Annette Kuhn's "Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination"

Kuhn's overall theme is the interaction between past and present, past and future on memory, remembering, and meaning-making. When talking about the bombsite in the movie Mandy, she states that "the mise-en-scene of the bombsite speaks a preoccupation that, unspoken yet insistent, pervades to entire film: the relation between past and future. It suggests that the future is rooted in the past, that the past will leave its marks on the future" (44). The past leaves imprints on the future self. This relates to Kuhn's own examination of the photographs taken of her as a child. How her mother remembers the scene and her daughter is different from how Kuhn remembers. The past influencing the future also relates to Derrida's ideas about the signature. The signature - although may physically happen in the past - is not determined until the future. The past imprints of the signer are discovered in the future. The signature also implies a certain absence. Kuhn states something similarly about photography. She says, "the photograph's seizing of a moment always, even in that very moment, anticipates, assumes, loss. The record looks towards a future time when things will be different, anticipating a need to remember what will soon be past" (49). The text and the photograph imply a future audience with a reading that is different from the past. Discovering the imprints of the self, or discovering the signature is an act that assumes a future audience.