Staging thought: The essay film and the consciousness of cinema

This article examines Bernard Stiegler’s notions of cinematic consciousness and tertiary memory, developed in his philosophy of time and technology, in relation to the essay film’s aesthetic and storytelling features. I begin by illustrating Stiegler’s ideas in relation to cinema, consciousness, memory and technology; making use of the recent and widely acclaimed TV series reboot Westworld, I employ it as an allegory of the functionality of cinema as mnemotechnology. Furthermore, considering how the essay film questions cinema’s industrialization effect through Stiegler’s theorization of cinema qua tertiary memory, I look at the work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon (1999) to argue how the essay film is a radical practice that stages thought in order to de-synchronize the consciousness of cinema.