[Winter 2000-2001]
This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Summary
This text, the product of parallel readings of Mercure, a novel by Amélie Nothomb, and L’avenir de la mémoire, an essay by Fernand Dumont, explores the tight links between identity, image, and memory. In Nothomb’s novel, the main character is trapped by the absence of all representation: in this sense, deprivation of thought is a condition not of liberation but of imprisonment. Similarly, overshadowed communities try to represent themselves to themselves in the space of the image. It is the denial of their representation that establishes the limitations within which they evolve.