Disappearance in the films of Chantal Akerman

Abstract

‘Disappearance’ in Chantal Akerman’s films means, in this essay, disappearance from a specific person. The attributes of the one who disappears are charged with special meaning for the one left behind, the one affected by the disappearance. It is not that someone used to be present and now they are not, but that one person is no longer there for another person. A dyad is involved, but its presence is felt from the perspective of half of that dyad. Whence the aptness of Barthes’s prologue to The Lover’s Discourse, that today that discourse is one of extreme loneliness.