Memory and the body: "you are not the stuff of which you are made"

Last week you may remember Silbi talking about looking at a picture of herself and realizing that the person in the photo is no longer in existence. That comment immediately reminded me of this portion of a lecture by Richard Dawkins (in which he quotes a book by Steve Grand). Dawkins underscores this idea that the temporal continuity of one's body (i.e. the "you" that exists through time) is not really a fixed material but rather something closer to a wave (or chain reaction). I think this point is incredibly interesting in relation to Barthes ideas about photography and memory. The photograph not only freezes motion, but it freezes a (false) representation of the body as a fixed material entity. Do you remember how we talked about Peircean signs (symbol, index, icon)? Indexical signs are often associated with notions of "evidence" (i.e. smoke is an index of fire). Yet the indexical footprint of the personal photo seems to represents a sort of false evidence: an illusory connection to one's former mind and body. Feel free to check out the whole lecture here. And more TED (Technology Engineering Design) lectures here.