Another Punctum: Animation, Affect, and Ideology

• Published in: Critical inquiry Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 575 - 591
• Main Author: Jenkins, Eric S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Chicago Press 01-03-2013; University of Chicago, acting through its Press
• Subjects: Animation; Ideology; Media; Photography
• ISSN: 0093-1896; 1539-7858
• DOI: 10.1086/670046

When numerous scholars, from Christian Metz to Jacques Derrida, Richard Grusin to Victor Burgin, Jacques Ranciere to Rosalind Krauss discuss a work, as they have Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, one can expect the critical ground to be well trod. Indeed, the book's two major concepts have garnered so much attention that their depictions approach consensus. As the epigraph indicates, Camera Lucida outlines two punctums--of detail and of death--that Barthes discovers in the "Photograph." Given his phenomenological commitment and ontological desire to "learn at all costs what Photography was 'in itself," many readers understand the punctum as exclusive to photography, making any attempt to expand the concept to other media seem dubious, at best. Here, Jenkins elaborates the concept of the punctum and considers its importance to media and ideology.