Photography as a Medium: Proust’s Punctum in the Lacan’s Mirror

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

The article discusses the specificity of photography as an important component of the field of modern mass media in the context of Roland Barthes’s works. In the first part of the article, an analysis of the genealogy of a photographic medium in the texts of Marcel Proust is undertaken. In this connection, the notion of fetishistic trait was singled out. The fetishistic trait serves as a center for the crystallization of image as an object of desire. Further, Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory helped to deepen the understanding of the fetishistic trait with the help of two concepts: the gaze of the Other and the object petit a. Normal and clinical aspects of the fetishisation of the visible world were identified. From this point of view, Barthes’s concept of punctum was analysed in its multilayer content and internal contradictions. In conclusion, a generalization has been made about the fetishist mechanisms that operate within the photographic medium, and the historical dynamics of the latter.