Is another punctum possible?

In this article I will take up Eric S. Jenkins’ (2013) suggestion that we need to learn from, but ultimately go beyond, Roland Barthes's concept of the punctum to describe a new kind of impersonal affective experience of animation. A new punctum needs to be a novel concept that grasps how animated images produce an illusion of movement by affecting perception and an ideological level of comprehension or miscomprehension. To achieve this aim we need to start, as Jenkins does, with Barthes's analysis of the photographic image. To understand how he arrived at the punctum, we need to imagine Barthes sitting at his writing desk, fixing his attention on an image, possibly with a blanket over his head, so as to block out any interference (Figure 4.1).

As he gazes deeply into the photograph, Barthes experiences something that goes beyond the subject of the image. His immersion in it is penetrated by the punctum. This is, as Jenkins points out, part of a now renowned distinction Barthes makes between the studium (the subject of the photo) on one hand, and the way the photo itself pierces the viewer's observation of the photo and in doing so transforms their perception of the image on the other. This rupture in the experience of the still image is considered, in Barthes's poststructuralist terms, as part of the language of the image: a punctuation in the speech images use to communicate with their audiences.

What is astute about Jenkins referencing of the punctum is his grasping of the opportunities Barthes seems to offer to go beyond a linguistic reading of still images, and address, as such, affective experiences, which might similarly pierce the perception and influence comprehension. This is a complex theoretical move, since although Barthes explicitly points to a media experience based on intensity rather than just detail (p 575), he distances his analysis from moving images. Indeed, as Jenkins notes, Barthes argues that the experience of photography is not at all like that of a moving image (p 576). In fact, one gets the impression that this distancing has something to do with Barthes's concern for the eventual death of the photographic image. It is certainly a mournful Barthes that we encounter here since he suggests that it is the new technology of movement that threatens the old punctum.