GEORGES DIDI-HUBERMAN

FRAGMENTARY IMAGE AS HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

Didi-Huberman begins from the Holocaust and the insufficiency of representation, but refuses the temptation to declare the event simply “unimaginable.” Such a declaration can erase existing traces.

In Images malgré tout, the four clandestine Auschwitz photographs become fragmentary images: partial, damaged, situated, and nevertheless capable of historical knowledge.

An image does not have to show everything in order to show something true.

Conceptual nodes: fragment, trace, partial image, surviving image, ethics of looking.

Benjamin → fragment / trace → Didi-Huberman → fragmentary image as historical knowledge.

Removal audit: without Didi-Huberman, the Brain loses a rigorous defence of partial images against both total representation and the claim that representation is impossible.