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!

*

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.