ABSTRACT
This chapter explores alternative conceptual and artistic approaches to lived temporality, as related to memory, trauma, and repetition by combining the psychoanalytical interpretative framework and the deconstructive theory of spectrality in order to arrive at an existential overcoming of temporal irreversibility and the possibility of breaking free from the circle of “eternal repetition of the same.” Through the comparative analysis of films such as Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Alan Resnais’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (2012), Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004), this chapter considers the effectiveness of the postmodern notions of the “outside” as theorized first by Foucault (in relation to Blanchot), and then by Deleuze and Guattari (in relation to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Shestov) for the possibility of outlining a different conception of temporality in its relationship to memory, testimonial and prayer. Deleuze’s notions of the “time-image” and of the “repetition of faith” will help illuminate a radically different account of recollection as creative restitution of memory turned toward the future, which breaks the logic of temporal irreversibility and promises to overcome oblivion and, ultimately, death.
