Abstract

A This master's thesis explores the question of origins and death in Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire ( s ) du cinéma (1987-1997). Methodologically, technically, and conceptually, the philosophical and historiographic perspectives offered in Histoire ( s ) are shown to reside on the "Before" and "After": two potentialities that are in perpetual exchange, displacement and convergence throughout the work. The dichotomy of birth and death is explained in terms of loss and survival, search for cinema in the wake of its disappearance, return to the origins as a way of defying death and paying tribute to the dead. Histoire ( s ) du cinéma is analysed as a "writing" of history, a "process" of memory, and a "practice" of montage. These three modes cross-fertilize each other and the nature of their exchanges is explored, using certain concepts from Foucault, Benjamin and Deleuze. The epistemological presuppositions of Godard's work are analysed from a "historical-archeological" point of view which investigates the relationship between history and memory, and shows how a redefinition of history through memory is undertaken, in Histoire ( s ), by a renewed conception of montage. In particular, the question of the return to the origins is addressed both as redemption and as an act of resistance, based on the belief in the image's capacity of restoring a belief in this world.