La cita frustrada del pasado: la caída y resurrección del cine en histoire(s) du cinéma

A key passage in Histoire(s) du Cinéma shows the failure of the history of cinema to recognize the historicity of images. As a result, some perspec- tives of history (like the Shoah) are omitted, and the cinema becomes at risk of turning into a failed cultural praxis. Hence, Godard purports to assemble the fragments of those thwarted pasts, in order to actualize the hindered potentials of those images. This article aims at developing the assembling exercise of Histoire(s) on the basis of Walter Benjamin’s idea of dialectical image, for it expresses the contradictions of a past that has been forgotten both by the canon and by the history of cinema. Moreover, the dialectical image will be read in the light of Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of non-conformational proposition, as it enables to pinpoint how the dialectical image bursts in, distorting official history and, at the same time, reincorporates those pasts into the field of memory