Politics of Forgetting

As long as humans can remember, memory has been a problem. The knowledge of the problem of memory itself testifies to this fact. If I had no memory, I would not know that memory is a problem. That is to say: the knowledge of the problem of memory stands in the way of curing itself.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a wonderful article (his second Untimely Meditation) pressing home the point that everyone must take a teaspoon of "unhistory" in order to live a healthy life. He was writing in an age where history was becoming the byproduct of every thought. The 19th century believed you could know everything by historicizing it. Nietzsche, the rebel that he always was, cried out against this practice. He believed that too much history would suffocate life. If you live in the past too much, then you would never be free to experience the present and future. We must be able to forget in order to carry on with our lives.

I fully agree with Nietzsche. I hear his holler echo all the way from the 19th century and enter to my heart. I too must learn to forget things. I too must lay down my past that so often can tear me down and keep me anchored like a ship in the middle of an ocean. The good memories and the sad ones must learn to obey the present and instead of tyranizing it.

But now I ask: how are we to do this? How could I ever forget?

Early in Shakespeare's play, Macbeth hears a prophecy from the Weird Sisters. The memory of this prophecy and the desire to see this prophecy fulfilled tortures the ambituous man to the end of his reign as king. Late in the play, Macbeth pleads with his doctor, when he hears that his wife is starting to go crazy:

“Cure her of that," he begs,

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?"

To which the Doctor replies: “Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.”
(Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, 3, 40-46)

The doctor speaks paradoxically. How could the patient minister to him or herself? To forget one's memory would be to cut off one's head. Once the act is performed, the object upon which the act had been performed is immediately extinguished. If I really forget something, then I must also forget the act of forgetting. In other words: if I have ever successfully forgotten a memory, I would not know that I actually did. This is precisely Augustine's point in his unforgettable tenth book of his Confessions: “I can mention forgetfulness," he writes,

"and recognize what the word means, but how can I recognize the thing itself unless I remember it? I am not speaking of the sound of the word but of the thing which it signifies. If I had forgotten the thing itself, I should be utterly unable to recognize what the sound implied. When I remember memory, my memory is present to itself by its own power; but when I remember forgetfulness, two things are present, memory, by which is what I remember it, and forgetfulness, which is what I remember. Yet what is forgetfulness but absence of memory? When it is present, I cannot remember. Then how can it be present in such a way that I can remember it? […] Are we to understand from this that, when we remember it, it is not itself present in the memory, but it only there by means of its image? For if forgetfulness were itself present, would not its effect be to make us forget, not to remember?”
Augustine, Confessions, X, 16, S. 222

Now, the critically inclined might object. "But we do forget things!," he would say. "Just a few days ago I forgot my keys! So there. Theory invalidated."

But wait. To this objection, I would reply: No, you can't remember that you forgot your keys a few days ago! You only appear to know that you forgot your keys, because you noticed after you left your apartment that something was missing. But go ahead and try to remember when you forgot the keys. Exaclty at what point did you forget the keys? Was it before you brushed your teeth? Or while you were closing the door? Or maybe in between? Forgetting is not an active act. You cannot remember forgetting, because you didn't do it actively. Forgetting is a lack of something. Trying to remember when you did not pick up your keys is a foolish riddle. It didn't happen, so you can't remember it!

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At the very end of Odyssey, Odysseus comes home and slaughters all of the suitors that have been courting his wife while he was at sea. While he goes to see his father, the families of the slaughtered ones hear about Odysseus' deed. They want revenge. And so they make a charge for Odysseus and his father. Athena, the goddess who always kept her eye out for Odysseus, see the scene unfold and shortly before it all comes to a climax she begs Zeus to take action and help Odysseus:

“'My child', Zeus […] replied, '[…] Now that royal Odysseus has taken revenge, let both sides seal their pacts that he shall reign for life, and let us purge their memories of the bloody slaughter of their brothers and sons.” XXIV, S. 483)

In order for peace to rest in the land, Zeus and Athena must purge the memories of all involved. The only way to introduce peace is with the politics of forgetting. But note! It is not the humans who do the forgetting. It is Zeus who purges the memory. Yes Nietzsche, I'm all with you. But we need the power of a god to de-historicize us. This divine act cannot come from our own powers.

To truly forget, to truly "pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow", we need to usher in a god.

a marxist manifesto

Be serious about life! Believing and caring about what one does. To become completely cynical about life and society is to exterminate all hope or indeed even all notions of utopia. Hasn't control and stability become the dominant feelings of our contemporary existence? Here (or rather for me, there), everything is a joke, all mirages, all is frivolous, ironies everywhere - the pinnacle of post-modernity. Blindness! Do not take the simulacrum as a pre-given, a dogma, for it is the symptom of illness! Don't confuse the oppressed subject as the failed subject. Take up the motto of the Enlightenment again "Sapere Aude!" Overcome the spiritless Zeitgeist! Periodically the consciousness of society must be awakened to face itself again. To witness itself and all its self-induced farces. Be serious and see the world we have created! To be ultimately cynical and ironic means the acceptance of your impotence. Make all things transparent and do not laugh at those who in sincerity believes in the human possibilities. Projection of God doesn't give one transcendent sight, only immanent blindness! The tragic is not our relationship to God but our relationship to ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw

the lyric moment

As I sat outside on the steps to the backyard this morning, imbibing cheap instant coffee mixed with a drop of blood of some poor farmerand munching a somewhat stale P&J (that got dropped onto the ground just secs before), all consumed by Mozart's Requiem... I had a lyric moment (sun before me, warmth upon me, harmony within me, it and me, it it it it it... no no, me me me me me....)

Is this not the pure bourgeois? Man confronts the beautiful without? Who then contemplates his loss from the Mother (why did you forsake me Mother?). Who rejoices upon finding her, but realizes he is forever banished from her, masturbates to achieve her... Zizek, I think in the Guide, pointed to the horrific moment during coitus when one realizes the utter absurdity of the mechanical. Do we not constantly work towards the splurt? That paradoxical moment of both attainment and disillusion? Oh great Sisyphus, roll not the boulder, let the boulder roll over you.

For a moment, death, horror, injustice, perished... But here, and there; precisely everywhere; the alienation! Is my remorse not the symptom of an alienating/alienated world? If humanity has anything to achieve, is it not to alienate alienation? To banish the logic of the bourgeois? So we may stare deeply into the Mother and scream "I have murdered thee!"

Depression and Ecstacy: a conversation on Short scenes for Phillip's upcoming montage of the unconscious

There we sat, across from each other, offset by one seat. I was bent over reading, eyes glued to the paper. Yet not for a second did I not want to stare into the essence of her being - her gorgeous brown eyes. Staring into another's eyes might be the most emotionally charged act in life. One is almost naturally too weak to accomplish the task. I wanted to sneak a peek. I could probably integrated it into a look-up-get-water move. So I will do it, all excuses accounted for. Just as I jerk my head up, I am pleasantly surprised ... I caught her off guard! I can only speculate what she was doing, but at that moment she madly and quite disorientately scrambles for the nearest book and resumes the "official" stance. Oh joy! That scramble far surpassed any comparable rewards from a peek...

//

The grab, the leap, the landing... the uncertainty of balance... the tug, the closeness... the shriek, the giggle... the danger of intersections, the passing between bus and herd... the warnings, "I'm getting on," "I'm getting off." Acts overlooked by the unobservant.

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Philip-Zhang Qiang

After the whole long semester's mild depression, half-conscious sleeps, waking up at 4 to ghostly look back onto my body laying flat in bed, crap teaching and so on, I had what I call "December Renaissance" here in boston in the next term. I can see that you are heading to that direction. the creative spirit is rising up, seeking release, seeking artistic expressions, seeking to translate the psychic wound to shimmering words and images. As the eye opens up again out of the dark to not just see, but itself being a newly discovered planet, a moon circulating a bright sun in the dark universe.
And all this happens in a blink...

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Yhinferno
On depression:

No man is a Man until he has died at least once.
No Man is a man until he dies.
For the slimmest margin separate the inside from the Outside. Looking Outward we always find ourselves previously unconscious and dead.

If you value the mind then you find yourself contained no where, contained by nothing. If you value your body then you find yourself contained wherever, contained by everything. To conquer the without or to conquer the within, that is the question. Conquer the outside at
the expense of submission of the inside; conquer the inside at the expense of submission to the outside.

But finally, I am an existentialist! Happiness hides in every nook and cranny; joy to those who seeketh Happiness in her den.

The horizon of possibilities, the world.