What Can Recall Its Past Lives
Bergson, Barthes, and the Hauntology of the Image
Keywords:
photography, memory, time, ontology, cinema.Abstract
This article investigates the relationship between memory, time, and the photographic image through a philosophical dialogue among Henri Bergson, Roland Barthes, and the aesthetics of cinema. By revisiting Bergson’s notion of pure memory and Barthes’s concepts of studium, spectrum, and punctum, the essay explores how photography and film can give form to the ontological survival of the past. The analysis culminates in a reading of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives as a cinematic meditation on spectral temporality. Engaging with Derrida’s hauntology and the idea of the image as a trace of duration, the article proposes that photography and cinema are not merely representations of memory but modes through which the past coexists with the present in affective and sensorial ways. Ultimately, it asks: can an image recall its past lives?
References
Barthes, Roland. 1980. La chambre claire: Note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
Bergson, Henri. 1889. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Paris: Alcan.
———. 1896. Matière et mémoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF), 1939 edition.
———. 1903. Introduction à la métaphysique. In La pensée et le mouvant. Paris: PUF.
———. 1907. L’évolution créatrice. Paris: Félix Alcan.
Brassaï. 1982. Proust et la photographie. Paris: Gallimard.
Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Spectres de Marx: L’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale. Paris: Galilée.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1966. Le bergsonisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
———. 1983. Cinéma 1: L’image-mouvement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Ferraz, Maria Cristina Franco. 2004. Ruminações: Ensaios sobre arte, filosofia e literatura. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
Fujita, Hisashi. 2009. “Khorologia da memória, ou como localizar o não localizável?” In Henri Bergson: Crítica do negativo e pensamento em duração, edited by Daniel Morato, 181–200. São Paulo: Alameda.
Jaguaribe, Izabel, dir. 2003. Meu tempo é hoje. Featuring Paulinho da Viola. Brazil: Ijá Produções.
Kahn, Douglas, and Gregory Whitehead, eds. 1992. Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kelly, Mark. 2010. Bergson and Phenomenology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paulinho da Viola. 2003. Meu tempo é hoje. Dir. Izabel Jaguaribe. Brazil: Ijá Produções.
Prado Jr., Bento. 1988. Presença e campo transcendental: Consciência e negatividade na filosofia de Bergson. São Paulo: EdUSP.
Proust, Marcel. 1987. À la recherche du temps perdu. Edited by Jean-Yves Tadié. 3 vols. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Salomão, Waly. 1996. Algaravias: câmara de ecos. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Weerasethakul, Apichatpong. 2010. Loong Boonmee raleuk chat [Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives]. Thailand/UK/France/Germany/Spain/Netherlands: Kick the Machine Films.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Edvan Aragão Santos
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
