Trace, Archive, Imaginary

Abstract

In his major treatise Memory, History, Forgetting, first published in 2000, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) thoroughly examines the relationship between facts, memories, and transmission, both collectively and individually. This ambitious meditation considers the use not only of scientific historical methods but also of fiction and widely refers to the notion of “images.” But it should be pointed out that the images under consideration in Memory, History, Forgetting are only mental or literary constructs; Ricoeur focuses exclusively on words as mnemonic tools to describe, remember, and forget. Encompassing over six hundred pages, Ricoeur’s magnum opus thus overlooks a fruitful field of understanding coterminous to the processes he analyzes, if one also acknowledges the powers and efficacy of visual images, particularly of filmed images. Nowhere is this potential more visible and pregnant than in a consideration of the Holocaust—more appropriately known as the Shoah—which in its extreme consequences is at the very center of Ricoeur’s ruminations. Elaborating on the practices, theorizations, and polemics regarding the Shoah and filmmaking, this article shows how Ricoeur’s study can be further developed, in both perception and understanding, by calling upon the cinema and thinking with its images.