An artists’ book showcases a collection of photographs that allegedly belong to Christian Boltanski at various ages: 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, and 20. Gradually, it becomes clear that the accompanying narrative explains that all the pictures were captured in a single afternoon by Annette Messager, close to the waterfall within Paris’s Parc Montsouris. Interestingly, it’s disclosed that the only accurate portrayal of Christian Boltanski is in the last photograph, albeit at the age of 28 rather than 20. What matters here is not so much the content, the documentation and fixation of reality as such, but the very form and structure that make the gesture of appropriation legitimate.
In 1910, Sigmund Freud introduced one of the most renowned and controversial explanations for “Infantile amnesia”. Freud prompted his patients to recollect their earliest memories and discovered that they encountered difficulties in recalling events from their lives prior to the ages of six to eight. He coined the term “infantile” or “childhood amnesia” in his work titled “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”. We partially remember our childhood because during this time we first face the effects of sexualization, which triggers a strong sense of guilt. The memory, both everyday recollections and everything associated with sexuality and attraction to the mother are erased at this moment. As Melanie Klein later demonstrated in her research, libido is present and begins to form within us even during the period of breastfeeding. And it is ultimately shaped within the unconscious in speech and during the mirror stage, which occurs after the stage of “le complexe de sevrage”. However, the mirror stage is not a complete self-identification with oneself. The subject still remains in a reduced position. Although the captivating power of Imago gives a false sense of wholeness. The ego, as Lacan says, is never an authentic instance. For this, he uses the special term “Méconaissance” – false recognition, an imaginary object with which we identify ourselves.
Childhood, for Boltanski, is a period of complete anonymity. “You are only your memories, and even then, only those that you can resurrect in memory.” Impossibility to identify is a constitutive part of human subjectivity. Later, Boltanski came to the conclusion that childhood cannot be reconstructed; it can only be enacted. “Every truth has the structure of fiction”.
