Indexicality as symptom: Photography and

affect
YURIKO FURUHATA

Abstract
This article uses Roland Barthess text, Camera Lucida: Reflections on
Photography, to critique photographys truth claim to the real by reading
the photographic discourse of indexicality as a symptom, as defined in
izek. The implications of this symptomatic relationship
the work of Slavoj Z
between photography and the real are analyzed in relation to the question of
photographic spectatorship on the one hand, and to the inarticulability of
aect on the other. In conclusion this article turns to Kants notion of subjective universality as it is challenged by Barthess theory of photography.
Keywords:

indexicality;
universality.

photography,

symptom;

punctum;

aect;

Society is concerned to tame the Photograph,

to temper the madness, which keeps threatening to explode in the face of whoever looks at
it.
Barthes (1981: 117)

In her discussion of photography, Susan Sontag draws a curious analogy

between the non-linguistic property of the photographic image and the
linguistic act of quotation. She writes, Photographs and quotations
seem, because they are taken to be pieces of reality, more authentic
than extended literary narratives (1973: 74). Sontag casually evokes this
analogy as if the concept of authenticity implied in the photographic
mode of inscription and the linguistic act of quotation needs no further
explanation. If we follow Sontag, a photograph does not only signify,
but it also presents itself as a special kind of inscription that reproduces
and repeats the real or the original. A photographic inscription is,
Semiotica 1741/4 (2009), 181202
DOI 10.1515/semi.2009.032

00371998/09/01740181
6 Walter de Gruyter

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first and foremost, an infinitely repeatable semiotic sign that makes a

claim to authenticity through its fidelity to reality.
Sontag extends her analogy to further suggest that a photographer is
someone who directly quotes from reality. The unadulterated mode of
repetition and the repudiation of originality suggested by the act of quotation are then linked to the Surrealist fascination with found objects, the
destabilization of an authorial position, and the evidential power of the
referent: [A] photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an
image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly
stenciled o the real, like a footprint or a death mask (1973: 154). The
photographic sign is thus defined through its dual semiotic function, of
being iconic and indexical at once. It is a type of representational image
that resembles the real, all the while being an indexical trace that is existentially and causally related to the real.
Curiously, however, when Sontag extends her analogy from quotation
to trace, she blurs the dierence between the linguistic mode of reproducing an utterance or inscription and the non-linguistic mode of retaining a
physical trace (e.g., a footprint). Yet it is precisely the diculty in dierentiating these two types of traces the former the linguistic and the latter the non-linguistic that continues to haunt contemporary discourses
on photography.
In what follows, I propose to rethink this question of the photographic
trace as an indexical sign by positing the hypothesis that indexicality is a
symptom of contemporary discourse on photography. As a point of departure, I will borrow Slavoj Zizeks broad definition of the symptom as
a particular element which subverts its own universal foundation while
at the same time being an indispensable element that constitutes this universality. I will then examine the implications of a symptomatic relationship between photography and the real from the perspective of photographic spectatorship. A reading of Roland Barthess illuminating text,
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography will highlight the significance
of an aective investment in the spectatorial experience of viewing photographs. In conclusion, I will briefly consider this aective investment in
relation to the problem of interested aesthetic judgment, which calls
into question the purported subjective universality of the disinterested
aesthetic judgment.

1.

Trace

When one considers the dierence between the linguistic trace, as in the
case of a written quotation, and the non-linguistic trace, as in the case of

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a footprint, the semantic uncertainty of the word analogical becomes

apparent. The expressions analogical and analog are often used to
describe the medium specificity of photography, yet these expressions
also disclose the conceptual diculty of dierentiating these two types of
traces. For instance, the term analog inscription is frequently used to
describe both celluloid-based film and photography in the discourse of visual media. Film and photography are said to embody an analog mode of
recording (in opposition to a digital mode of recording), which relies on
the direct physical contact between the sign and the referent. This sense
of the term analogical is used to highlight only the physical, non-mimetic
properties of the trace. A more conventional sense of the term analogical,
on the other hand, presupposes resemblance or likeness between otherwise dissimilar entities; it implies a certain similitude between dissimilar
forms that constitutes the basis of comparison. When used in relation to
forms of visual representation, the analogical in this latter sense no longer
points to the physical relation between the sign and the referent, but to
the mimetic relation between them.
Indeed, in discourses on the visual and literary arts, the term analogical is more frequently used in this second sense of mimetic representation. As Raymond Bellour suggests, in this regard a digitally produced
image can also be said analogical insofar as it appeals to this second sense
of mimetic appearance (1996: 182). When used in this way, the term analogical dispenses with the first sense of physical contact altogether. What
is interesting about the discourse of photography is, however, its reliance
upon both senses of the term analogical. For instance, when Sontag compares the photograph to a footprint, she implies the first sense of the term
analogical: the physical contact between the sign and the referent. By
contrast, when she compares the photograph to a quotation Sontag assumes the second sense of the term analogical: resemblance. The term
indexical supplements only the first sense of the analogical inscription
that the term.
First coined by the American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce, the
term index designates a special kind of sign, which has a direct causal
link to the referent but may not have any visual resemblance to it; for instance, smoke is an indexical sign of the presence of fire. Notably, the
word index used in this semiotic sense slightly diers from its conventional use as well as its use in linguistics. As the familiar example of the
index at the end of a book suggests, an index often designates a table, catalog or a list of subjects followed by page numbers. In this case, it functions as a thumb index, a topographical and classificatory sign, which indicates the location of the referent inside the book but which assumes no
physical or existential contact between the index and the items it points

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to. On the other hand, the linguistic use of the word index retains an etymological sense through deictic words such as I, here, this, and
now, words whose meanings are completely contingent upon the context, agent, time, and place of the act of enunciation. The link between
the sign and the referent hence remains contextual. Nevertheless, in all
three cases the index leads the reader of the sign to the referent; it has a
directional or pointing function.
There is also, however, a temporal dimension to the indexical sign.
While often overlooked in discourses on the index, there is as a temporal
lapse between the sign and the referent in the case of the footprint, the
fingerprint, or the photograph, all which hinge upon the spatial as well
as the temporal dissociation between the index and its referent. In spite
of this spatio-temporal gap between the index and the referent, theorists
of photography often appear certain of the causal link between the sign
and the referent. Sontag expresses such certitude in her discussion of the
photographic index:
While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is
never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than
the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) a material
vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be. (Sontag 1973: 154)

Similarly, Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida fondly expresses his certitude

of the existence of the pre-photographic referent, which he finds in the
photographic trace. He writes: The photograph is literally an emanation
of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations
which ultimately touch me, who am here (1981: 80). What the indexical
sign of the photograph appears to guarantee, for him at least, is the presence of (and not the resemblance to) the pre-photographic referent.
Because of its singular relationship to the referent, which in the case of
photography designates a particular presence of something at a particular moment in the past, a photograph is said to be a special type of
trace. It never allows the reader of the index to be led to an intended
referent because, in a strict sense, the intended referent has already vanished at the moment of the creation of the index. This is why photography is often described as the memento mori of time; it is a reminder of
mortality and the irreversibility of time itself. Put dierently, photography awakens the viewers chronoscopic sense of reality. That is to say,
time follows a linear trajectory and becomes a homogeneous empty
time, to use Walter Benjamins well-known expression (1968: 261).
Here time is measured not only by dates in a calendar but also by the precision of a clock that visually segments time into equidistant instances.

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Furthermore, the temporal non-coincidence between the sign and the

referent makes it impossible to identify the sign and the referent because
of the structural absence of the referent conditioned by the mechanism of
photography in which the production of the sign (the photograph) is
always temporally subsequent to the pre-photographic referent. This is
especially the case with traditional photography, which involves a timetaking development process, but is equally true of instantaneous (i.e., Polaroid) or digital photography, where the image always appears at a temporal remove however small from the instant when the photograph
is taken. Moreover, physical contact alone does not suce to link the
two, temporally disjunctive entities together. That is, the recognition and
identification of the referent (for example a landscape) is a logical impossibility unless we introduce an element of analogical resemblance between
the referent (the landscape) and its sign (the photograph of the landscape). It is at this point, I believe, that the linguistic analogy of quotation
becomes particularly pertinent, since what is at stake is a certain willingness to suspend disbelief in the photographic index: there is a psychic
investment or trust in the fidelity of the sign to its pre-photographic referent. One may argue that this fidelity is built upon the mechanical automatism of the camera and its equally automatic chemical processes. However, this argument is insucient. For what the photographic apparatus
guarantees is only the mechanical transmission of light and its interaction
with chemicals; it does not explain the trust or belief that we have in the
connection between this sign and its referent.
In his essay, Signature event context, Jacques Derrida raises a similar
question around the problem of quotation in relation to the notion of fidelity. In his analysis of J. L. Austins study of performative speech,
Derrida detects a point of internal breakdown in Austins argument that
threatens to overturn the very foundation of his claim. In dierentiating a
performative utterance from a constative utterance, Austin suggests
that by way of the performative utterance a speaker does something
rather than simply says something. In a marriage vow, the utterance and
the action referred to by the utterance coincide with the event of the performative utterance: When I say I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth I
do not describe the christening ceremony, I actually perform the christening (Austin 2001: 1432). Performative utterances are thus classified as
first person singular present indicative active utterances, which presuppose preexisting conventions. However, for the performative utterances to
be successful, the conventional procedure which by our utterance we are
purporting to use must actually exist (Austin 2001: 1433). Here arises a
paradox; despite the fact that a performative utterance takes place as a
singular event, marked by deictic words such as I, here, now, it

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must repeat a convention in order to be intelligible and hence successful.

Nonetheless, quoted or simulated performative utterances (e.g., a marriage vow performed by an actor in a play, as a joke or cited in a poem)
are deemed non-serious utterances by Austin. They are thereby excluded from the purview of his definition of performative utterances
(2001: 1435).
Now, as Derrida points out, Austin must exclude non-serious simulations and quotations of the conventions in order to repress and conceal
the structural possibility of all utterances becoming quotations and
thereby infelicitous or unsuccessful. Derrida suggests, [Austin] insists
on the fact that this possibility remains abnormal, parasitic, that it constitutes a kind of extenuation or agonized succumbing of language that we
should strenuously distance ourselves from and resolutely ignore (1988:
16). Paradoxically, however, this negated parasitic element is precisely the
internal positive condition of a successful performative utterance. In other
words, as Austin himself acknowledges, a felicitous performative utterance is predicated upon the repetition of a convention; that is, certain formal features must be quoted. This structural possibility that every utterance may become a citation and hence fail to become a meaningful
utterance is what Derrida calls the general iterability of language, which
the act of inscribing a signature best exemplifies.
It seems like a banal fact that the signature, by convention, certifies the
singularity of the event of signing and the identity of the signer. However,
this irreplaceable singularity at the heart of signature is made possible
only through its iterability: In order to function, that is, to be readable,
a signature must have a repeatable, iterable, imitable form (1988: 20).
The convention requires that a written signature be identifiable on the
basis of its graphic resemblance to the archetypical signature of the same
signer. Moreover, a written signature implies the actual or empirical
nonpresence of the signer because the written signature by convention
is a substitute for an oral promise, a performative utterance that says I
do (Derrida 1988: 20). This points to the peculiar trust we have in the
signature; while it certifies the intention of the signer in her or his absence,
its constitutive iterability does not exclude the possibility of the infidelity
of the signature as to its proper origin, such as in the case of forgery. As
Derridas well-known critique of Platos logocentric depreciation of writing demonstrates, what appears to be a supplementary aid threatens to
subvert the entire premise, as in the case of a signature that is supposed
to function as the supplement or replacement for an oral contract, but in
fact subverts the singular premise of the contract itself.
Sontag uses the comparison between quotation and photography in
order to gesture towards the authenticity and fidelity of the sign to the

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referent. Yet, following Derridas argument, we might suggest that this

analogy between the quotation and the photograph in fact reveals the
structural possibility of the inauthenticity and infidelity of the photograph
itself. That is, if the quotation is always haunted by the logic of iterability
and thus infidelity, and if the operation of the photograph is analogous to
the operation of the quotation, then the photograph would similarly be
open to infidelity.

2.

Symptom

As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Zizeks definition of

symptom as a particular element which subverts its own universal
foundation, a species subverting its own genus is particularly helpful for
thinking through the question of the structural possibility of infidelity
built into the photographic trace (1989: 21). Following Zizek, we may regard photographic indexicality as a symptom of photography. That is,
within the purview of a conventional understanding of photographys evidentiality, a photographic trace functions like a signature: it certifies
the presence and the origin of the absent subject to whom such a trace is
attributed. Yet, as in the cases of the signature and the performative utterance, this very photographic trace threatens the foundation of documentary truth precisely because of its constitutive iterability. The concept
of repetition, as Derrida notes, already incorporates the possibility of difference (1988: 7). One could therefore argue that the structure of repetition is at once a necessary condition as well as an element of possible alteration inherent in every photograph.
It is in this sense of a symptomatic relationship between the fidelity of
the photographic index to its referent and its constitutive possibility of
alteration that I would like to read the following sentence from Camera
Lucida: What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only
once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated
existentially (Barthes 1981: 4). This sentence, I would argue, encapsulates Barthess awareness of the impossible fidelity of photography to the
real that is, photographys constitutive iterability, or alterability
and yet his desire to believe in this fidelity nonetheless. Critics such as
Georey Batchen (1997) and John Tagg assert that Barthes would have
us believe (Tagg 1988: 3) in the photographs evidential power as to the
prior existence of the pre-photographic referent. Yet contrary to attacks
on Barthes that posit him as a naive believer in photographic indexicality,
I would suggest that Barthes explicitly posits such a belief in the form
of an impossible desire, which guides him as what he terms his

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Ariadnes thread in his labyrinthine search for an ontological essence of photography.

Barthess reference to Ariadne appears in his discussion of a special
photograph of his mother, the Winter Garden Photograph, in which
he glimpses the essential identity of his mother and photography itself:
Something like an essence of the Photograph floated in this particular picture. I
therefore decided to derive all Photography (its nature) from the only photograph which assuredly existed for me, and to take it somehow as a guide for my
investigation. All the worlds photographs formed a Labyrinth. I knew that at the
center of this Labyrinth I would find nothing but this sole picture, fulfilling Nietzches prophecy: A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.
The Winter Garden Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me
discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me what
constituted that thread which drew me toward Photograph. (Barthes 1981: 73)

What he emphasizes in the above passage is the impossibility of finding

such essence independent of his desire. In other words, Barthes poignantly acknowledges the absence of a universal truth in the center of the
labyrinth constructed from all the worlds photographs. In place of the
universal truth, Barthes discovers his particular truth of photography: this
particular truth is his discovery of the Winter Garden photograph of his
mother at the age of five. Barthes writes: Not a just image, just an image, Godard says. But my grief wanted a just image, an image which
would be both justice and accuracy justesse: just an image but a just
image. Such for me, was the Winter Garden (1981: 70).
As is evident from the beginning of the book, Barthes frames his argument within the context of his subjective desire rather than within a
purportedly objective universality. In fact, the problem of the particular
and the universal is presented in the first pages of the book as both his
predicament as well as the predicament of photography itself:
In the Photograph, the event is never transcended for the sake of something else:
the Photograph always leads the corpse I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency, matte and somehow stupid, the This
(this photograph, and not Photography), in short, what Lacan calls the Tuche, the
Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in its indefatigable expression. (Barthes 1981: 4)

It is worth noting that in the above passage Barthes emphasizes the absolute singularity of each photograph, which cannot be subsumed under the
universal rubric of Photography. (I will come back to this problem of
the particular and the universal in my discussion of Kantian aesthetic
judgment and its relation to desire in my conclusion.) Moreover, Barthes

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relates this impasse in speaking of photography as a general concept or

phenomenon to Lacans notion of the Real. Taken together with his insistence on the particularity of his desire as a spectator of photographs,
this reference to the Lacanian Real also allows me to reintroduce the notion of the symptom, which I mentioned earlier in relation to its subversive character.
The symptom, according to Zizek, is not only a ciphered message,
it is at the same time a way for the subject to organize his enjoyment
(1989: 74). What does it mean that the symptom is not only a ciphered
message, that is, a visible sign of the invisible pathological imbalance as
understood in Freudian psychoanalysis? Zizeks theoretical interpretation
of Lacans notion of the symptom diers from the Freudian sense of the
term. Instead of a hermeneutic imperative to decipher the ciphered kernel
of the unconscious through recourse to visible signs of eruptions of invisible forces lurking in the depths, Zizek posits the symptom as a necessary
cipher, a mask that shields us from the terrifying truth that there is nothing at the kernel of the unconscious. As Zizek puts it, the symptom is an
element which causes a great deal of trouble, but its absence would mean
even greater trouble: total catastrophe (1989: 78).
Zizek further relates this specific sense of the symptom to the notion of
the Real: a traumatic kernel that resists symbolization inside our psychic
reality. The Real has a paradoxical structure; it is on the one hand a
positive fullness without a lack, yet it is on the other hand and at the
same time the embodiment of a certain void, emptiness or enabling
lack around which the symbolic order is structured (1989: 170). In
other words, the Real as lack does not lack anything in itself because it
is a lack from the point of view of the symbolic order. To put it dierently, the symbolic order is structurally outside the Real because the subject acquires language as a compensation for the original trauma of symbolic castration or repulsion from the Real, a site where the dierence
between self and other does not yet exist. The Real is, therefore, something that cannot be negated because it is the very condition of the original lack, the place of the Other and the place of a perpetual return of
an insatiable desire (Zizek 1989: 170). One may rightly criticize Lacans
formulation of desire as the desire of the Other the desire of a child to
become a phallus and to fulfill the desire of his (and her) mothers desire
due to her lack of a phallus as deeply implicated in the hegemonic
structure of patriarchy and heterosexuality. Nonetheless, I think it is useful in the present context to consider Zizeks re-interpretation of the Lacanian Real as a pure negativity (1989: 170).
According to Zizek, the Real as pure negativity is an enigmatic center
that eludes articulation: it is the rock upon which every attempt at

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symbolization stumbles. It is thereby something that persists only as

failed, missed, in a shadow, and dissolves itself as soon as we try to grasp
it in its positive nature (1989: 169). Importantly, in moving away from
his earlier semiotic analysis of photography, Barthes also returns to photography in Camera Lucida in order to question the limit of descriptive
language in articulating aect. For Barthes, the aect generated by photography occupies a position not unlike the Lacanian Real; it is what resists symbolization and exceeds the hermeneutic imperative for a semiotic
reading of the photographic image as a meaningful utterance.

3.

Punctum

While Barthes turns to photography with this keen awareness of the radical impossibility of the direct symbolization of aect in Camera Lucida,
we should also note that he had already touched upon this same issue in
his earlier texts. However, in these earlier works he was rather optimistic
about the possibility of symbolizing aect. For instance, in the essays
The photographic message and Rhetoric of image Barthes establishes general rules for the semiotic reading of a photographic image. Although he dierentiates the coded iconic message (connotation) from the
un-coded iconic message (denotation) of a photograph, the perceptual
message of denotation is presented as a universally recognizable and
hence communicable message. According to Barthes, in order to read
this last (or first) level of the message, all that is needed is the knowledge
bound up with our perception (1977: 36).
In the subsequent essay, The third meaning, Barthes further classifies
photographic signifiers at the level of denotation (the literal message of
the image) by separating obvious meaning from obtuse meaning.
Obtuse meaning is conceived as a supplement to the semiotic reading
of photographic images that a readers intellection cannot succeed in
absorbing, at once persistent and fleeing, smooth and elusive (Barthes
1977: 54). This supplementary addition of obtuse meaning functions as a
floating signifier without a signified, malleable and flexible in its power
to signify, depending on the context and the object of signification. Again
Barthes asserts the general applicability of his particular reading of obtuse meaning, which he finds in photographic stills taken from Sergei Eisensteins films:
The pictorial rendering of words is here impossible, with the consequence that
if, in front of these images, we remain, you and I, at the level of articulated
language at the level, that is, of my own text the obtuse meaning will not

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succeed in existing, in entering the critics metalanguage. Which means that the
obtuse meaning is outside (articulated) language while nevertheless within interlocution. For if you look at the images I am discussing, you can see this meaning, we
can agree on it over the shoulder or on the back of articulated language.
Thanks to the image . . . or much rather thanks to what, in the image, is purely
image (which is in fact very little,) we do without language yet never cease to understand one another. (Barthes 1977: 61, emphasis mine)

Yet, it is precisely this optimistic belief in the general communicability of

obtuse meaning that Barthes abandons in Camera Lucida.
Instead of arming the generality of the photographic mode of signification, Barthes develops a pair of correlative concepts, studium and punctum, in his pursuit of the specificity of photographic aect in Camera Lucida. He dierentiates the culturally informed and hence coded field of
the studium from the un-coded punctum, which he variously renders as a
hole, a speck, a supplement, a detail, or a partial object. The punctum is
what generates an intense aect by pricking and wounding Barthes.
The dierence between the obtuse meaning and the punctum is subtle yet
crucial. While the obtuse meaning is generally recognizable and agreeable, the punctum is not. It is an insignificant detail inside a certain photograph that animates Barthes, but which does not aect others in the
same fashion. A good example is the Winter Garden photograph, which
Barthes does not include in his book because the photographs punctum
to him would be undetectable by other viewers. As Barthes puts it: I
cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me.
For you, it would be nothing but an indierent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ordinary (1981: 73).
Although Barthes recasts the punctum as time in the second section
of Camera Lucida, it is initially introduced as a detail that has the
value akin to that of a partial object. The punctum is said to be [the]
element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and
pierces him (Barthes 1981: 26). This element arises from inside the photograph and punctures its surface, leaving a hole, as it were. The punctum
pierces and wounds Barthes as a viewer, leaving him heavily aected with
a sense of poignancy. Moreover, this encounter with the punctum arrives
unpredictably, accidental like a cast of the dice (1981: 27).
Significantly, Barthes also associates the punctum not with intelligible
taste or the realm of liking but with the inexplicable realm of loving
that mobilizes his desire. Once aligned with desire in this manner, the
punctum leads him away from the cultured province of conscious taste to
the primordial depths of unconscious desire. Yet precisely because the
punctum is intertwined with its counterpoint, the studium, Barthes freely
moves between the two regions.

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Playing on the psychoanalytic notion of the partial object or fetish,

Barthes also argues: Very often the Punctum is a detail, i.e., a partial
object. Hence, to give examples of punctum is, in a certain fashion, to
give myself up [me livrer] (1980: 73; 1981: 43). This statement begs the
question of the function of the punctum: What does it mean when
Barthes says he gives himself up by giving examples? The verb livrer
signifies at once acts of surrender, deliverance, and indulgence, which
can be assorted as the simultaneous act of giving something up, being
given over to something, and giving oneself over to something. It doubly connotes activity and passivity, pleasure and displeasure. The notion of the punctum defined as a partial object thus indicates the importance of fetishism as a theoretical concept for Barthes. Indeed
fetishism is directly referenced in his discussion of William Kleins photograph of Moscow: [Photography] allows me to accede to an infraknowledge; it supplies me with a collection of partial objects and can
flatter a certain fetishism of mine: for this me which likes knowledge,
which nourishes a kind of amorous preference for it (Barthes 1981:
30).
Zizek interprets Lacans notion of objet petit a (Lacans term for partial object) as a kind of residue, a remnant, a leftover of every signifying
operation, a hard core embodying horrifying jouissance, enjoyment, and
as such an object which simultaneously attracts and repels us (1989:
180). This is what Zizek calls a sublime object: an ordinary thing,
which accidentally attains a kind of sublimity. The notion of sublimity
here refers to the paradoxical immaterial corporeality of objet petit a: an
insignificant, banal, material object that becomes the incarnation of the
incorporeal Real, and attains the power to produce a series of eects in
the symbolic reality of subjects while remaining a trivial thing in itself
(1989: 163).
This formulation of objet petit a as a sublime object can help us understand Barthes definition of the punctum. Barthes defines the punctum in
the following terms: (1) as a detail, often an insignificant one, in a photograph; (2) as an element that eludes the full disclosure of its meaning; and
(3) as a supplementary addition by the spectator to the photograph, and
yet what is nonetheless already there (1981: 55). As if corresponding to
Zizeks definition of objet petit a, the punctum operates as a cause of both
delight and disturbance. Take, for example, the following passage by
Barthes: What I can name cannot really prick me. The incapacity to
name is a good symptom of disturbance (1981: 51). Moreover, in facing
a photograph of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass by Mapplethorpe, he
struggles to translate the aects of attraction and disturbance he feels
into descriptive language. In his words, The eect is certain but un-

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locatable, it does not find its sign, its name; it is sharp and yet lands in
a vague zone of myself; it is acute yet mued, it cries out in silence
(1981: 53).
In light of these remarks, I would like to return to Barthess aforementioned reference to the Lacanian notion of the Real at the beginning of
Camera Lucida: Photography evades us . . . We might say that Photography is unclassifiable . . . it is the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency . . . in short, what Lacan calls the Tuche, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real (1981: 4). This unclassifiability of photography, as I
suggested earlier, derives from the absolute singularity of each photograph. Thus, one could say Photography only provisionally. This is
why Barthes suggests in a parenthetical note, [F]or conveniences sake,
let us accept this universal, which for the moment refers only to the tireless repetition of contingency (1981: 5). Like the Real, an enigmatic kernel which eludes symbolization through language, the ineability of photography can be rendered only conditionally in a form of as if. In other
words, we only have access to this sublime entity of Photography in a
mediated manner through recourse and reference to particular photographs, and it is only this way that we can talk about the aect generated
by Photography.
Accordingly, the ineable essence of the Photograph is presented
through the conceptual framework of Buddhism, which Barthes suggests
problematizes linguistic signification: In order to designate reality, Buddhism says sunya, the void (1981: 5). His Orientalist fascination with
Buddhism notwithstanding, Barthes points out an important aspect of
photographic indexicality. He suggests that in our gesture or reference to
a photograph, we can only name the pre-photographic referent in deictic
language: The Photograph is never anything but an antiphon of Look,
see, Here it is; it points a finger at certain vis-a`-vis, and cannot escape
this pure deictic language (1981: 5). That is, every reference to a photograph must begin with a linguistic indexical sign designating this or
that, as if our reference to the photograph replicates its own referential
relationship to the pre-photographic referent.
Interestingly, in his essay The deaths of Roland Barthes dedicated to
Barthes Derrida mentions just such indeterminacy in the status of the referent in photography. He writes:
[Barthes] first highlighted the absolute irreducibility of the punctum, what we
might call the unicity of the referential (I appeal to this word so as not to have to
choose between reference and referent: what adheres in the photograph is perhaps
less the referent itself, in the present eectivity of its reality, than the implication
in the reference of its having-been-unique). (2001: 57)

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In this manner, Derrida reformulates the problem of indexicality as a

problem of the inevitable contingency of our own temporal relationship
to the photograph. This temporal contingency inherent to the relation between a photograph and its spectator (rather than a photograph and the
pre-photographic referent) is precisely what Barthes calls the second kind
of punctum: This new punctum, which is no longer of form but of intensity, is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (that-has-been), its
pure representation (Barthes 1981: 96). Although Barthes calls this punctum the noeme (essence) of photography, it is an ironical essence whose
property is contingency itself. That is, the awareness of the that-hasbeen (ca-a-ete) of the completely vanished moment of the past embodied
in a photograph is possible only from the present, subjective and temporally contingent point of view of the spectator. Moreover, the temporal
positionality of the spectator is determinable only through her or his recourse to deictic words such as now or maintenant, which guarantee nothing but the possibility of marking a contingent point in chronological
time. Indeed, this is how Barthes seems to understand the noeme of photography when he writes, I am the reference of every photograph, and
this is what generates my astonishment in addressing myself to the fundamental question: why is it that I am alive here and now? (1981: 84).
I believe this fundamental question of subjective temporality characterizes Barthes relationship to photography. Given his interest in this radically subjective sense of time brought forth by the photograph, it comes
as no surprise that Barthes distrusts cinema. For cinema, through its
mechanism of capturing and projecting motion, adds an element of extrinsic, automatic duration to photography, and thereby abolishes the
spectators own subjective sense of time. In his discussion of the punctum
as a supplementary addition, he notes: Do I add to the images in
movies? I dont think so; I dont have time: in front of the screen, I am
not free to shut my eyes; otherwise, opening them again, I would not discover the same image; I am constrained to a continuous voracity (1981:
55). In brief, the speed of cinema does not allow Barthes the slow time
needed for reflection on the past moment to which the image points.
Ironically, however, Barthes insists on the cinematic term spectator to
describe his position as a viewer of photography. Following Christian
Metzs analysis of the primary identification process in cinematic spectatorship, one may argue that Barthes identifies with his gaze by constituting himself as a perceiving subject: that is, to identify with a pure act of
perception, which is the condition of possibility of the perceived . . .
which comes before every there is (Metz 1982: 49). Barthess own reasoning seems equally suggestive: he etymologically links the spectator,
spectacle, spectrum, and specter. Thus, Barthes draws a trajectory

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first from the looking subject (the spectator) to the spectacle object (the
photograph), which emits the spectrum or radiant energy (eidolon) of the
pre-photographic referent, and finally, this conjures the ghostly specter of
the past (the return of the dead). What Derrida calls the haunting
economy of photography characterizes this peculiar spectatorial relationship between the viewer and the photograph (Derrida 2001: 41).
Moreover, it is precisely this eect of apparition or spectral haunting
that links photography to hallucinatory madness, giving rise to what
Barthes calls a temporal hallucination:
Now, in the Photograph, what I posit is not only the absence of the object; it is
also, by one and the same movement, on equal terms, the fact that this object
has indeed existed and that it has been there where I see it . . . The Photograph
then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination. (Barthes 1981: 115)

Yet, despite his disavowal of cinema, Barthess very discussion of photography is haunted by its specter. For instance, Barthes ironically suggests
that it was in a film Federico Fellinis Casanova (1976) that he discovered the link between temporal hallucination and madness that attends the medium of photography: I then realized that there was a sort
of link (or knot) between Photography, madness, and something whose
name I did not know. I began by calling it: the pangs of love (1981:
116). It is this element of love, then, that leads Barthes to discover the
last element of photography: pity. The aect of the punctum as pity
pierces Barthes and promises compassion and resurrection of the dead
vila.
like the luminous arrow of God piercing the heart of St. Theresa of A
On the other hand, this intense pity leads to madness, as in the case of
Nietzche who, on the eve of his descent to madness threw himself in
tears on the neck of a beaten horse: gone mad for Pitys sake (1981: 117).
In the midst of this ecstatic moment of being profoundly aected by his
memory of all the photographs in which he discovered the eect of the
punctum, Barthes enters into the imaginary space of photographic spectacle. He writes: I passed beyond the unreality of the thing represented, I
entered crazily into the spectacle, into the image, taking into my arms
what is dead, what is going to die, as Nietzche did . . . (1981: 117). As if
entering the realm of the dead, Barthes textually and utopically
goes back in time, enlisting the photograph of his mother as his guide,
his Ariadnes thread in his labyrinthine quest to discover the essence of
photography. Here one may argue that the representational absence of
the Winter Garden photograph from the book further enthrones its status
as a sublime object, that which Zizek calls the impossible-real object of
desire (1989: 194).

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This sublime object, as we saw, is a banal object endowed with a certain sublimity, and in which we can experience this very impossibility
of the representation of the Real (Zizek 1989: 194). It is thus only by
the very failure of representation, [that] we can have a presentiment of
the true dimension of the Real. The presence of this sublime object thus
gestures towards the unrepresentable: [I]n the very field of representation, [it] provides a view, in a negative way, of the dimension of what is
unrepresentable (Zizek 1989: 203).
But precisely because the sublime object as a fetish could function as a
necessary cipher that masks the emptiness, the void of the Real, it protects the subject from reaching the traumatic kernel of the Real as pure
emptiness. It is in this sense of protection that I suggest that Barthes also
presents his notion of the punctum. The punctum, here, protects Barthes
from reaching the emptiness at the center of his theory of photography,
that is, the emptiness or unfoundedness of the essence of photography
that he purports to have discovered. In sum, the essence of Barthess essence of photography is desire, the contingency fueled by the sublime
object that is the Winter Garden photograph.
In his exposition of Lacans notion of the symptom as sinthome, Zizek
suggests that the sinthome points to the subjects need for the symptom,
because rather than being a pathological imbalance to be eradicated, the
symptom as sinthome is the only positive support of the subject that allows the subject to function in the symbolic realm:
In other words, symptom is the way we the subjects avoid madness, the
way we choose something (the symptom-formation) instead of nothing (radical
psychotic autism, the destruction of the symbolic universe) through the binding
of our enjoyment to a certain signifying, symbolic formation which assures a minimum of consistency to our being-in-the-world. (Zizek 1989: 75)

The symptom as sinthome, then, should be understood as a veil, which

prevents the subject from discovering the terrible truth that there is indeed
nothing behind the screen the symptom projects. Is it a coincidence that
Barthes endows the punctum with a certain depth? The punctum, we
might say, is a kind of screen that presents an imaginary depth, yet beneath which we will find the nothingness that necessitates its very existence.
Indeed, at the ecstatic moment of jouissance (the moment when Barthes
is swallowed by the aect of madness, love, and pity) the flat surface of
the photograph, which earlier agonized Barthes with its metonymic platitude of Death, is transformed into an imaginary space of depth. Curiously, this scene in Camera Lucida follows Barthess reference to his

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viewing of Fellinis film. At this juncture, cinema as the haunting double

of photography becomes indistinguishable from the latter, and enables
Barthes to discuss the utopian depth of photographic spectacle. In this regard, it is helpful to turn to Barthess evocation of the punctum as a kind
of cinematic o-screen space. For instance, in speaking of the punctum
Barthes quotes Andre Bazins dictum that the screen of cinema is not a
frame but a hideout (Barthes 1981: 55):
[T]he man or woman who emerges from it continue living: a blind field [un
champ aveugle] constantly doubles our partial vision. Now, confronting millions
of photographs, including those which have a good studium, I sense no blind field
[un champ aveugle]: everything which happens within the frame dies absolutely
once this frame is passed beyond. When we define the Photograph as a motionless
image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means
that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down,
like butterflies. Yet once there is a punctum, a blind field [un champ aveugle] is created (is divined). (Barthes 1981: 55)

By incorporating the notion of a blind field (un champ aveugle) into his
discussion of the photograph, Barthes thus creates a kind of o-screen
space. As Peter Brunette and David Wills suggest, the punctum endows
the photograph with the structure of the moving images (Brunette and
Wills 1989: 111).
Now, the o-screen space in cinema, especially in a conventional narrative film, establishes the impression of the spatial continuity of the represented scene in the areas that are blocked from the view of the spectator:
namely, the space above, below and beyond each side of the frame, as
well as the space behind the set and the camera. Through the techniques
of continuity editing, shot/reverse shot, reframing, and camera movements such as panning, the spectator is allowed to imagine the continuing
existence of the characters and objects in the diegesis of a film, even when
they are not depicted on the screen. In particular, the moving camera, in
using pans and tracking shots, creates a mobile frame that enhances our
sense of three-dimensional space inside the screen. Additionally, the eect
of this mobile frame is inseparable from the duration of time in which
such camera movements take place. O-screen space can also be suggested by the characters whose looks and gestures connote the existence
of something outside the frame. Similarly, the intrusion of something or
someone moving into the frame can also create the sense of an expanded
space outside the frame (Bordwell and Thompson 2001: 216217). Most
of all, the spectators willingness to imagine the invisible space outside the
frame plays a significant role in establishing the o-screen space.

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A new question thus arises: how does the blind field created by the
punctum correspond to the cinematic o-screen space? The connection between the blind field and the o-screen space is oered by the notion of
what Barthes calls a kind of subtle beyond [une sorte de hors-champ
subtil ]. Although the English translation erases the direct reference to the
notion of the field indicative of the field of vision, the original phrase de
hors-champ plays with the cinematic concept of o-screen space/out-offield (le hors-champ) as well as with a connotation of a field beyond or
out of reach (hors). In aligning the pornographic photograph with an
anesthetizing quality of the studium and the erotic photograph with an
animating quality of the punctum, Barthes suggests that [the erotic photograph] takes the spectator outside its frame [hors de son cadre], and it
is there that I animate this photograph and that it animates me. The
punctum, then, is a kind of subtle beyond [une sorte de hors-champ subtil ]
as if the image launched desire beyond what it permits us to see
(1981: 59).
Barthes calls this movement of going beyond the frame of the photograph and entering the imagined o-frame space the right moment, the
kairos of desire (1981: 59). What does he mean by the kairos of desire?
The term kairos suggests that the space Barthes claims to enter through
photographic spectacle is outside the realm of chronological time. If
kairos is understood to be a moment of the fulfillment of truth that intervenes and suspends our chronological sense of the time (Lindroons
1998: 44), Barthess reference to the right moment in the photographic
works of Mapplethorpe points to the intense moment of jouissance: the
impossible fulfillment of desire. The punctum understood in this manner,
then, becomes an aective index that directs Barthes towards the timeless
realm of plenitude, away from the dual threats of death and lack.
Through an intense aective movement (fueled by erotic desire, madness,
love, or pity) that carries him beyond the frame of the photograph
Barthes narrativizes a momentary return to the realm outside language
and symbolization. The punctum animates otherwise still photographs,
and allows Barthes to enter the o-screen, psychic space of his own desire, a space that is unknown even to himself before he embarks on his
long, labyrinthine quest for the essential features of Photography.
Barthess reference to the metaphor of Ariadnes thread is, therefore,
over-determined; the unseeable blind spot is not only an eect of the
punctum but it is also a crucial element of his narrativization of his quest
to find the essence of Photography. The labyrinthine structure of
Camera Lucida as a text and the blind, non-knowledge of the desire that
guides Barthes inquiry are, in fact, complementary in nature. Here it
may be worthwhile to turn to Pascal Bonitzers essay titled, Partial

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vision: Film and the labyrinth, which he originally presented in Barthess seminar on the Labyrinth at the Colle`ge de France on January 27,
1979, one year before the publication of Camera Lucida. In this essay Bonitzer oers an intriguing discussion of an anity between the structure
of the labyrinth and the constitutive blind spot in the self-knowledge of
the subject (Bonitzer 1981: 63). While Bonitzers emphasis is on the significance of the partial vision created by the blind spot and the careful
manipulation of the subjective camera in the filmic genre of suspense, his
reading of a short story written by Luis Jorge Borges, points to a particular narrative economy that characterizes the style of Camera Lucida.
Bonitzer argues that the eects of suspense and surprise folded into the
labyrinthine structure of Borges narrative hinge upon the blind spot,
or non-knowledge of the first-person narrators own identity (i.e., that he
is the Minotaur):
What is important is that our blindness is reflected in that of the narrator. Apparently he does know himself any better than we do . . . it is as if the story confronted us with our own blind spot. At the heart of every labyrinth, in fact,
there is the blind spot. And if the subject of the narrative wanders in the labyrinth
of his own blindness, the narrative in turn becomes for us readers a labyrinth in
which we wander until someone like Theseus, just a name, attempts to deliver us
from it. (Bonitzer 1981: 57)

Just like the reader of Borges short story, the reader of Camera Lucida
shares the blindness of the narrator about his self. Instead of providing
an objective, theoretical inquiry on photography, Barthes oers a narrative of an inwardly, subjective quest to discover the kernel of his desire.
Camera Lucida is in this sense a keenly reflexive text that problematizes
the very premise of its own epistemological inquiry: the desire for an objective, scientific knowledge of photography in general. Barthes expresses his predicament, facing the disparity between science and subjectivity, or, to put it dierently, between semiotic theory and the
personal memoir: I found myself at an impasse and, so to speak, scientifically alone and disarmed (1981: 7). Barthes begins his reflexive journey with the awareness of this impasse, and it is precisely this awareness
that marks the singularity of Camera Lucida as a text.
Barthes is aware of the diculty of articulating and translating the affect generated by photography into theoretical language, but he is equally
aware that without going through this inarticulable realm of aect he is
not able to broach the issue of photographic spectatorship. Barthes therefore must position himself as both an inhabitant of the labyrinth, the
Minotaur who is blind to his own origin (i.e., his own desire), and as

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Theseus, an outsider who enters the labyrinth in quest of the Minotaur

(i.e., the essence of photography), led by Ariadnes thread (i.e., the
Winter Garden photograph). Barthes as a theoretician cannot reach a scientific, objective knowledge of Photography without killing his own desire, which is in fact constitutive of the ineable essence of photography. This is why he proposes, in a radical gesture, to turn the very
singularity of his subjective experience into the foundation of a theoretical
discourse: [W]hy mightnt there be, somehow, a new science for each object? A mathesis singularis (and no longer universalis)? So I decided to
take myself as mediator for all Photography (1981: 8).

4.

Aesthetic judgment

In conclusion, I would like to briefly comment on the implications Barthess foregrounding of his subjective desire as the basis of his theoretical inquiry has on the Kantian notion of aesthetic judgment. Rosalind
Krauss, following the work of Pierre Bourdieu, calls photography an art
moyen (middle-brow art). Photography occupies the middle-ground between high art and popular culture because its appreciation often hinges
upon the indexical quality of the photograph (to gesture towards the past
existence of the referent) and the identification of its subject matter,
rather than the formal aesthetic judgment of the photographic image
(Krauss 1999: 169182). Photography as the art moyen is the art of ordinary people who make an interested judgment of personal taste instead of a disinterested judgment of cultivated taste. According to
Bourdieu, most people bring to bear their cultural values and socioeconomic interests on their judgments of photographs. Bourdieu thus
problematizes Kants categorical exclusion of interests, including
charm, emotion, ethics, and desire from the realm of proper
aesthetic judgment (Bourdieu 1990: 8586).
Bourdieus theorization of photography in terms of interest rather than
disinterest is useful, and comes close to Barthes emphasis on the aective investment of desire in his discussion of photography. Yet he diers
from Barthes on one crucial point: Bourdieu bases his argument on the
generalizable, objective validity of popular taste, while Barthes insists
on the impossibility of such a generalization. In so doing Bourdieu ends
up rearming the universality of a purportedly subjective judgment that
underpins Kants definition of the aesthetic judgment. According to Kant:
We must begin by fully convincing ourselves that in making a judgment of taste
(about the beautiful) we require [ansinnen] everyone to like the object, yet without

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this likings being based on a concept . . . and that this claim to universal validity
belongs so essentially to a judgment by which we declare something to be beautiful that it would not occur to anyone to use this term without thinking of universal validity. (Kant 1987: 57)

Although the problem of the proper aesthetic judgment of the beautiful

may not be applicable to the discourse on photography, the problem of
the subjective universal still haunts it. This problem becomes most apparent in contemporary semiotic discourse on photographic indexicality,
and its reliance on the purportedly mechanical basis of the photographic
signs fidelity to the pre-photographic referent.
Anticipating this problem in advance, and as if to salvage the importance of desire, which Kant eliminates as a primitive domain of sensation,
Barthes uses his own desire as a radical point of departure for his search
of the subjective universality of the photographic essence. At the same
time, as his reference to the impossibility of reaching the center of the labyrinth attests, Barthes does not (against the interpretations of critics like
Batchen and Tagg) present his meditation on photography as a universal
truth. As I have argued, Photography reveals its essence to be absolute
contingency. Ultimately, what Barthes discovers and communicates to us
is the absolute singularity of our subjective experience that comes from
the aect of viewing a photograph.
As I have demonstrated in this article, despite the tendency to read
Barthess theory of photography as a naive armation of photographic
indexicality, his theory problematizes our very desire to believe in this
indexicality. I began by investigating the presumed analogical status
of the photograph in its relation to the real, which I suggested is always already haunted by the possibility of betrayal, alteration, and infidelity. From there I proceeded to discuss how the spectatorial investment in the fidelity of the photographic sign to the pre-photographic
referent is characterized by the structure of the symptom. The notion
of indexicality in this sense is a kind of a constitutive symptom that
on the one hand is necessary in order for the discourse of photography
to foreground its medium specificity (based on fidelity to the real), and
yet, on the other hand, undermines the purported universality of such
a discourse. Barthess reflexive exposition of his subjective desire in the
course of his search for the objective essence of photography, highlights, through the very notion of indexicality, the impossibility of
isolating the universal, objective quality of photography from the subjective, aective investment of the spectator. In so doing he oers
not only a theory of Photography but also a new method for its
pursuit.

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Yuriko Furuhata (b. 1973) is an assistant professor at McGill University 3yurikofu1@yahoo.
com4. Her research interests include film theory, Japanese film, literature, and visual culture.
Her publications include Desiring resistance in the age of globalization (2004); and Returning to actuality: Fukeiron and the landscape film (2007).