Memory: Encounters with the Strange and the FamiliarWhen we think of getting older, we know we will slowly lose more and more of our memory—and with it, our sense of where we belong and how we connect to others. We might relax a little if we considered the improvements in computer data storage, which may lead us into a future when the limits of our memory become less constricting. In this book, John Scanlan explores the nature of memory and how we have come to live both with and within it, as well as what might come from memory becoming a process as simple as retrieving and reading data. Probing the ways philosophers look at memory, Scanlan reveals that some argue that being human means having the ability to remember, to see oneself as a being in time, with a past and future. At the same time, he shows, our memories can undo our present sense of time and place by presenting us with our past lives. And in a digital age, we are immersed in a vast archive of data that not only colors our everyday experiences, but also supplies us with information on anything we might otherwise have forgotten—breaking down the distinction between the memories of the individual and the collective. Drawing on history, philosophy, and technology, Memory offers an engaging investigation of how we comprehend recollection and how memory, as a phenomenon, continually remakes everyday life. |
Contents
7 | |
I Pasts | 17 |
II Presences | 60 |
III Ecologies | 109 |
Conclusion | 155 |
159 | |
177 | |
Acknowledgements | 181 |
Photo Acknowledgements | 183 |
184 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Ankersmit apparent archive auditory awareness become Bergson Bush of Ghosts Cambridge camera Carlo Ginzburg century collective memory conscience collective consciousness contemporary culture digital memory ecology encounter everyday existence experience external memory film fragments Friedrich Kittler Ginzburg Halbwachs Harvie Ferguson heritage Historical Enquiries Team Ibid images immanence immemorial individual instance involuntary memory Jean-Pierre Vernant kind Kittler knowledge Leibniz’s living London media technologies memory and history metaphor microhistory mind modern monadic musique concrète myth mythical nature Nietzsche nonetheless notion object Odysseus ofMemory ofthe once one’s particular past perception perhaps perspective Peter Sloterdijk phenomena phenomenon philosophical photograph Pierre Nora plane of immanence potential present preservation reality realm recollection record reflect relation reveal seems self-consciousness sense social song sound soundscape space strange suggests Surf temporal things thought tradition trans unconscious understanding Vernant virtual visual voyage Walter Benjamin words writing wrote