Page 218 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 218
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
lexicon of ordinary language already in very early popular culture. Imag-
es, which represented the visual world more convincingly than any artist’s
work – not because they were better as images, but because they were rec-
ognised to be “truer” – have forever changed human perception. How was
human perception organised and how it functioned before this process of
change started, we are unable to say in detail, but we can take into account
many such written records as various philosophical texts, especially those
on epistemology, which demonstrate many troubles in explaining the per-
ception and the true value of a reality outside ourselves. As soon as we men-
tion a concept such as memory, many people are quick to associate it with
psychology as the science that can supposedly define and describe the con-
cept. True, apart from neuro-science, psychology (no matter which of many
different doctrines) deals a lot with the concept of memory. The psycholog-
ical concept of memory, as much as it serves its purpose within the limits
of psychology as a science, seems to be insufficient as an answer to a range
of questions. Problems associated with memory have nowadays become a
matter of cross-related issues and various types of knowledge and research.
No one expects psychology itself in isolation from other research to deliver
much more knowledge than it already does in the field, which is designat-
ed by the concept of memory. This divergence between psychology and oth-
er humanities started to come into view within the work of Henri Bergson.
Gilles Deleuze brought this historical fact to our attention in 1983, when
this great philosopher of the 20th Century stunned the intellectual com-
munity with his first extensive study on cinema. Bergson’s works displayed
many features of a great foresight, when he, in his discourse, revealed the
full meaning of the concept in a nascent context, which fully developed lat-
er. By “this context”, I mean not only aesthetic developments as such, but
these developments as they were seen through the interactions with ed-
ucation, cinematography, and cultural institutions, which all contributed
to a change of the perception of human perception. It is of the utmost im-
portance that along with the concept of movement Bergson not only em-
phasised the notion of memory, but also the concept of image. It is not as
important how exact or wrong Bergson’s observations, assertions and state-
ments were in view of, for example, modern physiology and the psychology
of perception, since we are talking about the philosophical building of con-
cepts. Thus, maybe – due to the fact that Bergson’s book on memory was
first published in 1896, roughly at the same time when the brothers Lum-
ieres’ cinématograph started film history – we can shed light on the prob-
216
lexicon of ordinary language already in very early popular culture. Imag-
es, which represented the visual world more convincingly than any artist’s
work – not because they were better as images, but because they were rec-
ognised to be “truer” – have forever changed human perception. How was
human perception organised and how it functioned before this process of
change started, we are unable to say in detail, but we can take into account
many such written records as various philosophical texts, especially those
on epistemology, which demonstrate many troubles in explaining the per-
ception and the true value of a reality outside ourselves. As soon as we men-
tion a concept such as memory, many people are quick to associate it with
psychology as the science that can supposedly define and describe the con-
cept. True, apart from neuro-science, psychology (no matter which of many
different doctrines) deals a lot with the concept of memory. The psycholog-
ical concept of memory, as much as it serves its purpose within the limits
of psychology as a science, seems to be insufficient as an answer to a range
of questions. Problems associated with memory have nowadays become a
matter of cross-related issues and various types of knowledge and research.
No one expects psychology itself in isolation from other research to deliver
much more knowledge than it already does in the field, which is designat-
ed by the concept of memory. This divergence between psychology and oth-
er humanities started to come into view within the work of Henri Bergson.
Gilles Deleuze brought this historical fact to our attention in 1983, when
this great philosopher of the 20th Century stunned the intellectual com-
munity with his first extensive study on cinema. Bergson’s works displayed
many features of a great foresight, when he, in his discourse, revealed the
full meaning of the concept in a nascent context, which fully developed lat-
er. By “this context”, I mean not only aesthetic developments as such, but
these developments as they were seen through the interactions with ed-
ucation, cinematography, and cultural institutions, which all contributed
to a change of the perception of human perception. It is of the utmost im-
portance that along with the concept of movement Bergson not only em-
phasised the notion of memory, but also the concept of image. It is not as
important how exact or wrong Bergson’s observations, assertions and state-
ments were in view of, for example, modern physiology and the psychology
of perception, since we are talking about the philosophical building of con-
cepts. Thus, maybe – due to the fact that Bergson’s book on memory was
first published in 1896, roughly at the same time when the brothers Lum-
ieres’ cinématograph started film history – we can shed light on the prob-
216
