Abstract
Foucault published several interviews and articles about cinema in 1970s, and he took the cinema as one of the dispositifs codifying the popular memory. The working class in 19th century invented many ways to write their own memory, but the cinema, by way of popular historical narration, ended the history of the people from the lower depths to write their memory. Foucault analyzed how the controversial (retro and erotic) films in 1970s represented desire and power in historical narration. This paper tries to combine Foucault's "dispositif of popular memory" with the biopolitics, and claims that the memory is also the object of biopolitics and the mnemo-government is part of biopolitic government. The mnemo-government can be traced back to the damnatio memoriae in Roman times, and there are two important forms of mnemo-government in the time of cinema according cognitive science: Orwellian government and Stalinesque government. After all, the cinematic art can invent many ways to resist the mnemo-government.
First Page
52
Last Page
60
Recommended Citation
Li, Yang. 2015. "Foucault and Damnatio Memoriae: An Introduction to the Mnemo-Government of Cinema." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 35, (6): pp.52-60. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol35/iss6/5
