echoes of selves

echoes of selves.

[ or ]

history through eyes of glass.

© jeremy rose 2006

 

Abstract

History is the fundamental repetition that exists, proving that the past existed, the present continues, and the future is simply copyright infringement. Where the line lies between the visual, the idiovisual, and the purely imagined is the question that has plagued humankind since the question of truth became a reality. Is it history if it is imagined, yet duplicated into reality, as a second coming of absence? Is it truth if it happened but cannot be remembered, nor duplicated? History is destined to repeat itself, but only insofar as it can be remembered. What, then, is the difference between memory and construction, one must ask. If the answer is only to be seen in hindsight, then from whence comes historical truth?

 

Echoes of Selves

The predilection toward history as an inherently repetitive structure awkwardly presupposes a notion of the existence of invisible events. A modern reflection on historical realism shows, in contrast, a purely evidence-oriented perspective. In this way, that, which came before, exists only insofar as it is viewed by and from the present. This relegates historical truth not to the past, but to the present, where it is a fundamentally fictitious concept.

Collective history is the agglomeration of lives, insofar as they exist in a discrete time and location. It is through the eyes of one individual that the past must, at any time, be seen and it is this act of retroactive visualization, which defines historical truth. Each of these lives is a chronological series of disparate, yet contiguous events, the sum of whose durations matches inherently with one’s age. History is forcibly otherwise. Like a treasured shoebox, with its snapshots and sentimental paraphernalia, the past of humankind is a vast space of uninhabited time, punctuated by relatively occasional points of interest.

To apply a teleological interpretation, to say that these are mistakes, intrinsically bound to Sisyphean repetition until human existence approaches a temporal infinity, is to imbue humanity with a collective, determinate fate, when what is closer to the truth is a collective, indeterminate memory of an imagined past. To suppose that those whose historical knowledge allows them the ability to recognize and, therefore, correct these repeated missteps is to imply a universal ignorance, which is to be overcome through a somewhat more than metaphorical turning from the present to study the past.

Sporadic happenstance is simply the beginning; repetition would be the end of history as it is currently known.

To a child, life is a contiguous stream of the visual and the idiovisual – the nameless realm of imagined realism that is forgotten with age. Through her eyes, history is today’s spelling lesson, a recently witnessed automobile accident on the motorway, and a magic carpet by the bed – which turns inconspicuously into a floor rug when an adult is in the room. Age reconstructs the visual into sensory consciousness and the idiovisual into a subconscious fantasy, ignored for the sake of societal norms; history harkens back to these roots, however.

Modern history – not the history of modern times, but the contemporary outlook on the relationship between a singular present and a theoretical past – has shed its repetitive quality in favor of a structural dichotomy of visual and idiovisual. (As with many metaphorical constructs, these terms are selected for their subconscious effects. Semantically, visual may be replaced by perceptual and idiovisual by truth; these terms, however, contain vast conceptual subtexts and will be subsequently absent.)

 

Out with the Old (Take 2)

Repetition implies impetus and duplication. In an environment of structural repetition, a single impetus may be the source of endless (perhaps even subtly propriomorphic) facsimiles thereof. The implicit and grammatical need for this original action is basic to the concept. This is not fundamentally an ideal original action; more often, the subsequent repetitions could be seen as a progression toward such an ideal. (Deleuze and Patton; Fischer; Said)

The dawn of the photographic era saw anticlimactic sunsets on prior notions of sensory experience. Time ceased to exist as a meaningful relationship to the visual, as the celluloid reproduction stood in apposition to reality. Beyond a conceptual chicken-and-egg dilemma, less than a century’s physical time passed before the real was replaced by the image. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism))

The photograph is the most physically static representation of the image, the fundamental language of the inner dialogue. While the majority of images, which have replaced the real, are seen on the screen behind the eyes, inside the mind, their film-based counterparts are equally representative of society’s progression. (Barthes)

History is a collection of images. Be them in an album, a shoebox, or simply in that idiovisual realm of the inner photographic consciousness. If it did not happen visually, it did not happen at all. As rote learning evaporates as a mere memory of educational practices past, the contemporary mind is stimulated by a series of static and interpretation-rich images, which outline the high points of both individual life and collective human achievement.

The photograph is not a depiction of the real. Rather, it stands in apposition to the real, against the real, creating the real, to the point where it is a replacement for a reality that may or may not have ever existed. The unquestioning belief that the image is symbolic of a truth that must have occurred or must occur in the future has given the visual a status beyond that of the spoken language. It is implied that, while humans lie constantly and to varying degrees, the photograph cannot be manipulated. (Barthes; Sontag Against Interpretation; Sontag On Photography)

While this is inherently untrue – the opposite is more likely to be the case – this societal construct has resulted in the depletion, or poverty, of the action and the adoption of the visual record.

 

In with the Never

For a photograph to exist, something must have happened. This is much like the statement that for a human to exist, something must also have occurred. (Hirsch; Sontag Against Interpretation) In the case of a life, however, it is consistent and irrevocable that this action was reproductive intercourse, whereas, in the case of a photograph, the only action that was purely necessary was the creation of the image. There is an implication that the photograph reflects a reality that was but this is far from absolute truth. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism); Eco)

In this spirit, repetitive history is a duplication of actions, which may never have occurred, with the understanding that it is repetitive. An image on paper is sufficient evidence that a human exists, and that she has traveled, been married, sailed on a lake, and climbed a mountain. Without the image, these personal histories would cease to exist, to be believed. It is clear how negative history may be created in the absence of photographic evidence; the inverse is perhaps more true. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism); Baudrillard The Gulf War Did Not Take Place; Elkins)

Human memory is the place where both the visual and the idiovisual reside, overlapping and interacting. The nature of a human is that she may imagine, that she may conceive of ideas, which are not true, in opposition to those ideas, which are. The slave may conceive of freedom, the child of death, and the woman of masculinity, without having ever experienced these constructs. (Hirsch) Each of these ideas has, intrinsically, a component of the visual – in the case of death, for example, a child sees her body, stationary and prostrate, no longer breathing, but not herself as an old woman, in a similar state. She may act out this conceptual visual component, or not, but it is undoubtedly real. (Agamben; Riffaterre) The idiovisual element, the vision of death, in this case, does not preclude the verisimilitude from being called a reality that could come.

This concept is the process whereby history may enter the human mind. This child was not present at military battles from the First World War, yet she has a clear picture of them in her mind. A similar picture exists of the Napoleonic wars and even the Roman conquests. Without photographic evidence, the Roman era should, in a purely image-oriented society, disappear. If it were not for the imaginary essence of memory, this would most certainly be the case. However, Romans were humans and shared enough physical appearance with the contemporary world as to form the basis for constructive idiovisual memory. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism); Fischer; Gane; Hirsch)

Through this procedure, it is not difficult to see the danger in this conceptualization of history. Where the unseen and imagined ends and the unseen and real begins is a line over which all humans are wont to stray, on occasion. (Baudrillard The Gulf War Did Not Take Place) This creates a history, which is to be endlessly duplicated, which may never have existed in the structural, physical sense. The question becomes, at this point, if this is any less or more historical than the actual events, on which it is based, if it has a physical and lasting impression on the present, which is to become history with each passing instant. (Hirsch)

 

Memories of Things Unseen

Truth is of questionable importance, in a society where the necessary framework for history to exist is that of an image. Put another way, it is feasible for the modern citizen to remember the past that she did not experience. While past cultures were outwardly based on oral tradition, a visual society is necessarily reliant on a collective visual memory or “post memory”. (Hirsch) A collective image consciousness must therefore exist.

It is conceptually useful to think of this collection as a vast library of photographs and, while this is definitely a contributing factor, it is not the physical gallery of images that is important in the concept; it is, instead, the images that are remembered by the living individuals. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)) Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is that of war. The overwhelming majority of those alive in the west today have no direct experience of the Vietnam conflict, either as a military presence or as an uninvolved observer. This does not, however, stop images from being conjured in the consciousness whenever the topic is mentioned. Black and white photographs of decimated battalions and exploded helicopters take on a life, an existence in the modern mind, long after the fires were extinguished and the coffins sent home to Dover.

The images of the real mix with images of the imagined, through a medium of half conscious memory. The truth behind these interior photographs is less important than their existence. It is in this instant that a cultural shift is apparent. This is not to say that such a shift is only now occurring; it simply offers evidence of its renewed existence. The shift is that of reality, which may never have been a present-day phenomenon, to that of a hyperreality, the result of a visually motivated society. (Agamben; Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism); Gane; Holly)

To say that reality did not exist is to presuppose a knowledge of a higher order truth that cannot be witnessed or experienced. This knowledge is not the question; moreover it is unanswerable. It cannot reasonably be said that reality has never existed; nor can the opposite be expressed with any certainty. (Agamben; Baudrillard The Illusion of the End) What can be examined, however, is the replacement of a conceptual society that relied on an original experience as the foundation for its truth, by one whose truth is built on an image, whose existence both presupposes and replaces the real. (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism))

Returning to the example of Vietnam, original concepts of truth, if they were ever to have existed, were necessarily confined to the battlefield environment, the witnesses of which are mostly deceased. Regardless of the quality of the photographs taken at the time, their ability to move, to shape public opinion, to create an end to the conflict outside of the war itself, they do not function as experience for the audience. To see a photograph of war, then, is not to fight therein.

Why, then, does the modern citizen, She, remember the war? It is not because she stood on the fields of battle; rather it is because she did not. From a semantic perspective, this example may quickly be reduced to the three-fold distribution. The photograph is sign, the battle, signified, and the memory, interpretant. For a soldier, the traditional relationship may be possible. Seeing the photograph stirs thought of the battle, manifesting itself in a memory thereof. For She, this transaction is impossible. The photograph should, through an application of common sense, hold no meaning, since the signified and the interpretant are missing from the equation. (Eco; Hirsch; Sontag Against Interpretation)

This, however, is not the case. In a post memory scenario, She sees the photograph, which represents a fictitious war, of which she has no knowledge, and creates a living memory of events that she did not witness or experience. Through the image and its intrinsic creative power, it is possible that she may remember the war in Vietnam, having never participated in a war, nor traveled to the region – quite possibly without ever having met or spoken with a survivor of the conflict. (Hirsch; Riffaterre)

This example illustrates the phenomenon of functional creative memory – the creation of a history whose basis is not in fact but, instead, in the photograph.

 

Memories of Things Undone

The example of Vietnam is potentially one of benign significance, where the war, in reality, existed. This, however, is simply a matter of degrees of separation from the event. The possibility of post memory is a key to unlock a frightening door, through which one may never return. To replace, even to supplement, the real memories, those acquired through physical experience, with those borrowed from representative photographs is to give the physical senses a vacation and to temporarily replace them with the creative existence of the mind. (Riffaterre)

It is possible to say that a confusion has taken place, that modern society does not know whether to rely on the photograph or the objective truth that it believes to exist. (Elkins; Sontag On Photography) A theoretical objection to the image taking precedence gives way, in practice, to a wholehearted adoption of a secondary memory, the photograph being the most simple conduit of its construction. What this means is that that a progression exists from a reliance on experience to a belief in the visually rendered. The photograph stands for reality; therefore, it is to be trusted, not only as a sign for the real but also as the signified. (Barthes; Tagg) The sign becomes the image that She creates and the interpretant remains the resulting memory.

This is one step in a lengthy progression and it is, by no means, complete or discrete as a societal model. This step, however, has been collectively achieved and is necessitated by western social norms. It is likely that collective knowledge has always been a function of any living society. With the dawning of this age of mass-media and instantaneous communications, a collective memory has necessarily been expanded to include vast quantities of assumed knowledge, whereby interpretation and comprehension becomes possible and without which, confusion expels dissenters from accepted society. (Benjamin; Elkins)

The most functional example of this phenomenon, from the perspective of photographically stimulated collective memory, is the discipline of magazine advertising. Television and Internet media have the opportunity to explain, to animate, and to lead the audience through a progression toward understanding. A published collection of photographs has the ability to speak to the audience, through notes and placement of multiple images. The single-page essence of magazine spreads, however, forces the artist and the audience to have a collective interpretive meeting. This meeting is possible in two scenarios – the simplicity of the image or the collective memory of its inherent concepts.

Simplicity may only lead to a certain point on a trail of interpretation. While many images require no explanation for the most basic level of comprehension, interpretation is only fully possible with a broader set of experience, in the vicinity of the subject. An advertisement containing a simple photograph of a dog (see Figure A) is a functional example of simplicity preceding the need for collective memory. The audience may see the photograph and imagine the product being used along with the pictured animal. No background is necessary to understand what makes up a dog.

 

The need for collective memory, however, takes place when this simplicity is dissatisfying to the audience. To expand on this example, were this dog to be a Saint Bernard (see Figure B), wearing brandy around its neck, the simple interpretation still applies. It does not, however, allow the audience access to the necessary information to communicate with the subtext of the image. The background of understanding that the dog would naturally be found in the Alps, rescuing trapped victims of an avalanche, transporting alcoholic sustenance to those in need, forms one part of a collective post memory.

 

While the dog in the picture existed, complete with miniature keg, She has never seen one, nor has she experienced an alpine avalanche. The series of images that form the basis for her understanding of the single frame of Saint Bernard on the page in front of her create a memory, which not only presupposes but also precedes the reality of the situation. As the advertisement stimulates this memory, the photographed dog acts as the sign, the memory as the interpretant, and an assumed reality is created to be the signified.

This formula, when applied to a more complex photograph, becomes the gateway to vast quantities of far ranging memories. (Hirsch; Riffaterre) To return to the Vietnam example, the simple interpretive method is incomplete and dissatisfying in all cases, as the political and social reality surrounding the photograph is fundamental in the understanding of its situation. A portrait of a soldier (see Figure C) against the background of undefined shapes relies not only on the basic knowledge of what a soldier is, but also on the nature of the conflict. It is offered in comparison with other photographs of the war and is only functional as representative of a corpus of photographs. It may stand alone, from a physical perspective, but it cannot be discrete from its situation, as interpreted by the collective memory that it helps to create.

 

Without a functional memory of the conflict, be it through photographic representation or experience of a more physical nature, the individual photograph is forced to stand alone. The situation that is created by this segregation from the corpus results in a complete incomprehensibility of the photograph. Its signified disappears and the semantic relationship is incomplete.

 

Memories of Things Unphotographed

While memories are created by the relationship between the image as sign and the created reality as interpretant, it would be incomplete to suggest that the creative process stops there. It is clearly necessary that a collective memory exists, based on the images of historical events. (Agamben; Eco; Hirsch) Through these visual gateways to the past, present stimuli remind the viewer of a past that she did not witness or experience. While a photograph necessitates a subject, a thing or event, which is to be memorialized in print, the question arises of reality in contrast with verisimilitude.

A photograph is necessarily a real object. It has physicality, form, shape. Its essence, however, is external to its constructive nature. The image that it holds is its true signified component, in this equation of creative past. (Sontag Against Interpretation) In this way, its reality may be questioned but its verisimilitude is neither diminished nor impacted. For the image to occur in this way, an action, a time, a place, a functional being must have occurred, interacted with the photographic device. (Barthes; Sontag On Photography) Without this interaction, no image would be possible.

The next step on this progression, however, is the most fundamental stumbling block for the creation of collective memory – the questionable assumption that the photograph signifies the real, stands as evidence of its existence, proof that cannot be contested that a thing happened at a time. In contrast, the act of photography is an aggressive action against the continuum of infinite reality over infinite time. (Sontag On Photography) A photograph expropriates a single frame of existence and eliminates its time factor, bringing it into a fixed present – the present of the viewer.

It is here that the stumbling block may be removed and the path cleared. For a photograph to exist, an action took place – it cannot be assumed to be the action that the viewer interprets the photograph to represent. The act of viewing an image is one of translation, interpretation of its composite elements, to construct from a fixed scenario, without time or location or physical existence, an imagined story of its coming into being. (Barthes; Elkins) The necessary interpretive nature of the image as internalized story, video, is the impetus for transformation out of representation of the real, into construction of the hyperreal – a replacement of the original action with an assumed, fictitious story. (Baudrillard The Illusion of the End; Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (the Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)) This story has something more desirable for the viewer than the truth – the appearance of the truth.

To take an example, a simple park scene (see Figure D) necessitates the existence of a park. The question arises, however, as to the park’s location, the situation that led to its functioning as subject of the photograph, and the artist’s purpose in taking the picture. The confusion that arises from any attempt to know the truth from seeing the photograph alone is that the answers to the viewer’s questions are not to be found in the simple image. (Deleuze and Patton; Hirsch) Hence, verisimilitude, as opposed to reality.

 

The answer for most is creative replacement of the real. Having viewed this photograph, a calm day between trees and rocks and water, a reasonable subtext could be an escape, for the photographer, from the city, a departure to the country. Having constructed this alternate interpretation, each subsequent viewing of the image serves only as a reminder of this, rather than evidence of any structural, objective reality. The fact that the photograph was taken in New York’s Central Park, perhaps one of the busiest cities, does little to replace the functionally untrue story. Memory is created on contact with the image and its basis forms the photograph as signified, to memory’s interpretant.

 

A more detached interpretive example is that of joy contrasted with pain. A photograph of a girl (see Figure E), balanced high above a sharp fall may be interpreted in a variety of ways – one of which is an expression of life, experience of joy, happiness, an unbounded spirit; another of which is an expression of a depressed youth, preparing to end that life, far from joy, seeking closure. The interpretive nature of any image is its defining factor, as a replacement for the reality that it both presupposes and precedes. The girl’s actual intent, neither to jump nor to rejoice, rather simply to pose, as model, in a created scenario for the all-consuming photographic device, has no inherent impact on the visual truth of the created memory.

 

Conclusions

Through the use of visual and idiovisual memory techniques, it is inherently impossible to differentiate history from itself, real from imagined, in the human memory. To rely solely on the proof of visual rendering invites the interpretive construction of the photographer, while relying on aural tradition invites the interpretive construction of the speaker. Human history, as a necessity, is interpretive. Human memory, as a fundamental concept, is visual.

Where this differentiating line between the visual, the idiovisual, and the purely imagined reality is the answer that may never be discovered. It is the search for this, however, that is the key to the repetitive nature of history. As a function of itself, the imagined may become real in its repetition and the real may become imagined in its singularity.

Destined to repeat itself, history is the repetition of the interpreted, the forgotten of the real, and the construction of the mind. The only question that remains is how one may discover the difference between these three and shape this repetition.

Memory may be created in many forms, all of which have in common their purely visual, interpretive storage medium. The collective nature of the external stimuli, as photographic evidence, creates a corpus of images, to be interpreted by each individual. The interpretation of these common images creates for her a post memory, which function as a replacement reality. This new reality both assumes and precedes the true existence that it eventually replaces.

As truth is replaced by interpretation and history by constructed, collective memory, the question shifts, as to existence’s purpose. Why something, not nothing? gradually becomes its conjugate pair, Why nothing, before something?

 

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