Memory and Forgetting
Two interesting perspectives on the question of forgetting are observed by Paul Ricoeur in his Memory, History, Forgetting:
1. Plato provides a myth in which he links anamnnesis, Greek for recollection, "to a prenatal knowledge from which we are said to have been separated by a forgetting that happens when the life of the soul is infused into a body--described as a tomb--a forgetting from birth, which is held to make the search a relearning of what has been forgotton."
2. "For mediating memory, forgetting remains both a paradox and an enigma. A paradox: how can we speak of forgetting except in terms of the memory of forgetting? Otherwise, we would not know that we have forgotton. An enigma, because we do not know, in a phenomenological sense, whether forgetting is only an impediment to evoking and recovering the 'lost time,' or whether it results from the unavoidable wearing away 'by' time of the traces left in us by past events in the form of original affections."
1. Plato provides a myth in which he links anamnnesis, Greek for recollection, "to a prenatal knowledge from which we are said to have been separated by a forgetting that happens when the life of the soul is infused into a body--described as a tomb--a forgetting from birth, which is held to make the search a relearning of what has been forgotton."
2. "For mediating memory, forgetting remains both a paradox and an enigma. A paradox: how can we speak of forgetting except in terms of the memory of forgetting? Otherwise, we would not know that we have forgotton. An enigma, because we do not know, in a phenomenological sense, whether forgetting is only an impediment to evoking and recovering the 'lost time,' or whether it results from the unavoidable wearing away 'by' time of the traces left in us by past events in the form of original affections."
posted by Clean Forest at 2:11 PM
4 Comments:
exactly. recently reading "screen memories" by Freud. The second quote talks so much to Freud's piece!
Love it!
Li
Li,
in Ricoeur's "Memory, History, Forgetting," he refers repeatedly to Bergson's work "Matter and Memory," the book you were reading.
Interesting! How is it that though i'd like to memorized special events, i tend to forget them after a few months? And how come my 70yr-old-grandma still remember a lot of things than i do? I thought our memory declines when we're aging! hmmm:-)
Nutbuk Ug Bulpin --
thanks for your comments.
According to certain authors, forgetting is unavoidabe and there is an unconscious persistence of the past. We all struggle against forgetting, and for tomorrow, one must not forget . . . to remember. Since effort and mind-energy are involved in memory,some people remember certain things for a long time, and they seem to have good memories.
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