In 1895 the advent of projected cinema, the theory of the unconscious, and the discovery of X-rays introduced modes of representation that significantly impacted the image of the body and the discourse of its limits. Each technique produced a new boundary that came to supplant the original limit, the surface of the human body. This lecture tracks the development of cinema, psychoanalysis, and X-ray photography in relation to the concept of the surface. Although these techniques offered a means of traversing the human body, they also inscribed the function of the surface at another location-the screen. The irradiated photographic plate and the cinematic and psychoanalytic "screen" can be seen as extending the body beyond its traditional topology. This reading seeks to understand the extent to which the surface of the human figure became a crucial aspect of visual representation and the way in which the theory of the surface underwent a radical transformation.-A. M. Lippit Akira Mizuta Lippit is an assistant professor of Film Studies and Critical Theory in the Department of Cinema at San Francisco State University. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Assemblage, Camerawork, Criticism, MLN, Poliphile, and other publications.