Both memory and the act of remembering originate in mindfulness. To be mindful is to have knowledge, but also to take care. A memory is a memory of and to remember is to remember because… Therefore, if memory is equated with knowledge, neigh, if memory is indistinguishable from knowledge, the contents of memory can be just as easily refuted as can the contents of all knowledge; science was tailored for this very reason: to enable the refutation of all knowledge – of all memory. Therefore, if the content of the act of remembering is easily refuted, what is truly indicative in the act of remembering is what the action itself indicates, hence, the “to remember… because…” (…for the reason that…)
Nature persists as nature in Time. Photography persists beyond Time (you can keep on snapping). Beyond Time nothing is real (you can still keep on snapping). Photographs cannot not be real. Photography is also immune to Mannerism. Photographs indicate. Photography’s indexicality is an indication. Photography and photographs always existed as the post-aesthetic age. Photography and photographs are post-aesthetic. Art is formal composition. The post-aesthetic is not post-aesthetics. The post-aesthetic is post-historical.
Reality is not invalidated by any theory. Reality is invalidated by Memory. Memory has no content. If it did, it would be extremely easy to invalidate that content – just as it is easy to invalidate the content of all knowledge (knowing, after all, is not a knowing). To know and to remember… those are in themselves the indication. ‘The photographic’ happens through images.
‘The photographic’ points to what it always is, in this pointing gesture surreptitiously reneging its cause. Hence, it can never be what it is. ‘The photographic’ is the index that indicates (it may very well indicate nothing). If it happens to be otherwise then it cannot be stated otherwise.
All that is past about memories is the fact that the events that they happen to index happen to have happened in the past. Truly, though, nothing is past in memory. The photograph hasn’t slipped into the past; it’s there in front of you.
The mind knows that images are inherently manipulable; hence the “faculty of the mind which forms and manipulates images” (HARPER 2001-2022): imagination. What dynamic in an image does one manipulate to capably make that image be beheld as a remembrance? Time ceaselessly proceeds into the future. The real is amenable to manipulation too. “Just remember what it is you wish for.”
An alterity which is radically different in nature to Alterity…
An alterity otherwise to Alterity…
An alterity?
Nothing is ever real enough.
Featured Image:
Dosso Dossi, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsReferences:
HARPER, Douglas. 2001-2022. Online Etymology Dictionary [online]. Available at: https://www.etymonline.com [accessed 16 June 2022].
