the ownership of every state. Someone who spaces out no longer takes a momentary leave that belongs only to them. Silence is no longer merely an absence of speech. Saying “skip it” no longer simply deletes part of a performance. Wishing to become invisible no longer means leaving the field of vision. The public event behaves like a seamless container. It will not allow a state to stop naturally, but processes every pause, refusal, and blank into a next step. Public exposure does not illuminate truth; it abolishes the privacy of interruption.

Spacing out is a small and incisive example. In ordinary life, it can be an innocuous withdrawal. A person temporarily leaves language, explanation, and social obligation, returning to a blank place they may not be able to explain even to themselves. In public performance, however, spacing out can be watched. It occupies the audience’s time and invites another question. It ceases to be merely an inward condition and becomes a public event. It no longer belongs to the person who has withdrawn. Other people name it, wait for it, urge it onward, interpret it, and even make it answerable to the question of what “everyone” is supposed to be watching.

The same holds for skipping. To skip ordinarily means omission: this need not occur, can be cut, can withdraw from present time. Part Four does not let the skip succeed so easily. Language can say “skip,” while the body remains. A performance can claim that something has already been performed, while the space still requires the person to move. A passage can be declared unnecessary, while the audience has already heard the declaration of its irrelevance. What was skipped has not vanished. It becomes a debt. It no longer occurs in its first form but returns as bodily hesitation, spatial waiting, and the residue of the event.

Blankness intensifies this public pressure. Someone says that their mind has gone blank. The declaration seems to mark the end of language: I stop here. In Part Four, blankness cannot become an endpoint. It is heard and received. Someone may ask whether help is needed to say what cannot be said. Blankness moves from an interior state to an interface. It is no longer simply the absence of content but a site that another person can approach, manage, and propel forward. The most frightening prospect is not that someone loses their voice, but that the voice may bypass them and continue through somebody else.

The wish for invisibility cannot be fulfilled simply either. A person who asks not to be seen appears to request withdrawal: do not illuminate me again, do not interpret me again, do not place me before the audience again. Yet the event preserves that very withdrawal. White fabric, lighting, spectators, camera, subtitles, and spatial position transform the wish not to be seen into something visible. Invisibility does not become disappearance. It becomes a publicly preserved posture. The stronger the wish to leave spectatorship, the more clearly the shape of leaving remains within the image.

Public exposure in Part Four is therefore not transparency but a change in ownership. Interiority no longer belongs only to the inner self; body no longer belongs only to body; silence no longer belongs only to the silent person; refusal no longer belongs only to the person who refuses. The event catches each state, other people continue it, materials support it, and audience time prolongs it. No single controller need be imagined. More precisely, the public event itself distributes the authority to organize what happens. A person continues to speak, but speech is not entirely theirs to decide. They continue to remain silent, but cannot preserve silence alone. They continue to act, but do not fully control where the action ends.

This is the most forceful moment in *Human Surrender*’s spectralization of the living. The specter is not an invisible entity. It is a person who remains visible, present, capable of speech and movement, yet begins to lose the ability to retreat into ownership of the self. The living person has not disappeared, but seems already to have entered an afterlife. Their spacing out is watched by others; their blankness is taken up by others; their skip is retained by the event; their wish for invisibility is preserved by the image; their ending will be processed further by backstage space and credits. The subject remains there, but the subject’s boundary has split.

This is also why Part Four should not be reduced to a public performance spinning out of control. Loss of control is only the surface. The deeper structure is that public conditions convert everything that might have ended the event into continuation. Spacing out cannot stop it. Neither can skipping, blankness, invisibility, or even the declaration that the performance is over. Public performance becomes a machine in which stopping ceases to function. It pushes the games of capture, sensory proofs, and failed intimacies from Part Three before an audience, preventing the spectator from occupying a stable position outside them.

An ethical boundary must be preserved here. To say that a living person cannot retreat into the self is not to make their pain, silence, or blankness available for unlimited interpretation. On the contrary, what makes Part Four so disturbing is its disclosure of the danger in looking. Seeing is not understanding. Public exposure is not ownership. Recording is not rescue. The film brings these states before us not so we can possess them but so we must acknowledge a danger: once interiority, body, and refusal enter public conditions, they may be continued by others, and that continuation itself requires scrutiny.

Part Four therefore places the film’s question under maximum pressure. In the opening, the person does not appear alone. In rehearsal, action does not belong to the actor alone. In Part Three, a relation cannot be proved by language alone. In public performance, a person cannot fully keep even their own pauses, blankness, and wish for invisibility. After being seen, can someone still own themselves? Part Four offers no answer, only a pressure that cannot be avoided: visibility does not automatically confer recognition. It may instead deprive the subject more completely of any way back.

## 5. From the Backstage Sound Field to Silence: How Cinema Learns to Stop

Part Four presses people into the position from which departure is most difficult. Spacing out, skipping, blankness, invisibility, and delegated speech can no longer be treated as minor states sealed within a person. The audience hears them, space receives them, and the event continues them. The film might have increased the pressure: further exposure, further interrogation, every pause converted into another performance. *Human Surrender* does not. At the moment when it could most easily continue to extract, it begins to turn away.

The turn is decisive. It is neither evasion nor an abrupt transition into conventional credits. Once the public performance recedes, the film does not immediately become quiet. It changes the place from which events occur. Sound remains. The screen remains. Backstage activity remains. Music remains. Voices that emerge after the closing announcement remain. Earlier, we saw people being pushed before others. Now we begin to hear how the event that placed them there continues to operate after the front of the performance has withdrawn.

Backstage space is therefore neither outtake nor appendix, nor material designed to let the audience relax. It is another front of the film. It reminds us that the public event was never limited to the illuminated area onstage. A performance depends on sound, equipment, screen, music, waiting, coordination, announcements, and many people who do not occupy the center of the visible image. Part Four prevents the figures from retreating into themselves. Part Five prevents the event from pretending that it was merely a background.

This shift changes the meaning of ending. A performance can be declared over, but the sound of its ending does not end at once. Corrections continue. People still speak. The soundtrack spills over. The event propels what just happened forward by other means. The ending is no longer a closed door but something like an air vent: the heat of the front stage drains through it as backstage voices rise. The film does not make an ending into a clean period. It makes it a transition.

Spectrality now changes location. In the earlier sections, it came from position preceding person, unfinished versions returning through rehearsal, sensations taking over after language failed, and living people losing the route back to private ownership in public. Here, spectrality no longer adheres only to the person. It begins to adhere to the event itself. The performance is over, but the conditions it leaves behind continue to speak. The front stage withdraws, while the organization behind it develops into view. The word “over” has been spoken, but uncontained echoes trail behind it.

If Part Four makes stopping fail, Part Five begins to relearn how to stop. The film no longer hands everything back to public performance for further escalation. It moves from an insistent gaze toward listening, from frontal performance toward a backstage sound field, from the exposure of figures toward the development of conditions. The gesture is restrained and crucial. The film acknowledges that the event has not truly ended, but no longer requires the figures to remain responsible for everything unfinished.

The lists, roles, locations, acknowledgments, logos, black screen, and silence that follow belong within this movement. They are neither the paper’s protagonists nor an archival answer capable of explaining everything. They are the film’s last act of arranging the event: who appeared, who performed labor, where it took place, which relations sustained the film, and which spectators formed part of the audience that night. A list is not a method for possessing people. It returns what can be written to a provisional place.

This is why thanking the audience is not a simple gesture. The spectators are neither external observers nor people whom the film crudely designates as responsible for what occurred. They are, more accurately, one condition under which the event took form. Without an audience, the public pressure of Part Four would not arise in the same way. Without an audience, the continuing backstage voices and their eventual recession would not carry the same weight. To thank the audience is not to recruit it into a conclusion, but to acknowledge that it was present.

The final black screen and silence push this acknowledgment toward its limit. Blackness is not erasure, and silence is not nothing. They reduce the demand: illuminate no more, extract no more, do not force figures, voices, spectators, and interpretations to continue producing. The film writes what can be written, thanks whom it can thank, leaves the marks it can leave, and lets sound recede to a place from which it can no longer interrogate a person.

Here *Human Surrender* makes its most suggestive contribution to death studies. Death appears not only when life ceases, but when the format of existence changes. A person remains alive while being jointly preserved, continued, and distributed by position, rehearsal, sensation, audience, backstage space, and lists. An event has ended while acquiring an afterlife in sounds, names, places, acknowledgments, and silence. What matters most is that the film does not interpret afterlife as unlimited possession. It knows that leaving something behind is not the same as extracting more from it; preservation is not exhaustive explanation; gratitude is not the completion of another person’s sentence.

The film’s true ending, then, does not explain the event completely. It knows when to stop possessing. It lets us see how the living become spectral within visibility and how a film may assume an ethical responsibility after participating in that spectralization: not by casting more light, asking another question, or converting another person’s blankness into material, but by acknowledging at last that some things must remain and must not be taken away.

## 6. Where Hauntology Enters: Not the Return of the Dead but the Living Person’s Loss of Complete Self-Possession

Only now can hauntology properly enter the essay. Not because we have located an image that resembles a ghost, nor because the film ends with names, darkness, and silence, but because the film has shown us something more fundamental. A person need not die in order to begin existing spectrally. Once they can no longer possess alone their appearance, speech, silence, dreams, blankness, ending, and mode of preservation, they have entered a spectral condition before death.

The ghost is commonly imagined as a dead person who returns, a past that refuses to leave the present, or an unsettled history that repeatedly assumes the form of a shadow. Hauntology matters because it refuses to treat the past as completed. Pasts return. Unfinished events return. Suppressed voices return. What has not been mourned returns. *Human Surrender* moves the problem one step earlier. If a specter is not only a form taken by the dead but also a state of existence that can no longer be possessed in full, then the living, too, can become spectral.

The specters in this film are not primarily invisible. On the contrary, they are often too visible. People are caught in light, reached by the rotating lens, pushed forward by rehearsal, tested through sensation, awaited by an audience, continued backstage, and written into the credits. The problem is not that someone disappears. It is that, after appearing, appearance no longer belongs completely to the person. Visibility does not securely return the subject to itself. It hands the subject to a system of conditions: position, light, script, body, voice, material, spectators, backstage space, and memory.

The **spectralization of the living** does not mean that the film’s figures resemble ghosts, nor does it aestheticize their pain. The term names a split in ownership. The person remains, but “how I appear” is jointly organized by other things. The person continues to speak, while the ownership of speech grows uncertain. The person remains silent, while others hear, interpret, await, or take up that silence. The person tries to depart, while the image may preserve the posture of departure. The specter does not lack a body. The body remains, but can no longer guarantee that the subject owns every meaning it produces.

Across the film, this process never happens all at once. In the opening, a person emerges through orientation, light, and the rotation of the lens; appearance already comes from more than the self. In rehearsal, unfinished versions return repeatedly like unsettled pasts that cling to the present. In Part Three, language fails to prove the relation and sensations and objects begin to testify in its place; bed, water, white light, glasses, a fan, and dream externalize interiority. In Part Four, public performance deprives spacing out, skipping, blankness, and invisibility of any private route of retreat. In Parts Five and Six, the event leaves the front stage and continues as backstage voices, names, locations, acknowledgments, logos, and silence.

These stages demonstrate that spectralization is not the spectacle of one scene but the film’s total movement. It is not because the film finally produces an archive that ghosts appear. From its first minute, the person’s appearance already belongs to a system larger than the subject. The ending only cools, arranges, and quiets this movement. Spectrality has long been occurring through the orientation of the opening, the failures of rehearsal, sensory proof, public pressure, and backstage echoes.

This reading also changes the meaning of “surrender.” Here, surrender is neither defeat nor weakness nor submission to a particular person or institution. It is an epistemological act: the subject stops pretending to own itself completely. A person cannot wholly own their voice, because once released it enters other people’s ears. They cannot wholly own their body, because once placed within an event it is reorganized by light, space, and audience. They cannot wholly own a dream, because once narrated, translated, and played it has left the dreamer. They cannot wholly own an ending, because backstage sound, credits, acknowledgments, and silence continue to process the traces that follow.

This does not mean that the subject has been abolished. We should avoid the interpretation—both too pessimistic and too simple—that being watched, recorded, or taken up by others can only be deprivation. The film is more complex. Visibility brings risk, but it is also a condition of relation. Recording can possess, but it can also preserve an event that would otherwise disperse. Speaking for another person can be dangerous, but the approach of another can also support a fragile continuation where language has failed. The question is not whether visibility is good or evil. It is whether an ethics exists after visibility.

The ethics of *Human Surrender* lies in its capacity to reveal both the danger of possession and the possibility of ceasing to possess. It does not turn the spectralization of the living into an object theory can explain exhaustively. While position, material, audience, and backstage space repeatedly carry the subject elsewhere, the film also learns at the end to lower its voice. It recognizes that it has already preserved too much, and that further illumination is not deeper understanding. It writes what can be written, offers the acknowledgments it can offer, and gives what cannot be completed to black screen and silence.

Hauntology and death studies meet here. Death need not name only the cessation of biological life. It can name a change in the format of existence. A person remains alive, but their voice has become someone else’s memory, their silence an audience’s waiting, their blankness an entrance for another person’s approach, their dream material for public playback, and their name and labor traces in the credits. Life has not ended, but survives in another form beyond the subject.

This is **afterlife before death**. The phrase neither turns the living into the dead nor exaggerates the film’s events into scenes of death. It names a condition of modern visibility in which subjects begin, before biological death, to exist as residues, traces, recordings, offscreen voices, delegated speech, audience memory, and archival marks. The person has not died, but part of them has left the self and entered a world in which others can watch, preserve, misunderstand, replay, and continue to interpret it.

The film’s significance consequently exceeds film studies. Contemporary life increasingly equates being seen with recognition, being recorded with preservation, being expressed with being understood, and leaving a trace with avoiding disappearance. *Human Surrender* does not reject these desires entirely. It compels us to attach a question to each of them. Who sees? Who records? Who expresses whom? Who has the right to continue interpreting? Who knows when to stop? The film offers not an iconography of ghosts but an ethical philosophy of contemporary visibility.

Hauntology, as used here, is therefore not a label imposed upon *Human Surrender* from outside. It is a mode of viewing that the film gradually teaches. The opening teaches us to see the conditions of appearance. Rehearsal teaches us to hear unfinished versions return. The sensory passages teach us to understand a crisis of proof. Public performance teaches us to acknowledge that living people cannot simply retreat into private possession. Backstage sound and silence teach us that the ethics of cinema lies not only in illuminating a person, but in knowing that the illuminated person remains unpossessable.

We can now reformulate the paper’s central question. After being seen, can a person still own themselves? The answer offered by *Human Surrender* is neither a simple no nor a romantic fantasy of recovering complete sovereignty. More precisely, a person never owned the self completely. For that very reason, looking, recording, performance, commemoration, and scholarship must learn a more restrained responsibility. Hauntology here concerns not only how the dead return, but how the living can remain untaken after they have been seen.

## Conclusion: After Being Seen, the Living Still Must Not Be Taken Away

We can return now to the sentence at the film’s beginning. Someone says, “I love you,” but the lens does not stop to build a room that belongs to two people alone. It continues to rotate, drawing light, orientation, a third person, the camera operator, and the title into its movement. We can now recognize that this is not simply a stylistic decision. It is the film’s philosophical point of departure. From its first instant, *Human Surrender* tells us that no intimacy, voice, or appearance issues alone from a perfectly self-sufficient subject.

This does not mean that intimacy is false, or that the speaker is insincere. The film’s sharper insight is to place sincerity within conditions. A person may speak sincerely, but as soon as the voice leaves the mouth it enters other people’s ears, the camera’s movement, spatial orientation, and the memory of every later spectator. A person may be sincerely silent, but once that silence is seen, it too may be awaited, interpreted, preserved, or misread. It is not because the person is false that they lose complete sovereignty over the self. It is precisely when something truly happens that they discover themselves within an event larger than the self.

*Human Surrender* therefore cannot be summarized as a narrative feature or reduced to a film about credits, archives, and backstage material. It unfolds a movement of existence: how a person appears, rehearses, fails, seeks evidence, becomes public, leaves an echo backstage, and is finally preserved without being completely explained through lists, logos, black screen, and silence. Its story does occur, but in places usually hidden by story: in how light makes a person appear, rehearsal makes failure return, sensation testifies in place of language, an audience changes the ownership of a state, backstage space prolongs an ending, and silence prevents further extraction.

This is the film’s contribution to hauntology. It does not merely supply hauntology with a new example; it forces hauntology to change direction. A specter is not only a past that returns after death. It can be someone alive, visible, and speaking who can no longer possess alone the way they appear. The spectralization of the living is not the conversion of people into ghosts. It is the splitting of the subject’s ownership: my body remains, but the meanings it produces are not entirely mine; my voice remains, but another person can take it up; my dream remains, but it can be played publicly; my blankness remains, but it can become an entrance for approach and delegated speech; my ending has been declared, but backstage sound and credits continue it.

Death studies moves with this insight. Death does not happen only when life ends. It also happens where the format of existence changes. When a person remains alive but exists beyond the self as trace, echo, name, acknowledgment, audience memory, subtitle, offscreen voice, and silence, that person has already entered an afterlife before death. This afterlife is not death and must not be romanticized. It is closer to an ordinary condition of modern visibility. The more we are recorded, preserved, and retold by others, the more urgently we must ask: after preservation, who owns the traces?

“Surrender,” then, is not a posture of failure but a more difficult knowledge. It does not ask the subject to relinquish dignity, nor claim that a person can only be swallowed by conditions. It asks the subject to relinquish one fantasy: that voice, body, dream, silence, pain, and ending can be owned completely. Surrender does not mean submission to oppression. It means ceasing to pretend that “I” can compose “I” alone. Only after this pretense has been suspended can the film open a new ethical question: if no person is entirely self-owned, how should spectators, recorders, scholars, and cinema itself treat the person who is not entirely self-owned?

The answer of *Human Surrender* is not to stop looking. Nor does the film ask us to reject recording, performance, or preservation. It is more lucid than that. Without looking, many relations cannot occur. Without records, many fragile events will disperse. Without another person taking something up, many failures of language will receive no support. The problem is not seeing but whether seeing turns immediately into possession; not preservation but whether preservation pretends it has understood; not scholarship but whether scholarship knows that some things remain beyond its power to take.

This is the **ethics of stopping**. The film illuminates people without treating illumination as ownership. It develops blankness into view without filling it. It places an audience within the event without making the audience the final judge. It records names, locations, labor, and thanks without pretending the list exhausts what happened. It leaves black screen and silence not because nothing remains to be said, but because continued speech may become another demand. The film’s deepest tenderness is not consolation. It is the final acknowledgment that some things can be seen and still must not be taken.

This also explains why *Human Surrender*, however unfamiliar, is not remote. Its concern is not a minor problem confined to experimental cinema. It is an increasingly ordinary condition of contemporary life. We are filmed, transcribed, archived, screenshotted, preserved, and interpreted; we also turn other people’s speech, expressions, silences, and pain into material that circulates. Modern subjects no longer fear only being forgotten. They must also fear being misrecognized through preservation. Hauntology enters the contemporary not through an ancient ghost but through the living person made excessively visible.

The paper’s final proposition is therefore not that *Human Surrender* contains ghosts, but that the film teaches us to understand the specter differently. Spectrality is not a privilege of absence, nor a form reserved for the dead. The specter can be someone who has been seen, heard, recorded, thanked, named, and preserved, yet still has not been possessed. The specter reminds us that acknowledging a person does not mean explaining them completely; preserving an event does not make it ours; seeing a living person does not grant the right to carry that person away.

The opening “I love you,” carried away by the camera, acquires a different weight at the end. It is no longer merely a moment when intimacy is interrupted. It is the first form of the film’s entire problem: I speak words that belong to me, but once spoken they no longer belong only to me. The film does not reject love on that account. It makes love bear its actual risk. Love, looking, recording, scholarship, and remembrance are alike in this respect: only by acknowledging what cannot be possessed might they avoid becoming another form of seizure.

This is the unsettling and necessary proposition that *Human Surrender* leaves to hauntology and death studies: living people do not become spectral only after death. Once visibility prevents them from possessing themselves in full, they have already entered an afterlife before death. This is not a counsel of despair. It calls at once for a better way of looking, a slower interpretation, and a form of preservation that knows when to stop. After being seen, we may no longer own ourselves completely. For precisely that reason, no one else may take us away.

## Evidence Boundary

This paper is a theoretical interpretation of observable formal relations in *Human Surrender*: camera movement, lighting, rehearsal, dialogue, sensory motifs, public performance, backstage sound, credits, and silence. It does not infer the participants’ private psychology, off-screen relationships, consent, harm, or production responsibility from those forms. “Spectralization of the living” names an analytic condition of visibility and mediation, not a clinical, biographical, or supernatural claim.

After Being Seen, Do We Still Own Ourselves?

After Being Seen, Do We Still Own Ourselves?

Human Surrender , the Spectralization of the Living, and Afterlife Before Death

Human Surrender , the Spectralization of the Living, and Afterlife Before Death

Abstract

This essay proposes a reading of the Chinese experimental feature and performance film Human Surrender ( Shoot Self with You ) through hauntology and death studies. The film depicts neither ghosts, death, nor supernatural return in any conventional sense, and it does not organize itself around a plot that can be summarized in a few sentences. Instead, it behaves like a film about how people come to appear. Its figures do not exist first as complete subjects whom the camera subsequently records. They are gradually produced through light, orientation, rehearsal, camera, sensation, dream, audience, backstage space, lists of names, and silence.

I argue that Human Surrender moves hauntology from the “return of the dead” toward the spectralization of the living . Its specter is not an invisible corpse but a person who remains alive, visible, and capable of speech while losing the ability to own, alone, the conditions of their appearance. Death, in turn, is no longer understood only as biological cessation. It also names a change in the format of existence. When a person’s voice, dream, blankness, silence, pain, and manner of ending are continually taken up by other people, materials, audiences, procedures, and records, that person has already entered a kind of afterlife before death. The film thus poses a wider contemporary question: after being seen, do we still own ourselves?

Keywords: Human Surrender ; hauntology; death studies; visibility; performance; spectralization of the living; ethics of stopping

Introduction: A Sentence Carried Away by the Camera

Introduction: A Sentence Carried Away by the Camera

The opening of Human Surrender performs an almost cruel operation. A sentence that should, for a moment, have enclosed two people within an intimate relation is carried away from them by the camera. Someone says, “I love you,” but the film refuses to let the words settle inside love. The camera continues to rotate counterclockwise, drawing the room, lighting positions, a third person, the camera operator, and the film’s title into its movement. From the first moment, the spectator is made to understand that intimacy is not a sealed space here, and that a voice is not the speaker’s private property. The instant someone speaks, their words enter light, orientation, the lens, and the gaze of others.

This opening matters not because it establishes a reproducible plot but because it establishes a cinematic rule. A person does not exist first as a complete subject and then become recorded. The person is developed into view within a set of conditions. How does the light fall? How does the lens turn? Who is present? Who holds the camera? Who is pulled into the movement, and who appears a moment late? Conditions that narrative cinema ordinarily conceals become the film itself. Human Surrender does not hurry to tell us who these people are or what has happened to them. It asks first: how is a person permitted to appear? How is a sentence permitted to become someone’s sentence? When spectatorship is already present, can the subject still possess the appearance as wholly their own?

For most readers, Human Surrender will be an unfamiliar film. It resists secure placement within any single category: narrative feature, documentary, filmed theater, or experimental cinema. It contains relations but refuses to reduce them to psychological motivation. It contains performance but refuses to separate performance cleanly from reality. It contains an audience but does not treat that audience as a mere observer. It contains credits, logos, and silence but does not make preservation its final answer. More precisely, this is a film about how a live situation produces a person: someone emerges through orientation, veers away in rehearsal, seeks evidence through sensation, discovers in public that they cannot retreat into private possession, and is finally preserved—but also released from further possession—through backstage space, lists of names, and silence.

I will not, therefore, introduce Human Surrender simply as a “film about ghosts.” That description arrives too quickly and misleads us into looking for a recognizable spirit, apparition, or supernatural return. The film’s spectrality comes instead from the living. It does not ask how the dead return. It asks how living people, in the process of being seen, rehearsed, recorded, spoken for, thanked, named, and preserved, gradually lose the ability to own themselves alone. Its specter is not the invisible being but the person who remains unpossessable after an excess of visibility.

The central claim of this essay is that Human Surrender pushes hauntology from the return of the dead toward the spectralization of the living. Spectrality need not belong only to what follows death; it can name a mode of existence entered while one is still alive. A person remains alive, speaks, and is seen. They may still become silent, refuse, stare into space, skip something, hide, or allow another person to speak. Yet their voice, body, dream, blankness, pain, and mode of ending are continually taken up by other people, materials, audiences, procedures, cameras, and recording systems. The subject has not vanished, but can no longer serve as the sole custodian of the self.

This shift also requires death studies to move its boundary. Death should not be understood exclusively through biological cessation, the treatment of remains, funeral ritual, cemetery memory, or archival preservation. It may also be understood as a change in the format of existence. When a person’s words continue elsewhere, when a dream is played publicly, when blankness is spoken on someone’s behalf, when a wish for invisibility is preserved as an image, when an ending is prolonged by backstage sound and the silence of the credits, the subject has entered an afterlife before death. The importance of Human Surrender lies in its ability to enter death studies without a narrative of death and hauntology without an image of a ghost. It films afterlife before death from within visibility, rehearsal, sensation, public performance, and the conditions of recording.

The final question, then, is not whether the film contains a ghost. It lies closer to the contemporary politics of visibility: after being seen, does a person still own themselves? From its first sentence, Human Surrender refuses an optimistic answer. Being seen is not necessarily being understood. Being recorded is not necessarily being preserved. Being articulated is not necessarily being possessed. The specter is not an exception that appears after death. It is the ordinary shadow cast by the modern subject among light, cameras, other people, procedures, and archives.

1. The Opening Is Not an Introduction to Characters but an Apparatus of Development

1. The Opening Is Not an Introduction to Characters but an Apparatus of Development

It is easy to mistake the opening for atmosphere. Darkness, light, slowly emerging people, a rotating lens, and the appearance of the title may look to an unfamiliar viewer like a stylized entrance into experimental cinema. But the opening of Human Surrender does not simply add an aura of mystery to its figures. It behaves more like an apparatus of photographic development. The room comes first. The light comes first. The movement of the lens comes first. Only then do the figures surface from those conditions. We are not merely shown faces, bodies, and entrances. A less visible question has been opened: before someone becomes a figure, what must illuminate them, what position must receive them, and what mode of viewing must permit them to appear?

Conventional narrative cinema often assumes that the character is already there. We meet a character, then learn their desires, relations, and actions. Human Surrender delays this recognition from the outset. It does not rush to hand its figures over to the audience or supply them with psychological backgrounds. Space, light, and lens begin working first. The figures seem to be summoned by the room rather than to walk naturally out of an interior life. This distinction determines how the entire film must be watched. It is not enough to ask who appears. We must ask how appearance has been organized.

The opening therefore establishes a crucial rule of spectatorship. No sentence in this film can belong entirely to its speaker, and no intimacy can belong entirely to two people. Once a voice leaves the mouth, it enters space. Once a body is developed into view, it enters an orientation. Once a relation becomes visible, it enters the gaze of others. The subject is not something that first possesses itself and is subsequently influenced by the outside. From the moment of appearance, subject and external conditions are produced together.

This is the earliest form of what I call the spectralization of the living. There is no ghost, no death, and no overt supernatural event. Spectrality is nevertheless already present: position precedes body, spectatorship precedes selfhood, condition precedes character. A person is seen without thereby possessing their own appearance in full. A sentence is spoken without thereby belonging wholly to the speaker. Like a specter, the person begins to be summoned, distributed, and retained by conditions beyond the self.

The first step of this essay is therefore not to define the figures but to acknowledge a more basic fact: in Human Surrender , appearance itself is the problem. People are not introduced but developed into view. They do not move from interiority toward the lens; they acquire provisional form within the joint arrangement of camera, light, orientation, other people, and space. From the beginning, the film forces us to rewrite “Who is this person?” as “Under what conditions does this person become visible?” This is the starting point of the film’s hauntological force.

2. Rehearsal Is Not Preparation but the Return of Unfinished Versions

2. Rehearsal Is Not Preparation but the Return of Unfinished Versions

If the opening develops people through orientation and light, Part Two brings them into rehearsal. Rehearsal is conventionally a form of preparation: actors experiment, directors adjust, and the event approaches a finished version. In Human Surrender , rehearsal does not lead toward a completed form cleared of error. It resembles a machine through which unfinished things continually return. A person enters a role and runs back out of it; enters the script and is pulled away by an everyday gesture, an incidental sound, or bodily hesitation; enters an intimate scene and is interrupted again by a door, equipment, system prompts, the reverse side of the camera, and an onlooker.

Part Two consequently converts “failure in performance” from a defect into cinematic material. An ordinary production would treat an actor’s inability to perform as a problem requiring correction. Human Surrender permits the problem to remain and deepen. Does the line belong to the character or the actor? Is the gesture required by the script or improvised by the body as an exit? Is the pause a forgotten line, a refusal, or the moment when the live situation suddenly exceeds what performance can bear? The film does not hurry to answer. It retains the vertigo in which figure, character, actor, and event can no longer be separated cleanly.

3. When Language Cannot Prove a Relation, Sensation Becomes the Witness

3. When Language Cannot Prove a Relation, Sensation Becomes the Witness

Part Two destabilizes the ownership of action. Part Three carries that instability into the relation itself. Someone says, “I’m here.” Someone says, “I love you.” Such words ought to prove that a relation exists. But if language has already been interrupted too many times by performance, rehearsal, camera, and event, is it still enough? If the other person still cannot feel that they have truly been seen, can language bear the burden of proof alone?

The bed is called first. Few spaces seem to offer more immediate evidence of intimacy: proximity, reclining bodies, bodies side by side, lowered voices. Each appears to testify that a relation has been established. Yet the bed in Human Surrender offers no secure intimacy. Sound brings water into it, pressing words such as fish tank, swimming, falling into water, and not knowing how to swim against its surface. The bed ceases to be only a soft place and becomes a body of water without water. A person lies there as though placed inside a form of proof in which they cannot breathe. Intimacy has not disappeared, but it has become unreliable. The closer two people come, the more they resemble figures separated by glass; the more they are together, the more something else is required to prove that “being together” ever took place.

Dream, too, leaves the private interior. A dream is usually understood as the most secret theater of the self, but the film lets sound, a fan, song, subtitles, and public space carry it away. Once narrated, translated, and played, the dream no longer belongs only to the dreamer. It becomes public material: audible and open to misunderstanding; usable as testimony and altered by new conditions of spectatorship. Interiority is no final refuge. Even a dream can leave the dreamer and enter the space between people.

Here lies the spectrality of Part Three. The specter is not a dead person who suddenly appears, but everything that cannot be proved securely and yet refuses to vanish. Did a relation occur? Was a person truly seen? Does a dream still belong to its dreamer? Did an act of intimacy reach the other person? None of these questions receives a final answer. They keep returning in new bodies: now a bed, now water, now white light, now glasses, now a fan, now a dream. Each return resolves nothing and instead calls for another witness.

4. Making It Public Does Not Make It Clear: The Living Can No Longer Retreat into Themselves

4. Making It Public Does Not Make It Clear: The Living Can No Longer Retreat into Themselves

Part Three asks bed, water, white light, body, dream, and game to testify to an unstable relation. Part Four pushes those relations into a public performance. There is an audience, a performance space, materials, lights, microphones, an ongoing sound field, and language repeatedly proposed, interrupted, and carried away. Everything appears finally to have been brought into the open. But Human Surrender never assumes that the open is where truth becomes clear. Being made public means something else: whatever might once have retreated into interiority, into the relation between two people, or behind performance has now lost its route of withdrawal.

This is the most forceful moment in Human Surrender ’s spectralization of the living. The specter is not an invisible entity. It is a person who remains visible, present, capable of speech and movement, yet begins to lose the ability to retreat into ownership of the self. The living person has not disappeared, but seems already to have entered an afterlife. Their spacing out is watched by others; their blankness is taken up by others; their skip is retained by the event; their wish for invisibility is preserved by the image; their ending will be processed further by backstage space and credits. The subject remains there, but the subject’s boundary has split.

5. From the Backstage Sound Field to Silence: How Cinema Learns to Stop

5. From the Backstage Sound Field to Silence: How Cinema Learns to Stop

Part Four presses people into the position from which departure is most difficult. Spacing out, skipping, blankness, invisibility, and delegated speech can no longer be treated as minor states sealed within a person. The audience hears them, space receives them, and the event continues them. The film might have increased the pressure: further exposure, further interrogation, every pause converted into another performance. Human Surrender does not. At the moment when it could most easily continue to extract, it begins to turn away.

The turn is decisive. It is neither evasion nor an abrupt transition into conventional credits. Once the public performance recedes, the film does not immediately become quiet. It changes the place from which events occur. Sound remains. The screen remains. Backstage activity remains. Music remains. Voices that emerge after the closing announcement remain. Earlier, we saw people being pushed before others. Now we begin to hear how the event that placed them there continues to operate after the front of the performance has withdrawn.

Backstage space is therefore neither outtake nor appendix, nor material designed to let the audience relax. It is another front of the film. It reminds us that the public event was never limited to the illuminated area onstage. A performance depends on sound, equipment, screen, music, waiting, coordination, announcements, and many people who do not occupy the center of the visible image. Part Four prevents the figures from retreating into themselves. Part Five prevents the event from pretending that it was merely a background.

This shift changes the meaning of ending. A performance can be declared over, but the sound of its ending does not end at once. Corrections continue. People still speak. The soundtrack spills over. The event propels what just happened forward by other means. The ending is no longer a closed door but something like an air vent: the heat of the front stage drains through it as backstage voices rise. The film does not make an ending into a clean period. It makes it a transition.

If Part Four makes stopping fail, Part Five begins to relearn how to stop. The film no longer hands everything back to public performance for further escalation. It moves from an insistent gaze toward listening, from frontal performance toward a backstage sound field, from the exposure of figures toward the development of conditions. The gesture is restrained and crucial. The film acknowledges that the event has not truly ended, but no longer requires the figures to remain responsible for everything unfinished.

The lists, roles, locations, acknowledgments, logos, black screen, and silence that follow belong within this movement. They are neither the paper’s protagonists nor an archival answer capable of explaining everything. They are the film’s last act of arranging the event: who appeared, who performed labor, where it took place, which relations sustained the film, and which spectators formed part of the audience that night. A list is not a method for possessing people. It returns what can be written to a provisional place.

The final black screen and silence push this acknowledgment toward its limit. Blackness is not erasure, and silence is not nothing. They reduce the demand: illuminate no more, extract no more, do not force figures, voices, spectators, and interpretations to continue producing. The film writes what can be written, thanks whom it can thank, leaves the marks it can leave, and lets sound recede to a place from which it can no longer interrogate a person.

Here Human Surrender makes its most suggestive contribution to death studies. Death appears not only when life ceases, but when the format of existence changes. A person remains alive while being jointly preserved, continued, and distributed by position, rehearsal, sensation, audience, backstage space, and lists. An event has ended while acquiring an afterlife in sounds, names, places, acknowledgments, and silence. What matters most is that the film does not interpret afterlife as unlimited possession. It knows that leaving something behind is not the same as extracting more from it; preservation is not exhaustive explanation; gratitude is not the completion of another person’s sentence.

The film’s true ending, then, does not explain the event completely. It knows when to stop possessing. It lets us see how the living become spectral within visibility and how a film may assume an ethical responsibility after participating in that spectralization: not by casting more light, asking another question, or converting another person’s blankness into material, but by acknowledging at last that some things must remain and must not be taken away.

6. Where Hauntology Enters: Not the Return of the Dead but the Living Person’s Loss of Complete Self-Possession

6. Where Hauntology Enters: Not the Return of the Dead but the Living Person’s Loss of Complete Self-Possession

Only now can hauntology properly enter the essay. Not because we have located an image that resembles a ghost, nor because the film ends with names, darkness, and silence, but because the film has shown us something more fundamental. A person need not die in order to begin existing spectrally. Once they can no longer possess alone their appearance, speech, silence, dreams, blankness, ending, and mode of preservation, they have entered a spectral condition before death.

The ghost is commonly imagined as a dead person who returns, a past that refuses to leave the present, or an unsettled history that repeatedly assumes the form of a shadow. Hauntology matters because it refuses to treat the past as completed. Pasts return. Unfinished events return. Suppressed voices return. What has not been mourned returns. Human Surrender moves the problem one step earlier. If a specter is not only a form taken by the dead but also a state of existence that can no longer be possessed in full, then the living, too, can become spectral.

The spectralization of the living does not mean that the film’s figures resemble ghosts, nor does it aestheticize their pain. The term names a split in ownership. The person remains, but “how I appear” is jointly organized by other things. The person continues to speak, while the ownership of speech grows uncertain. The person remains silent, while others hear, interpret, await, or take up that silence. The person tries to depart, while the image may preserve the posture of departure. The specter does not lack a body. The body remains, but can no longer guarantee that the subject owns every meaning it produces.

These stages demonstrate that spectralization is not the spectacle of one scene but the film’s total movement. It is not because the film finally produces an archive that ghosts appear. From its first minute, the person’s appearance already belongs to a system larger than the subject. The ending only cools, arranges, and quiets this movement. Spectrality has long been occurring through the orientation of the opening, the failures of rehearsal, sensory proof, public pressure, and backstage echoes.

The ethics of Human Surrender lies in its capacity to reveal both the danger of possession and the possibility of ceasing to possess. It does not turn the spectralization of the living into an object theory can explain exhaustively. While position, material, audience, and backstage space repeatedly carry the subject elsewhere, the film also learns at the end to lower its voice. It recognizes that it has already preserved too much, and that further illumination is not deeper understanding. It writes what can be written, offers the acknowledgments it can offer, and gives what cannot be completed to black screen and silence.

Hauntology and death studies meet here. Death need not name only the cessation of biological life. It can name a change in the format of existence. A person remains alive, but their voice has become someone else’s memory, their silence an audience’s waiting, their blankness an entrance for another person’s approach, their dream material for public playback, and their name and labor traces in the credits. Life has not ended, but survives in another form beyond the subject.

This is afterlife before death . The phrase neither turns the living into the dead nor exaggerates the film’s events into scenes of death. It names a condition of modern visibility in which subjects begin, before biological death, to exist as residues, traces, recordings, offscreen voices, delegated speech, audience memory, and archival marks. The person has not died, but part of them has left the self and entered a world in which others can watch, preserve, misunderstand, replay, and continue to interpret it.

The film’s significance consequently exceeds film studies. Contemporary life increasingly equates being seen with recognition, being recorded with preservation, being expressed with being understood, and leaving a trace with avoiding disappearance. Human Surrender does not reject these desires entirely. It compels us to attach a question to each of them. Who sees? Who records? Who expresses whom? Who has the right to continue interpreting? Who knows when to stop? The film offers not an iconography of ghosts but an ethical philosophy of contemporary visibility.

Hauntology, as used here, is therefore not a label imposed upon Human Surrender from outside. It is a mode of viewing that the film gradually teaches. The opening teaches us to see the conditions of appearance. Rehearsal teaches us to hear unfinished versions return. The sensory passages teach us to understand a crisis of proof. Public performance teaches us to acknowledge that living people cannot simply retreat into private possession. Backstage sound and silence teach us that the ethics of cinema lies not only in illuminating a person, but in knowing that the illuminated person remains unpossessable.

We can now reformulate the paper’s central question. After being seen, can a person still own themselves? The answer offered by Human Surrender is neither a simple no nor a romantic fantasy of recovering complete sovereignty. More precisely, a person never owned the self completely. For that very reason, looking, recording, performance, commemoration, and scholarship must learn a more restrained responsibility. Hauntology here concerns not only how the dead return, but how the living can remain untaken after they have been seen.

Conclusion: After Being Seen, the Living Still Must Not Be Taken Away

Conclusion: After Being Seen, the Living Still Must Not Be Taken Away

We can return now to the sentence at the film’s beginning. Someone says, “I love you,” but the lens does not stop to build a room that belongs to two people alone. It continues to rotate, drawing light, orientation, a third person, the camera operator, and the title into its movement. We can now recognize that this is not simply a stylistic decision. It is the film’s philosophical point of departure. From its first instant, Human Surrender tells us that no intimacy, voice, or appearance issues alone from a perfectly self-sufficient subject.

Human Surrender therefore cannot be summarized as a narrative feature or reduced to a film about credits, archives, and backstage material. It unfolds a movement of existence: how a person appears, rehearses, fails, seeks evidence, becomes public, leaves an echo backstage, and is finally preserved without being completely explained through lists, logos, black screen, and silence. Its story does occur, but in places usually hidden by story: in how light makes a person appear, rehearsal makes failure return, sensation testifies in place of language, an audience changes the ownership of a state, backstage space prolongs an ending, and silence prevents further extraction.

The answer of Human Surrender is not to stop looking. Nor does the film ask us to reject recording, performance, or preservation. It is more lucid than that. Without looking, many relations cannot occur. Without records, many fragile events will disperse. Without another person taking something up, many failures of language will receive no support. The problem is not seeing but whether seeing turns immediately into possession; not preservation but whether preservation pretends it has understood; not scholarship but whether scholarship knows that some things remain beyond its power to take.

This is the ethics of stopping . The film illuminates people without treating illumination as ownership. It develops blankness into view without filling it. It places an audience within the event without making the audience the final judge. It records names, locations, labor, and thanks without pretending the list exhausts what happened. It leaves black screen and silence not because nothing remains to be said, but because continued speech may become another demand. The film’s deepest tenderness is not consolation. It is the final acknowledgment that some things can be seen and still must not be taken.

This also explains why Human Surrender , however unfamiliar, is not remote. Its concern is not a minor problem confined to experimental cinema. It is an increasingly ordinary condition of contemporary life. We are filmed, transcribed, archived, screenshotted, preserved, and interpreted; we also turn other people’s speech, expressions, silences, and pain into material that circulates. Modern subjects no longer fear only being forgotten. They must also fear being misrecognized through preservation. Hauntology enters the contemporary not through an ancient ghost but through the living person made excessively visible.

The paper’s final proposition is therefore not that Human Surrender contains ghosts, but that the film teaches us to understand the specter differently. Spectrality is not a privilege of absence, nor a form reserved for the dead. The specter can be someone who has been seen, heard, recorded, thanked, named, and preserved, yet still has not been possessed. The specter reminds us that acknowledging a person does not mean explaining them completely; preserving an event does not make it ours; seeing a living person does not grant the right to carry that person away.

The opening “I love you,” carried away by the camera, acquires a different weight at the end. It is no longer merely a moment when intimacy is interrupted. It is the first form of the film’s entire problem: I speak words that belong to me, but once spoken they no longer belong only to me. The film does not reject love on that account. It makes love bear its actual risk. Love, looking, recording, scholarship, and remembrance are alike in this respect: only by acknowledging what cannot be possessed might they avoid becoming another form of seizure.

This is the unsettling and necessary proposition that Human Surrender leaves to hauntology and death studies: living people do not become spectral only after death. Once visibility prevents them from possessing themselves in full, they have already entered an afterlife before death. This is not a counsel of despair. It calls at once for a better way of looking, a slower interpretation, and a form of preservation that knows when to stop. After being seen, we may no longer own ourselves completely. For precisely that reason, no one else may take us away.

Evidence Boundary

This paper is a theoretical interpretation of observable formal relations in Human Surrender : camera movement, lighting, rehearsal, dialogue, sensory motifs, public performance, backstage sound, credits, and silence. It does not infer the participants’ private psychology, off-screen relationships, consent, harm, or production responsibility from those forms. “Spectralization of the living” names an analytic condition of visibility and mediation, not a clinical, biographical, or supernatural claim.


第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

结果会回来-递归媒介学与P4根本文本-2026-07-14

literal links and image references in the public edition; no inferred semantic support

# 第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

本文为研究档案公开版，保留来源版本的论述与限制。公开时间：2026-09-08；不表示已完成同行评审。 本文属于公开研究资料（历史笔记、研究稿或来源记录）：已完成格式、来源限制与重复项筛查，尚未完成逐篇独立事实复核；原文中的解释、候选判断和未确认内容均按其原有限制阅读。

来源版本日期：2026-07-14

证据边界：本卷讨论被数据化、被评价和自我表演中的主体形成，以及共同体、拒绝与行动能力的候选机制；不从作品形式推断参与者真实心理，不把发言、可见、参与或自我反思自动写成主体解放，不把共同体作为无冲突整体。

# 第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

> 返回总入口（馆内参考，未随本文公开）｜上一篇：[第十二卷](/research/hs-4b6b8679132cc769)｜下一篇：[第十四卷](/research/hs-45c8713155d510cd)

## 一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

人们谈媒介时，常把人放在两个极端。一种说法把人看成自由使用工具的主人：平台、摄影机、表格和AI都是手里的东西，结果好坏只看使用者有没有能力。另一种说法把人看成系统的产品：算法塑造欲望，评分决定身份，影像夺走现实，人几乎无处可逃。两种说法都忽略了行动发生的中间地带。人确实会被记录、评价和安排，也会误读、绕开、拒绝、联合、修改规则；能力并非预先完整，也不是一次被夺走后永远消失。

[递归媒介学](/research/hs-78e468fde7b8b530)提供的不是第三种万能人性论，而是一条时间线。一个人做了什么，留下影像、数据、评价或他人的回应；这些结果回来以后，影响他怎样理解自己、别人怎样对待他、下一次什么行动更容易发生。新的行动再留下新痕迹。主体不是回路之外的起点，也不是回路内部的终点，而是在一轮轮返回中被暂时组织起来的位置。

“暂时”非常重要。数据画像不是整个人，角色不是永恒本性，一次拒绝也不会自动生出完整自主性。可是不完整的表述仍可能产生完整后果：一条错误标签可以影响推荐，一次失实评价可以影响机会，一段剪辑可以长期代表某个人。这里必须分开两类证据：界面、分配和他人行为的变化可以证明环境怎样对待一个人；那个人是否接受标签、怎样感受，则需要他自己的同期材料。理论不能因为画像“不是真人”就低估它，也不能因为它有现实力量就把人缩成画像。

## 二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

我们每天产生许多可计算痕迹：点击、停留、位置、购买、搜索、分数、工作记录和社交关系。系统把它们组织成偏好、风险、活跃度、能力或身份的近似描述。这个描述不是藏在后台的静态档案。它被用来排序、推荐、筛选、定价或分配注意，于是像一个先于本人到场的替身，替人接受第一次判断。

替身有三个特点。第一，它必然删减。人为什么停留、为什么沉默、为什么某天表现异常，数据常常不知道。第二，它会合并不同时间。很久以前的一次行为可能和今天的行为同时出现在画像里。第三，它具有操作效力。即使描述不准确，只要系统按它行动，它就会改变本人后来遇到的环境。一个人随后在这个环境里作出新选择，新选择又似乎证实原来的画像。

这就是画像回路最危险的地方：表示可能逐渐生产它所表示的对象。系统认为某人喜欢某类内容，持续提供同类内容；人接触其他可能的机会减少，后续行为可能更集中；数据于是更有把握地说“他就是这样”。这里能追踪的是分类、可见环境、实际选择与新数据，不能从行为集中直接推出欲望或自我认同已经被平台制造。人仍会搜索、厌倦、转向，也受到生活和关系影响。

行动者重新形成的第一步，不是宣布“画像不是我”，而是取得查看、质疑和纠正画像后果的能力。人需要知道哪些痕迹被使用，能够补充上下文、清除过期信息、迁移记录或选择不被某项推断继续支配。若系统只允许用户贡献更多数据来“优化自己”，它给出的仍是适应能力；只有分类和使用规则也能被争议，行动才从管理自己走向修改环境。

## 三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

评价看起来比数据画像更有人情味，因为它来自教师、同事、导演、观众或亲密关系。但评价同样会返回。一个孩子被说成“不专心”，一个演员被说成“缺乏真实感”，一个员工被说成“没有领导力”，这些话可能只描述某次情境，也可能在后续分工、期待和自我解释中取得稳定位置。人开始预防那个标签，或努力证明、反驳、迎合它；下一次表现因此改变。

被评价者并非只会接受。有的人反抗，有的人退出，有的人寻找另一套标准，有的人把负面命名变成自己的公开身份。可是反抗也仍然围绕那个词展开。一个评价真正强大时，不只告诉人“你做得怎样”，还预先安排“你接下来需要证明什么”。它把未来变成对过去判断的答卷。

因此，好的反馈不能只追求及时和明确，还要限制自己的代表范围。它应说明针对哪一次行动、依据什么、在哪些条件下成立；应允许被评价者补充情境，允许不同标准并存，也允许评价过期。把一句阶段判断永久写入档案，等于把一次关系冻结成身份。教育、组织和艺术现场都需要一种“可撤销的判断”：它可以指导下一步，却不垄断一个人的未来。

评价者也必须进入回路。教师根据学生结果修改课程，导演根据演员回应修改任务，组织根据成员异议修改标准，而不是只要求被评价者修正自己。这里的变化不必被浪漫化。中心主动改法仍可能由中心独断，参与者的意见也可能彼此冲突。但至少，评价不再是一条只向下的命令，而成为评价制度自我受检的机会。

## 四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

平台生活让“做自己”和“经营自己”越来越难分开。人选择头像、语气、照片、故事和公开立场，观众以点赞、沉默、评论和转发回应；这些反应回来，影响下一次呈现。久而久之，人设不只面向别人，也变成本人理解自己的一套方便脚本。

把人设说成虚假面具并不准确。任何社会生活都需要选择怎样出现，角色也能给人勇气、语言和行动位置。一个人可能通过反复公开表达，真的获得此前没有的能力；一个群体可能借共同名称找到彼此。问题不在表演本身，而在表演是否还允许变化，是否有离场，是否把所有生活都征用为维持角色的材料。

回路会奖励稳定可识别的自我。平台容易分发有明确标签的人，观众也期待熟悉风格；创作者于是重复最被认可的部分。成功人设带来资源，也产生债务：今天的自己要不断向昨天的数据交作业。若一个人改变兴趣、降低更新、拒绝公开，可能被视为不真实或辜负关注。表演起初是主动选择，后来可能变成一份没有正式合同的长期劳动。

行动者不是彻底摆脱表演的人，而是能够改变表演与生活边界的人。他可以选择何时以角色出现，哪些经验不进入内容，旧版本何时停止代表自己；也可以让不同身份并存，而不被平台要求合成一个最容易识别的品牌。[可见性后的非所有权](/research/hs-884ed206c4b3665a)在这里给出一条重要原则：别人看见过一个人，不等于取得了持续使用这个人的权利；公共出现也不等于永久开放。

## 五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

摄影机、语音记录、聊天历史和数据面板让人不断回看自己。回看有时能打破习惯：一个人第一次听见自己的语气，第一次看见自己如何占据空间，第一次发现某种自我叙述与实际行动不一致。它可以产生距离，使原本自然的动作变成可讨论对象。

但影像不会自动带来自知。人可能只注意自己最在意的缺点，可能按导演的剪辑理解现场，可能把一个角度当作全部事实，也可能从他人的沉默中过度推断。[元认知视频来源卡](/research/hs-ea4783c91e1dd879)提醒我们，看见影像与知道自己为何作出判断并非同一件事；[观看情境模型来源卡](/research/hs-753745236b28785b)也说明，不同观看者会依据各自知识和期待组织同样线索。成片能提供一条自我检查路径，不能证明所有人完成了相同心理转变。

所以，自我观看需要关系条件。谁选择回看的片段？本人能否停下、重看、补充画外信息？他人的解释是邀请还是裁决？这段影像会不会被用于超出原场景的公开？若一个人只能面对别人剪好的自己，再被要求承认那才是真相，回看会变成新的规训。若他能质疑剪辑、并置版本、决定用途和保留不解释，自我观看才可能扩大行动能力。

真正的反身不是不断分析自己，而是能够改变分析发生的条件。有时最重要的变化不是得出更精确的人格结论，而是停止把某个动作解释成人格；不是说出更深秘密，而是让人有权决定哪些问题不再回答。

## 六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

平台把看过同一内容的人叫作社群，机构把参加同一项目的人叫作共同体，艺术项目把同场出现的人叫作共创者。这些名称可能表达愿望，却不能代替共同体的形成。共享一次场景、一个标签或一条时间线，只说明人们被放在一起；共同体还要面对后果怎样分配、冲突怎样处理、决定怎样作出。

共同体至少包含三种共同。第一是共同受影响：一项决定会改变彼此的条件，而不是只有少数人承担。第二是共同可争议：人可以提出不同解释，不因破坏团结而被排除。第三是共同修改：争议有进入下一轮规则的通道，而不只是被记录为气氛。三者缺一，所谓共同很容易退回观看者集合、临时动员或品牌粉丝。

共同体也不是消灭差异以后形成一个“我们”。任何“我们”都会决定谁被包含、谁只能被代表、谁被要求说得更像集体。真正可持续的共同体应保留内部位置差：发起者、被邀请者、退出者、记录者、后来观看者承担不同风险，不能用“大家都是参与者”抹平。[主体间性转译](/research/hs-6de05a265ab2edc2)可以帮助描述经验如何在不同位置之间移动，却不能保证转译没有损失。

[共在现场](/research/hs-3a1e1dce5a8bd50d)的价值不在于宣布所有人融为一体，而在于承认没有人能独自完成事件。身体、空间、设备、规则和旁观者共同限制每个人。承认这种相互依赖，才有理由建立共同修改；但相互依赖本身不是共治证据。一个高度依赖参与者的机构仍可能把最终决定全部收回中心。

## 七、冲突不是共同体的故障

许多项目把顺畅合作当成共同体成熟，把争执、冷场和退出当成沟通失败。这样做会诱使组织者只保存正向反馈，把异议改写为“成长故事”，或把无法和解的人排除在正式叙述之外。共同体于是以删除冲突来证明自己存在。

冲突更适合被看成条件显影。谁可以占用多少时间，谁的语言被认为专业，谁能定义伤害，谁承担延期成本，往往在争执中才变得可见。它未必带来好结果，也不能自动被赞美；冲突可能造成真实损伤，可能让关系无法继续。但若它发生，组织至少应保留争点、决定者、未采纳意见和后来差异，而不是只留下“经过沟通已达成共识”。

共同体的能力不是永远达成一致，而是能够在不同意时仍明确边界：哪些事项需要一致同意，哪些可多数决定，哪些属于个人不可让渡的权利，哪些冲突意味着项目应停止。没有这些区分，“共同”会变成要求弱势者继续配合的温柔压力。

## 八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

人在回路中重新成为行动者，最清楚的时刻有时不是表达更多，而是说不。拒绝拍摄、拒绝解释、拒绝公开、拒绝继续扮演、拒绝让某段生活成为作品，都会阻断系统期待的下一步。[不被作品化权](/research/hs-7382bec30b31e7a6)强调，人的沉默、退出和痛苦不能因为具有艺术价值就自动成为可使用材料。

然而，系统也很会吸收拒绝。导演把拒绝剪成最有力量的场面，机构把退出写成方法有效的证明，研究者从沉默中推出更深理论。拒绝被听见了，却没有产生它要求的空缺。它只是让作品更复杂，让中心获得新的解释资本。

因此，拒绝不能只被当作一种反馈内容。它有时是一条关于用途的命令：不要拍，不要引用，不要命名，不要再联系，不要把这次退出写成公开案例。尊重拒绝意味着让某些东西不再返回，而不是用更体面的语言继续返回。[拒绝残余](/research/hs-56e77151772b2432)提示我们，即使停止公开，关系中仍可能留下无法抹去的后果；保存争议事实与继续使用原材料不是一回事。

拒绝也不只通过清楚语言出现。身体后退、停顿、疲惫、回避目光、无法继续执行任务，可能提示条件已经越界。[身体拒绝](/research/hs-5da6e2b7e33984f1)不能被直接当作当事人已经表达明确法律同意或撤回，但它要求现场减速、询问、提供退出并停止把模糊状态当作默认许可。身体不是神秘真理，却是制度不能只等完整陈述才承认的限制。

## 九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

行动者形成并不等于一个人终于说出“真实的我”。更实际的变化，是他从只回答别人问题的位置，移动到能够决定问题是否成立、谁来回答、答案怎样使用的位置。被测量者开始检查指标，被拍摄者开始询问镜头和剪辑，被评价者开始质疑评价标准，参与者开始要求看到下一轮规则。

这种移动至少需要四种能力。第一，读回路：知道哪些结果被保存、怎样返回。第二，留反证：能保存自己的版本，而不是只在中心档案中出现。第三，联结：发现看似个人的困境也发生在他人身上，并共同提出条件问题。第四，停手：在信息不足、伤害增加或权利不明时，能够延迟、撤回和结束。

能力不能只靠鼓励获得。一个人在会议上敢说话，却知道发言会失去工作，他的“参与”受结构限制；参与者能提出异议，却看不到终剪和合同，行动地址仍被遮蔽。主体性需要物质条件：时间、报酬、设备访问、语言支持、申诉渠道和不受惩罚的退出。没有这些，要求人更主动，往往只是把系统责任重新交给个人。

行动者也可能选择不成为中心。共同实践不应把每个人都训练成导演、发言人或个人品牌。照护、倾听、保存、翻译、技术维护和在关键时刻阻止发布，同样是行动。真正的权力分配不是所有人都做同一件事，而是不同作用能够被看见、获得资源，并对自己承担的后果拥有相称决定权。

## 十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

P4的理论价值不在于提供一批“被改变的年轻人”。这种叙述会把参与者放回实验材料的位置，把导演和机构留在观察者位置。更严格的检验是：项目结果是否改变了组织者的任务设置、摄影方式、剪辑权、公开规则、档案使用和结束决定？组织者是否承担与其权力相称的暴露和可修改性？

[P4工作方法稿](/research/hs-b56cecfac08f1f95)提出从规训走向递归的自我理解，[概念增补对话稿](/research/hs-87c2d7a422f20125)继续把权力和结果返回推向中心。这些材料能够证明理论要求怎样出现，不能单独证明历年实践已经做到。参与者曾经发言、导演曾经入镜、异议曾经进入电影，都不足以推出决定权已经转移。

P4如果要使行动者形成可被检验，需要为每个项目留下前后条件：谁能停场，谁能持机，谁能看粗剪，谁能限制用途，谁能修改署名，谁能决定不发布。随后记录这些权利是否被实际调用，调用是否付出惩罚，组织是否因此改变。行动者不是在宣言里被授予的称号，而是在一次具体决定中能够造成差异的位置。

对于《人类投降派》，现有影片、T0/T1材料和理论档案能支持声画关系、命名、观看与制作位置的分析，却不能直接裁决人物真实心理或多年后共同感受。[“人类到底是什么”专题](/research/hs-97f920ea3994ab45)已经提示：片中人不是抽象人性代表，而是在具体现场被降权又被迫承担的人。根本文本必须保持这种具体性，不能把他们再次升格为理论成功的象征。

## 十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

没有记忆，规则改变无法追踪，强者可以不断重写过去；没有遗忘，人的旧版本会永久追赶现在。共同体需要同时建设档案与边界。档案保存项目怎样决定、谁曾反对、哪些权利没有实现；边界规定哪些私人材料不公开、哪些版本到期、哪些搜索入口关闭、哪些内容只能由当事人访问。

多版本不是相对主义。作者版、参与者注释版、争议记录和公共版可以并存，同时保留可核的时间、决定和材料来源。它们让一种终剪不再垄断全部历史。遗忘也不是伪造“从未发生”，而是停止组织对某段生活的持续利用。[结束权](/research/hs-f035448f2c6ed356)在这里不仅关乎一个项目何时停，也关乎一个身份何时不再被旧材料强迫延续。

共同体的记忆还要允许缺页。有些沉默不能被解释，有些退出者不愿留下说明，有些身体经验无法被准确转译。档案可以记录“此处没有获得许可”“此处存在争议但材料封存”，而不是为了完整性补写原因。一个愿意承认不知道的共同体，比一个拥有无缝总叙事的共同体更可信。

## 十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

“赋能”“觉醒”“找回主体性”很容易把复杂变化写成完成式。现实中的行动能力常常局部、摇摆并依赖条件。一个人可以在剪辑会上有发言权，却在合同上没有；可以拒绝一次拍摄，却无法阻止旧影像传播；可以看懂平台数据，却仍需要平台收入。理论若只认完整解放，会看不见微小但真实的移动；若把任何表达都叫作主体形成，又会替权力不变制造庆典。

更可靠的描述是条件性的：在这一次决定上，谁原来不能影响，后来能够影响什么？这种能力是否有程序支持，是否可重复调用，是否在冲突时仍有效？新位置是否把额外劳动和风险全压给当事人？回答这些问题，才能区分象征性发言、临时协商和稳定权利。

行动者也不是永远进入更多回路的人。有时，行动就是退出被迫回应的节奏，停止解释自己，不再把每次反馈变成改进任务。一个健康共同体不要求成员持续可用、持续透明、持续成长。它允许人普通地在场，允许无产出的关系，允许离开以后不被追问成一段意义。

因此，本卷所谓“重新成为行动者”，不是恢复一个从未受影响的纯粹自我，而是在已经被影像、数据、评价和关系改变以后，重新取得对下一步的部分决定能力。这种能力既包括说话、联结和修改，也包括保留、拒绝与关闭。它永远不彻底，却可以在制度中留下真实差异。

## 十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

面对画像和评价，人最常得到的建议是“不要在意”或“经营好自己”。前者低估画像的制度后果，后者要求个人用更多劳动修复系统制造的问题。更实际的做法要分四层。

第一层是辨认。把“系统觉得我是什么”与“系统依据什么这样行动”分开。一项推荐可能来自最近停留，不代表完整偏好；一次组织评价可能来自特定任务，不代表一般能力。辨认不是心理安慰，而是缩小判断适用范围。

第二层是保存自己的过程证据。被剪辑者保留完整语境，被评价者保存任务条件，被数据分类者记录推荐怎样变化。个人版本不能自动推翻中心版本，却能防止后来只剩一个叙述。若保存本身会增加隐私风险，应选择最少材料、有限访问和到期删除，而不是为了反画像再制造一座无限档案。

第三层是把个体申诉变成共同问题。一个人不断纠正错误标签，可能永远追不上系统更新；多人发现同类误判，便可以追问分类标准、申诉程序和用途边界。共同并不要求公开每个人的私人细节，可以用匿名案例、规则差异和汇总问题行动。联结的目标不是扩大暴露，而是把责任从“你要更会解释自己”移回系统。

第四层是改变默认值。与其让每个人逐次申请不公开，不如让敏感材料默认不进入传播；与其要求退出者证明伤害，不如让退出本身足以停止新增使用；与其让被评价者不断补充背景，不如让高风险决定必须经过人工复核和申诉。行动能力在这里不再只是个人技巧，而成为一项任何人都能调用的普通程序。

这四层也提醒我们，主体不等于自我表达的数量。一个人可以少说、匿名、委托别人、只修改规则而不讲自己的故事。他仍然是行动者，因为他对后续条件造成了差异。

## 十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

共同体不能只靠信任，也不能只靠合同。它需要一些朴素装置，把善意变成在冲突中仍可调用的能力。

第一是清楚的入口：人为什么被邀请，项目会留下什么，进入不等于同意所有未来用途。第二是角色与资源表：谁发起、谁记录、谁裁决、谁得到报酬，避免“大家一起”遮住不平等。第三是多种表达通道：公开会议、私人反馈、匿名意见和代理表达并存，不能只奖励会当众讲话的人。

第四是版本可见：与一个人有关的材料，在公开前应有适当审看和纠错机会；审看权不必等于任意改写他人，但至少能指出失实、风险和用途冲突。第五是争议账：保存未采纳意见和决定理由，不用“已充分沟通”抹平分歧。第六是无惩罚退出：退出不丧失已经完成劳动的报酬，也不被自动写成作品的戏剧高潮。第七是正式结束：材料何时封存、公开何时停止、旧版本怎样降级，要有日期和责任人。

装置不会自动制造共同体。表格可能被敷衍，审看可能来得太晚，匿名渠道可能暴露身份，退出条款可能在关系压力下无法使用。它们的价值只能通过调用来检验：有人真的提出异议时，程序是否运转？决定触及中心利益时，权利是否仍有效？失败时，组织是否承认而不是责怪参与者不会使用？

共同体也不必永久存在。有些人只为一次任务相遇，完成后各自离开。把短暂协作强行写成终身关系，会制造新的情感义务。能够清楚结束、带着不同记忆离开，也是一种共同能力。共同体的成熟，不在于永不解散，而在于相聚时权力可争议，离开时材料和关系不继续追捕人。

检验行动者是否形成，可以放弃“他变得更自信了吗”这类笼统问题，改看五个具体动作：他是否知道结果将被怎样使用；是否能提出另一种解释；是否能让决定延迟；是否能改变一项后续条件；是否能在不失去基本报酬和尊严的情况下退出。五项不必全部发生，任何一项也不能由项目方单方面宣布。它们应在真实冲突中留下调用记录。

还要问能力后来去了哪里。若一个人只在艺术项目的保护场里能够发言，项目结束后所有接口消失，这仍可能是一段重要经验，却不能写成稳定主体性。若共同体把方法、设备、联系人和档案访问带到下一处，能力才有迁移可能。迁移也不是要求参与者成为长期活动家；他可以只带走判断和拒绝的能力，而不再与项目保持关系。

## 证据边界

本卷关于数据画像、评价、人设、共同体与行动者形成的论述是T3机制综合，不是对特定平台用户、学生、员工或P4参与者心理效果的实证结论。观看心理来源卡只支持一般的情境建模、自我观看和解释差异边界，不能代证《人类投降派》人物感受；用户论文与P4理论稿只支持概念发生和自我叙述，不能证明参与者已经获得权利。任何有关主体变化、共同体形成或拒绝效果的具体判断，仍须由同期记录、前后条件、实际调用、利益位置不同的多方说明及可反驳材料分别验证。

第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

第十三卷　主体与共同体：人在回路中如何重新成为行动者

返回总入口（馆内参考，未随本文公开）｜上一篇： 第十二卷 ｜下一篇： 第十四卷

一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

递归媒介学 提供的不是第三种万能人性论，而是一条时间线。一个人做了什么，留下影像、数据、评价或他人的回应；这些结果回来以后，影响他怎样理解自己、别人怎样对待他、下一次什么行动更容易发生。新的行动再留下新痕迹。主体不是回路之外的起点，也不是回路内部的终点，而是在一轮轮返回中被暂时组织起来的位置。

一、我们不是站在回路外面的人

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

二、数据画像：一个会行动的替身

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

三、评价：一句判断怎样变成下一次表现

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

四、表演自我：人设不是面具外面的假东西

行动者不是彻底摆脱表演的人，而是能够改变表演与生活边界的人。他可以选择何时以角色出现，哪些经验不进入内容，旧版本何时停止代表自己；也可以让不同身份并存，而不被平台要求合成一个最容易识别的品牌。 可见性后的非所有权 在这里给出一条重要原则：别人看见过一个人，不等于取得了持续使用这个人的权利；公共出现也不等于永久开放。

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

但影像不会自动带来自知。人可能只注意自己最在意的缺点，可能按导演的剪辑理解现场，可能把一个角度当作全部事实，也可能从他人的沉默中过度推断。 元认知视频来源卡 提醒我们，看见影像与知道自己为何作出判断并非同一件事； 观看情境模型来源卡 也说明，不同观看者会依据各自知识和期待组织同样线索。成片能提供一条自我检查路径，不能证明所有人完成了相同心理转变。

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

五、自我观看：看见自己，不等于了解自己

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

共同体也不是消灭差异以后形成一个“我们”。任何“我们”都会决定谁被包含、谁只能被代表、谁被要求说得更像集体。真正可持续的共同体应保留内部位置差：发起者、被邀请者、退出者、记录者、后来观看者承担不同风险，不能用“大家都是参与者”抹平。 主体间性转译 可以帮助描述经验如何在不同位置之间移动，却不能保证转译没有损失。

六、共同体不是一群收到同样反馈的人

共在现场 的价值不在于宣布所有人融为一体，而在于承认没有人能独自完成事件。身体、空间、设备、规则和旁观者共同限制每个人。承认这种相互依赖，才有理由建立共同修改；但相互依赖本身不是共治证据。一个高度依赖参与者的机构仍可能把最终决定全部收回中心。

七、冲突不是共同体的故障

七、冲突不是共同体的故障

七、冲突不是共同体的故障

七、冲突不是共同体的故障

七、冲突不是共同体的故障

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

人在回路中重新成为行动者，最清楚的时刻有时不是表达更多，而是说不。拒绝拍摄、拒绝解释、拒绝公开、拒绝继续扮演、拒绝让某段生活成为作品，都会阻断系统期待的下一步。 不被作品化权 强调，人的沉默、退出和痛苦不能因为具有艺术价值就自动成为可使用材料。

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

因此，拒绝不能只被当作一种反馈内容。它有时是一条关于用途的命令：不要拍，不要引用，不要命名，不要再联系，不要把这次退出写成公开案例。尊重拒绝意味着让某些东西不再返回，而不是用更体面的语言继续返回。 拒绝残余 提示我们，即使停止公开，关系中仍可能留下无法抹去的后果；保存争议事实与继续使用原材料不是一回事。

八、拒绝：不是等待系统理解的一条反馈

拒绝也不只通过清楚语言出现。身体后退、停顿、疲惫、回避目光、无法继续执行任务，可能提示条件已经越界。 身体拒绝 不能被直接当作当事人已经表达明确法律同意或撤回，但它要求现场减速、询问、提供退出并停止把模糊状态当作默认许可。身体不是神秘真理，却是制度不能只等完整陈述才承认的限制。

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

九、从被解释的人，到能够提出问题的人

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

P4工作方法稿 提出从规训走向递归的自我理解， 概念增补对话稿 继续把权力和结果返回推向中心。这些材料能够证明理论要求怎样出现，不能单独证明历年实践已经做到。参与者曾经发言、导演曾经入镜、异议曾经进入电影，都不足以推出决定权已经转移。

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

十、P4：组织者也必须被结果改变

对于《人类投降派》，现有影片、T0/T1材料和理论档案能支持声画关系、命名、观看与制作位置的分析，却不能直接裁决人物真实心理或多年后共同感受。 “人类到底是什么”专题 已经提示：片中人不是抽象人性代表，而是在具体现场被降权又被迫承担的人。根本文本必须保持这种具体性，不能把他们再次升格为理论成功的象征。

十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

多版本不是相对主义。作者版、参与者注释版、争议记录和公共版可以并存，同时保留可核的时间、决定和材料来源。它们让一种终剪不再垄断全部历史。遗忘也不是伪造“从未发生”，而是停止组织对某段生活的持续利用。 结束权 在这里不仅关乎一个项目何时停，也关乎一个身份何时不再被旧材料强迫延续。

十一、共同体要有记忆，也要有遗忘

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十二、行动者形成没有毕业典礼

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十三、个人怎样从画像里腾出空间

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

十四、共同体需要七种朴素装置

证据边界