Derrida explains that remembrance is “[…] to remember the others, the other others and the others in oneself […]” (77). In rephrasing, remembrance is an act of (re)membering all the traces of others outside and within one’s self. The “One” is the self-referential “I” that views the world; it is the first person point of view in which every individual confronts the world. This first person point of view not only “guards against” the others, but it also “keeps” within itself “some of the other” (78). For instance, in Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes attempts to conjure, or invoke memories of his recently deceased mother, by looking through photographs of her at various stages of life. Barthes questions whether he indeed recognizes his mother in the photographs, or if they are merely “fragments” of her existence (Barthes 65). Barthes notes that while viewing the images of his mother: “It was not she, and yet it was no one else” (Barthes 66). The “she” that is not the mother he remembers is merely Barthes’ self-referential “I” guarding itself against differentiation; it is an act of self-preservation by establishing a relational other. Barthes’ admittance that the image is of “no one else” is the trace of the other that Derrida suggests we keep within ourselves. In other words, Barthes cannot reconcile the image he currently has of his mother with the image depicted in the photographs.
The defensive gesture that drives Barthes to say that the image is not his mother, is what Derrida explains as a form of “jealous violence,” in which […] the self-otherness or self-difference (the difference from within oneself) […]” protects the first person point of view (78). This “violence” is what happens when one’s first person point of view is threatened by the possibility of non-existence. Derrida explains that once we recognize ourselves as a referent in relation to the world “[…] there is a murder, wounding, traumatism” that tries to (re)member itself as a point of reference. (78). The point of self-reference is no longer the same when in conflict, because the self-referential “I” forgets to “remember itself to itself […]” (78). As Barthes tries to hold on to the image he has of his mother, he is simultaneously erasing his mother’s past presence, or history. The conflict is that Barthes does not see what he wants to see and the “‘One differing,” becomes the “One” that is “‘deferring from itself’” (78). This type of denial or deferral, for Derrida, is a form of violence. Barthes cannot see that he does not see the image of his mother, and more importantly he cannot see that he does not see outside his first person point of view.
Derrida later explains that “[…] self-repetition, can only repeat and recall this instituting violence” (79). For Derrida, repetition is the only means for the first person point of view to “affirm itself” and “engage itself” with the outside world (79). However, this repetition is a form of “anticipation of the future to come” (79). So for Barthes, the recalling of the image of his mother is a self-affirming act that allows for a sense of continuity within his first person point of view. Derrida explains that repetition “[…] orders to promise, but it orders repetition, and first of all self-repetition, self-confirmation in a yes, yes” (79). It seems as though Barthes has to begin at the beginning of knowing, not the woman who was his mother, but the woman represented in the photographs, objectively outside his first person point of view; however, as Derrida succinctly expressed we cannot “begin at the beginning” (1).
