The introduction to Adrian Forty’s “The Art of Forgetting” discusses the uncertain relationship between memory and material objects, particularly regarding societal/ collective memory. Forty builds upon three distinctive points concerning objects and memory to illustrate the doubts in the Aristotelian tradition. He suggests that objects are agents to forgetting and that there is a process to remembering. With this argument Forty establishes a means of further understanding collective memory.
For Aristotle objects are “material enactments of mental decay. […] If objects are made to stand for memory, the decay or destruction of the object implies forgetting” (Forty 4). The issue here is that memory does not lend to a physical description and physical objects endure a different decaying process than that of mental material (Forty 6). This leads to doubts in the relationship between memory and material objects.
These doubts appear through the assumption that objects can replace mental memory. The first of the three is ephemeral monuments, which suggests that “collective memory doesn’t dwell on material objects,” and we get rid of what we don’t want to remember (Forty 5). Then there is Freud with his theory of mental process stating that repression of the ego is similar to forgetting, which is often intentional and desired (Forty 5). The third doubt is the Holocaust memorials, as they both desire to simultaneously remember and forget, challenged by the commemoration of the event without lessoning its severity (Forty 6). These problems illustrate how Western thought assumes forgetting to be more straightforward than it actually is.
Forty states that there are four principle categories that identify objects as agents to forgetting. ...
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...ly take its’ take place. This could allow for a larger audience and formation of collective memory on a global scale accessible form anywhere in the world with accommodating technology. The down side to advancements like this would be the loss of tactility and greater form of disconnection. Perhaps removing the shared experience with strangers at a site specific location may create a new issue with collective memory.
Aware of the lack of research on the topic, the introduction sets the footing to begin to understand how artistic practice and other methods of object making attend to issues related to collective memory. That said, what sorts of impact or influence does individual memory have on collective memory and its relationship with objects?
Works Cited
Forty, Adrian, and Susanne Küchler. "Introduction." The Art of Forgetting. Oxford: Berg, 1999. 1-18. Print.
Leon F. Litwack is the author of Trouble in Mind. Litwack is an American historian and professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He was born in 1929 in Santa Barbara, California. In 1951, Litwack received is Bachelor Degree and then continued to further his education. In 1958, he received his Ph. D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager wrote the book that sparked Litwack's curiosity in history. The book was The Growth of the American Republic. Litwack was in the eleventh grade when he first discovered his interest in history. In 1964, Litwack began teaching at the University of California, where he taught an excess of 30,000 students. Litwack has written other books besides Trouble in Mind. One of the books he wrote was Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery in 1979. In 1980, Litwack was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history of this book and in 1981 he was the winner of the National Book Award. He also wrote North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free State, 1790-1860, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, and The Harvard Guide to African-American History. Litwack has also won many including, the Francis Parkman Prize, the American Book Award, and he was elected to the presidency of the Organization of American Historians. In addition to this, Litwack has been an outstanding teacher and received two notable teaching awards. Litwack's first teaching position was at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he taught from 1958 to 1964. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, Louisiana State University, and the University of Mississippi. As one can see, not only has Litwack been an exceptionally outstanding author, he has also been a very popular and influential teacher.
and Memory in a World Without Relics.” Past and Present. The Past and Present Society,
One of the main concerns of contemporary philosophy has been the role of the memory in the life of the individual and the group, or more precisely - the lack and excess of memory. Memory is something very unreliable, because it causes the same kind of decay that invades our physical bodies, undermining the identity of every individual and every society. Even though human identity is based on historical memory, neither individuals, nor societies should be limited in categorical way by it and the importance of forgetting should not be diminished. In consideration of memory, psychoanalysis and history as disciplines may be merged to provide one with a more expansive view of this phenomenon, without reducing one to the other. Reading Freud's account of melancholia in relation to Nietzsche's account of historical illness can help enhance the understanding one derives from each individual discourse, in addition to highlighting an important theme in contemporary philosophy.
In the short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” the storyline takes place in Chicago, Illinois. This story employs mainly two genre conventions that make it a science fictional reading. The first one is called future science fiction. This is shown in the text because of the tropes of calling the Earth as “Terra” and the futuristic drug called “narkidrine”. Spy Fiction, or Spy-Fi is also another genre convention because of essential tropes such as suspicion and uncertainty. These two genre conventions project the fallacies of the American Government, which Dick uses to persuade the audience into believing that the text is science fiction. Moreover, blending these two distinct genres together makes the storyline much more amusing to the audience because of the supernatural characteristics mentioned above. In the short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” Phillip K. Dick utilizes satire, diction/neologisms, and ethical appeal in order to raise awareness of government interference in daily life for the audience.
Repressed memories is a topic that has been an ongoing dispute among some, however ac...
...These specifics recalled consist of things which, under normal conditions, we probably would not have ever remembered. The number of detailed facts retained about a particular situation is usually commensurate to the intensity of involvement or proximity to the action in question; therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that while these memories are not always perfectly engrained into our minds, interesting arguments exist which support the possibility of substantial and long-term recall of these matters.
The term ‘memory’ evokes the image of a thing, a container for information, or the content of that container. Thus, from our literate viewpoint, the Iliad preserves the knowledge of the Trojan War. But in jumping to this conclusion, we lose sight of the Iliad as an oral phenomenon, as the singing of a song. It is not so much a thing as an act, a gestalt uniting bard and audience in a shared consciousness. This phenomenon has little in common with that desiccated thing we literates call “memory.” In the world before writing, memory is the social act of remembering. It is commemoration. (15)
Lebow, Richard Ned. "The Future of Memory." American Academy of Political and Social 617 (2008): 25-41. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
This essay is going to discuss the need for an explanation of human memory, which proposes that memory is a set of stages rather than a single process. Flanagan (1997) defines memory as "the mental function of retaining data, the storage system holding the data, and the data which is retained." It is evident from reviewing the literature that an explanation of memory as a set of stages proves to be more understandable than as a single process, the theories of memory all providing information about how memory is structured and organised and the findings from the research studies inevitably pointing in the direction of memory existing as a set of stages rather than a single process. Therefore these are the areas which are to be outlined in this essay in order to understand the need to explain human memory as a set of stages.
Collective memory is the remembered history of a community; the way groups form memories out of a shared past to create a common identity. Collective memory is the structures that underlie all myths and histories without any distinction between them. The past that is fixed and internalized is myth, whether it is fact or fiction (Assmann 2011: 59). Therefore the memory of a group is a construction, or reconstruction, of the past. Collective memory can be expressed through a variety of different medias, e.g. festivals, rituals, symbols, memorial places, museums, as well as oral and written narratives, like myths, prophecies, law material, biographies and perceived historical accounts (Lewis 1975: 13). Each memory is specifically designed to recall events in the history of the collective. The past remembered is not necessarily a historically accurate past, but it is based on stories recognized to be the past as it has been remembe...
When we asked the question of how we remember, forget, and learn has been the topic of lots of discussions. Examining how importantly the successes and fails of our memory skills affect our lives, this interest seems exceedingly justified. We count on our memories for lots of what we do like whenever we do identifying, appreciating, and responding right according to the objects and persons we interact in our environment and to the actions in which we take part in writing, speaking, reading, or else communicating in thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, and also to recall the past about our experiences. That is our memory, which holds, and allows us to use, the knowledge we have get about ourselves and the life and that catches the ways in which we have configured to the world so as to better cope with it. There is so much we de...
What associations arise in our head when we talk about memory? First of all, this is the memory of generations, historical and cultural memory. These concepts correlate with the development of society, with the greatest values and events within the whole world, the state or some individual nations.
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
In conclusion, memory is deconstructive for Sethe, Paul D., and Stamp Paid. When each of these characters remember factors of their past it effects their behavior negatively. The people around them suffer from the outcome. It can destroy present relationships that people have worked very hard to build and it can destroy any chance of a future they might have.
When studying memory, it's important to understand that there are two primary classifications of memory, Explicit and Implicit memory. Explicit memory is a conscious recollection of one's own previous experiences (Robert 2001). Explicit memory can be subdivided into other events that are personally connected to the person; these events primarily contain experiences that allow the person to retain factual information. Implicit memory is a collection of experiences that influence current behavior but are not able to be recalled. In simpler terms implicit memory is the application of past events that result in everyday life skills. For example a small child may touch a hot pot and get burned. In the future that child will know not to touch hot objects however the child would not remember that initial event. These two categories of memory are produced based upon how the senses ...