The Montage

As Didi-Huberman summarizes throughout Images in Spite of All, Wajcman believes that the image cannot represent the Shoah, that the Shoah is in fact unimaginable. Didi-Huberman claims that “in Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema, in Wajcman’s view, we see a profusion of images” but “in Lanzmann’s Shoah we would see a single image” (127). Didi-Huberman points out this apparent inconsistency in Wajcman’s beliefs on page 133 and argues that, to remain consistent, Wajcman must “declare that Shoah’s nine and a half hours of images are not images.” This, of course, would be absurd, for Shoah is a documentary, a documentary that derives its power not simply from the information given by the survivors but from the fact that we see the survivors. As Didi-Huberman points out, “If Lanzmann had wanted to keep to speech alone, he would not have made a film but rather a book or a radio program” (133).

But is this actually an inconsistency in Wacjman or simply Didi-Huberman’s misreading of Wacjman? What is it exactly that Wacjman is objecting to? If it is any representation of the Holocaust at all, then Didi-Huberman is surely right. But even if Wacjman means simply photographs and film then this is still an untenable position.

For in the second paragraph of page 133, Didi-Huberman explains how artists and historians have managed to show the unshowable. The implication is that the Holocaust could be imagined in just the same way. But the photograph, that object which is never itself but only its referent, seems unsuited for this task. It is simply too still, too real, which is why Didi-Huberman impresses upon the reader the idea of montage, and a greater meaning emerging through that process. This is the lynchpin of Didi-Huberman’s argument. Montage creates meaning greater than the sum of its parts. Something happens when hundreds of images are placed next to each other. Even four images have an effect.