The recent publication of André Bazin's Écrits complets (2018), an enormous two-volume edition of 3000 pages which increases ten-fold Bazin's available corpus, provides opportunities for renewed reflection on, and possibly for substantial revisions of, this key figure in film theory. On the basis of several essays, I propose a drastic rereading of Bazin's most explicitly philosophical notion of “ontology.” This all too familiar notion, long settled into a rather dust-laden couple (“Bazin and ontology”) nonetheless retains its fascination. Rather than attempting to provide a systematic reworking of this couple along well established lines, particularly those defined by realism and indexicality, this article proposes to shift the notion of ontology in Bazin from its determination as actual existence toward a more radical concept of ontology based on the notion of mimesis, particularly as articulated, in a Heideggerian mode, by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. This more properly ontological concept, also paradoxically and radically improper, is shown to be at work already in Bazin's texts, and it allows us to see that far from simplistically naturalizing photographic technology, Bazin does the contrary: he technicizes nature. If Bazin says that the photograph is a flower or a snowflake, he also implies that, like photographs, these are likewise a kind of technical artifact, an auto-mimetic reproduction of nature. Bazin likewise refers to film as a kind of skin falling away from the body of History, an accumulating pellicule in which nature and history disturbingly merge. This shifted perspective on Bazin's thinking is extended further in reference to Georges Didi-Huberman on the highly mimetic creatures known as phasmids, insects that mimic their environement. I extend this into the dynamic notion of eternal return, an implicit dimension of Bazin's thinking, clarified here in reference to Giorgio Agamben and the “immemorial image” which, like Bazin's “Death Every Afternoon,” presents an eminently repeatable deathly image, an animated corpse-world that can be likened to hell.

中文翻译：

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安德烈·巴赞的永恒回归：本体论修订

最近出版的安德烈·巴赞的《Écrits complets》（2018 年）是一本 3000 页的两卷本，将巴赞的可用语料库增加了 10 倍，为重新思考和可能对电影理论中的这个关键人物进行大量修改提供了机会. 在几篇文章的基础上，我提议对巴赞最明确的“本体论”哲学概念进行一次彻底的重读。这个再熟悉不过的概念，早已成为一对尘土飞扬的夫妇（“巴赞和本体论”），但仍然保持着它的魅力。与其试图按照既定的路线对这对夫妇进行系统的改造，尤其是那些由现实主义和索引性定义的路线，本文提议将 Bazin 中的本体论概念从其作为实际存在的确定性转变为基于模仿概念的更激进的本体论概念，特别是由 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe 以海德格尔模式阐明的。这个更恰当的本体论概念，也是自相​​矛盾和根本不恰当的，已经在巴赞的文本中显示出来，它让我们看到，巴赞远非简单地将摄影技术自然化，而是相反：他将自然技术化。如果巴赞说照片是一朵花或一片雪花，那么他也暗示，就像照片一样，这些也是一种技术人工制品，一种对自然的自动模仿再现。巴赞同样将电影称为一种从历史身体上脱落的皮肤，自然与历史令人不安地融合在其中的不断累积的表皮。对巴赞思想的这种转变观点进一步延伸到乔治·迪迪-休伯曼关于高度模仿生物的研究，称为 phasmids，模仿其环境的昆虫。我将其扩展到永恒回归的动态概念，这是巴赞思想的一个隐含维度，在此参照乔治·阿甘本和“远古形象”进行了澄清，就像巴赞的“每天下午的死亡”一样，它呈现了一个非常可重复的死亡形象，一个动画可以比作地狱的尸体世界。