Memento

The Struggle to Unify Images (Intuitions) and Words (Concepts):

Leonard’s Struggle to Grasp World and Self

Dear Students,

Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film Memento – adopted from Jonathan Nolan’s short story Memento Mori – presents a classic detective motif in which the detective seeking justice gradually discovers that he himself is the perpetrator of the crime, the most classic representation of which is Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. This classic motif defines, in many respects, the basic theme of the course – What is it to be a human being? – and in what sense are we free in raising it?

The film – ostensibly about anterograde amnesia – presents a complex drama with many twists and turns, welcoming multiple interpretations and viewings, leaving its viewers with a sense of the potential fragmentation of human life and, at the close of the film, with a sense of the radical freedom at work in unifying one’s being in the world. The choppy, disjointed, juxtaposition of an ongoing multiplicity of different scenes forces the viewer to, in effect, assume the same position and posture as the protagonist, Leonard, who is likewise trying to make sense – to retain, to bring together, and to unify – a relentless multiplicity of changing, shifting, disjunctive multiplicity of different experiences. Throughout the term, we will return to this movie, viewing it through the conceptual perspectives of different philosophers, in particular our last figure, Nietzsche, whose radical reinterpretation of Kant’s notion of the freedom provides, in my estimation, the most satisfying way of making sense of the images, dialogue, photos, and notations of the movie. For now, however, I want to use our reading on Kant’s theory of knowledge to point out some key elements of the film, and I am going to simplify things drastically, making the film conform in key respects to Kant’s account of what makes experience possible: namely, the synthesis of intuitions and concepts, which is poignantly portrayed in the film as Leonard desperate attempt to synthesize – to combine and unify – images (i.e. intuitions) and words (i.e. concepts).

First and foremost, I want to draw your attention to the essential pairing in the diegetic reality – the scenes and events – of the movie: the pairing of images with words, pictures with descriptions, visual registers with verbal notations. This is Kant’s contrast between “intuitions” (sensory content or “direct representations”) with “concepts (discursive content or “indirect representations”). Keep the following chart in mind as you read what follows:

KANT’S DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTUITIONS AND CONCEPTS AS TYPES OF REPRSENTATIONS
Representations (Vorstellungeng) for Kant’s are ways in which something can be present or placed (stellt) before (vor) a subject. The subject can take herself as “placed before” something singular, a “this,” or “that,” “here,” and “now” and take it as an instance of something general, say a stone, house, or garden.
Intuition Anschauung	What belongs here folks?	Concept Begriff
Sensible Conditions of representations		Intellectual Conditions of representations
Privileged by Empiricism		Privileged by Rationalism
Capacity of receiving representations		Capacity of cognizing an object through these representations
Receptivity of impressions		Spontaneity of concepts
Singular Representation Representation of singularity		General Representation Representation of generality
Object is given		Object is thought
Faculty of sensibility		Faculty of understanding
Faculty of receptivity		Faculty of spontaneity
Affectation		Function
Direct relation to object		Indirect relation to object
Immediate presentation		Mediate re-presentation
That through which something is given		That through which something is thought
Refers immediately to an object		Refers to an object mediately or through a characteristic or maker
Sensible/sensory		Intellectual/Cognitive
Prior to thought		Attendant upon or to intuitions
Experiential Activity		Discursive Activity
Singular representation of an object		General representation of an object
Immediately depends upon the presence of the object		Does not depend upon the object’s immediate self-presentation
Function of Singularity of representations		Functions of Unity among our representations
Analogy with Linguistic Functions
The use of language to refer or pick out something immediately present to one		The use of language to say something about whatever is referred to
Singular terms and directly referential terms		Predicate terms
Indexical terms such as “This,” “that,” “here,” “now,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” “those,” etc.		Natural kinds terms such as “water,” “mammal,” “pine,” “spruce,” “rabbit,” etc.
Memento’s Depiction of the Contrast Between Intuitions and Concepts
Photograph		Words, Notations, or Descriptions (usually alongside the image photographed)
Image (usually a “perspective shot” taken from Leonard’s point of view)		Narration or Dialogue
Immediate Sensory Register (from Leonard’s point of view)		Mediated Narration or Commentary (on Leonard’s part)

The film opens with a photograph, an image, what Kant would classify as an “intuition,” a “direct representation” of something there, and it slowly fades, much as images do after we experience an event, when we try to retain in memory the sensory detail so vivid and immediate in the initial perception. There is almost a visual pun in the film when the photograph, a visual image or what Kant calls an “intuitive representation,” actually fades, reversing the chemical process that develops the Polaroid image, the documentation in image of what just happened. Instead of the linear sequence of prior event followed by the developing clarity and definition of the photographic image, we reverse time and move toward the event, but in doing so, we lose the image, which seems to fade away as we approach the actual event photographed. It’s disturbing to see the initial clarity and resolution of the photographic image gradually fade and altogether disappear, leaving us with a tabula rasa, disturbing because it is as if we were losing our access to, or grasp upon, what is shown. What’s truly disturbing, however, is the temporal pairing of this fading or aphanisis – the dissolution or disintegration – with our increasing proximity to what really happened. The filmmaker seems to ask us whether proximity to the real event – the truth that we seek – is necessarily purchased at the prohibitively high cost of the erasure of clarity, the fading of determinacy, the dissolution of solidity. Perhaps Nolan is suggesting here that “actual” event, the happening that makes its impact upon our person in all its potential traumatic directness, is itself a fiction, a retrospective creation of something that never was, however much our images and words point to, and reach for, it retrospectively. Even at the opening of the film we are left with question: Is our access to reality mediated by our desperate attempts to unify images with descriptions, which, in a terrifying way, fade and dissolve as we approximate the truth itself, the event in all of its presumed unfiltered directness and absolute immediacy? From a Kantian philosophical perspective, the question posed is about the possibility of experience, our access to the world, which is not the question of whether I know or not, but, instead, the much more fundamental question of what experience and knowledge are, what makes our experience possible.

Notice that the photo offers a “direct representation” of something there, or what was there, and it is composed of colors, shapes, and contours, what Kant calls intuitive presentations. The photograph directly presents the situation; it is not indirect or through a discursive representation such as words and descriptions, which conceive reality in general terms. I want you to equate the photo and the “point of view shots” from Leonard’s perspective – for example, the recurring image of Teddy – with Kant’s term “intuition,” which are presentations of sensory data – the colors, sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feels that present themselves whenever we are sentient. Kant speaks about one source of “representations” as “intuitions” or “sensibility,” understood as our passive capacity to receive, from the objects of the world, the sensory registration of sights, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds, all of which directly give or immediately present the object to us. Kant calls this faculty “sensibility” or our “intuitive receptivity,” and it directly presents, as here and now, objects in our midst. In one scene, Leonard closes his eyes, then opens them again, closing off and then receiving again the full spectrum of visual, tactile, and auditory sensory data, which impinges upon him as a passively receptive subject, and he declares, “Yes, the world is there,” which Kant would understand as the flow of sensory data – “intuitive” representations – that come whether we will them or not. We can close our eyes, but when we open them, sensory data floods in. This is one source of knowledge or experience for Kant, but alone it is insufficient to make up experience. What else is needed? What other component has to come into play for us to have normal, integrated experiences that allow us to know the world about us? What other type of “representation” do we need to make Leonard a functioning human being?

Concepts of course, which are depicted in the film by words, notions and descriptions, which offer so many ways of “conceiving,” “taking up” or “making sense of” the sensory content in the photos, which otherwise cannot figure, as Leonard says, “as a fact.” When we see a photograph with writing alongside it, we have a perfect cinematographic way of understanding Kant’s claim that only a “synthesis” or “combination” or “unification” of intuitions (sensibility) and concepts (understanding) can add up to a meaningful experience. Every time Leonard has some visual experience or holds a photograph, he talks about it, makes notations about how it should be conceived or interpreted, how it should be linked to other possible sensory experiences, making all of his various notations and descriptions – whether words alongside pictures, voice-off narrative, or diagrams on the wall – into so many Kantian concepts. Kant claims that “intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty.” This is beautifully depicted in Leonard’s struggle to make sense of his current situations, in which he desperately tries to synthesize or combine the right concept – word or description – with the appropriate intuitions, whether his own sensory field or his photos. Said differently, Leonard is actively striving to keep things together, to make sense of things, to adequately conceive of what he sees through his sensory modalities, and this captures Kant’s idea that human experience is an active synthesizing or combing or processing of sensory data.

Notice that, in the absence of concepts – ways of noting, talking about, describing, conceiving or, simply put, making sense of what is directly presented in sensory data – one loses the ability to maintain one’s sense of self, one’s grasp of who one is. Leonard risks losing his identity when he cannot hold onto a relatively stable and coherent world. Unless Leonard finds the right way of putting the world together, he will not be able to put himself back together. Said differently and all at once, the ability to “make sense” of the world is exactly the same activity of “making sense” of oneself as someone with a past, a present, and a future – that is, a continuous experience of a single, unified world. The continuity of the world and the coherence of the self are the two essential sides of the same coin, which Kant understands as the active – what he calls “spontaneous” – processing or conceptualizing bring together of sensibility and understanding. Teddy taunts and mocks Leonard numerous times throughout the film for not knowing who he, Leonard, is, precisely because he can’t keep track of other people and situations, who presumably belong to a single, unified world. When Leonard loses track of his having a past, present, and future, he loses his basic grasp of being a human being. Simply put, consciousness just is a unification of past, present, and future, and without such active grasping or holding on to one’s being in time – one’s past, one’s present, one’s future – one risks going out of business as a human being.

Kant addresses this key issue in his claim that forms of human intuition are space and time. What is meant by saying that the forms of intuition are space and time? Whenever we are directly or immediately related to an object – again, take the visual register of Teddy’s annoying smiling face – it is necessarily at a certain time or place. Whenever we have any sensory presentations, they necessarily have a temporal and a spatial index: in other words, we can always ask when and where they happened, and this is the only way in which objects can be presented to us directly. Different times are necessarily ordered in terms of before, during, or after, just as different places are ordered in terms of a totality of contiguous places. If Leonard loses earlier experiences, he can’t maintain a single, unified perspective upon his life, and he risks becoming as many selves as he has experiences. Also, his inability to make sense of places in terms of returning to them prevents him from having a single field of actions in the world. He simply does not know where he is because he can’t retain where he has been. For Kant, the unity and singularity of time and place – one time in which all times figure; one world in which all places have their place – are necessarily constitutive of the unity of the self, what Kant calls “the transcendental unity of apperception.” What he means by this last, ugly phrase is rather simple and commonsensical: one must be able to hold on to all of one’s experiences, and if we cannot carry out that task, one risks going out of business as a unified perspective upon, or viewpoint on, the world.

TIME CONSCIOUSNESS:

TEDDY

You read it off your fucking photo. You

don't know me, you don't even know who

you are.

LEONARD

I'm Leonard Shelby, I'm from San

Francisco and I'm -

TEDDY

(bloody grin)

That's who you were, you don't know who

you are.

LEONARD

Shut your mouth!

TEDDY

Lemme take you down in the basement and

show you what you've become.

In this scene, Teddy right provokes Leonard to understand his past in terms of what he has become, of who he is now and what he is now capable to doing, which is seemingly discontinuous with his former self. Consider another scene when Teddy raises the same basic question of whether Leonard can figure himself out in terms of a retained past, a current situation, and a future end.

TEDDY (cont'd)

You haven't got a clue, have you? You

don't even know who you are?

LEONARD

Yes, I do. I don't have amnesia. I

remember everything about myself up until

the incident. I'm Leonard Shelby, I'm

from San Fran -

TEDDY

That's who you were, Lenny. You don't

know who you are, who you've become since

the incident. You're wandering around,

playing detective... and you don't even

know how long ago it was.

TEDDY

Because you're relying on them alone. You

Don't remember what you've discovered or

how. Your notes might be unreliable.

LEONARD

Memory's unreliable.

Teddy snorts.

LEONARD (cont'd)

No, really. Memory's not perfect. It's

not even that good. Ask the police,

eyewitness testimony is unreliable. The

cops don't catch a killer by sitting

around remembering stuff. They collect

facts, make notes, draw conclusions.

Facts, not memories: that's how you

investigate. I know, it's what I used to

do. Memory can change the shape of a room

or the color of a car. It's an

interpretation, not a record. Memories

can be changed or distorted and they're

irrelevant if you have the facts.

Here, Leonard seems to equate memory with simple images and facts with images for with the appropriate descriptions have been given. Leonard assumes the persona of a detective, one who puts the pieces together, fits images and sensory scenes with descriptions, ways of conceiving such images that transforms them from floating questions marks into solid assertions about the world. Leonard’s “facts,” then, are the successful unification or synthesis of image and word, picture and description, intuition and concept, and what he calls his “system,” his active cognitive processing of data, is nothing nor less than Kant’s account of the type of activity necessary for humans to have experience and knowledge.