Memory, History, Forgetting

Memory, History, Forgetting

Author: Paul Ricoeur

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 662

ISBN-13: 0226713466

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Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative. Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. . . . It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—Library Journal “Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— New York Times Book Review


Remembering and Forgetting

Remembering and Forgetting

Author: Edmund Blair Bolles

Publisher: Walker & Company

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 9780802710048

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Explains how human memory works, describes the biological structure of the brain, and discusses amnesia, memory lapses, and examples of emotional memory


Forgetting

Forgetting

Author: Scott A. Small

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2021-07-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0593136195

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“Fascinating and useful . . . The distinguished memory researcher Scott A. Small explains why forgetfulness is not only normal but also beneficial.”—Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker and Leonardo da Vinci Who wouldn’t want a better memory? Dr. Scott Small has dedicated his career to understanding why memory forsakes us. As director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, he focuses largely on patients who experience pathological forgetting, and it is in contrast to their suffering that normal forgetting, which we experience every day, appears in sharp relief. Until recently, most everyone—memory scientists included—believed that forgetting served no purpose. But new research in psychology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science tells a different story. Forgetting is not a failure of our minds. It’s not even a benign glitch. It is, in fact, good for us—and, alongside memory, it is a required function for our minds to work best. Forgetting benefits our cognitive and creative abilities, emotional well-being, and even our personal and societal health. As frustrating as a typical lapse can be, it’s precisely what opens up our minds to making better decisions, experiencing joy and relationships, and flourishing artistically. From studies of bonobos in the wild to visits with the iconic painter Jasper Johns and the renowned decision-making expert Daniel Kahneman, Small looks across disciplines to put new scientific findings into illuminating context while also revealing groundbreaking developments about Alzheimer’s disease. The next time you forget where you left your keys, remember that a little forgetting does a lot of good.


Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering

Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering

Author: John W. Dower

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1595589376

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Historian John W. Dower’s celebrated investigations into modern Japanese history, World War II, and U.S.–Japanese relations have earned him critical accolades and numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize. Now Dower returns to the major themes of his groundbreaking work, examining American and Japanese perceptions of key moments in their shared history. Both provocative and probing, Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering delves into a range of subjects, including the complex role of racism on both sides of the Pacific War, the sophistication of Japanese wartime propaganda, the ways in which the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is remembered in Japan, and the story of how the postwar study of Japan in the United States and the West was influenced by Cold War politics. Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering offers urgent insights by one of our greatest interpreters of the past into how citizens of democracy should deal with their history and, as Dower writes, “the need to constantly ask what is not being asked.”


Remembering and Forgetting in the Digital Age

Remembering and Forgetting in the Digital Age

Author: Florent Thouvenin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-24

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 331990230X

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This book examines the fundamental question of how legislators and other rule-makers should handle remembering and forgetting information (especially personally identifiable information) in the digital age. It encompasses such topics as privacy, data protection, individual and collective memory, and the right to be forgotten when considering data storage, processing and deletion. The authors argue in support of maintaining the new digital default, that (personally identifiable) information should be remembered rather than forgotten. The book offers guidelines for legislators as well as private and public organizations on how to make decisions on remembering and forgetting personally identifiable information in the digital age. It draws on three main perspectives: law, based on a comprehensive analysis of Swiss law that serves as an example; technology, specifically search engines, internet archives, social media and the mobile internet; and an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions from various disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics, amongst others.. Thanks to this multifaceted approach, readers will benefit from a holistic view of the informational phenomenon of “remembering and forgetting”. This book will appeal to lawyers, philosophers, sociologists, historians, economists, anthropologists, and psychologists among many others. Such wide appeal is due to its rich and interdisciplinary approach to the challenges for individuals and society at large with regard to remembering and forgetting in the digital age.


The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting

The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting

Author: Michael O'Loughlin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1442231882

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The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines that draw on multiple perspectives to address issues that arise at the intersection of trauma, history, and memory. Contributors include critical theorists, critical historians, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and a working artist. The authors use intergenerational trauma theory while also pushing and pulling at the edges of conventional understandings of how trauma is defined. This book respects the importance of the recuperation of memory and the creation of interstitial spaces where trauma might be voiced. The writers are consistent in showing a deep respect for the sociohistorical context of subjective formation and the political importance of recuperating dangerous memory—the kind of memory that some authorities go to great lengths to erase. The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting is of interest to critical historians, critical social theorists, psychotherapists, psychosocial theorists, and to those exploring the possibilities of life as the practice of freedom.


Memory

Memory

Author: Barry Gordon

Publisher: Mastermedia Publishing Company

Published: 1996-12

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9781571010735

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Dr. Gordon explains the difference between a real memory impairment and the normal absent-mindedness that occasionally affects us all--especially as we age. Memory offers simple strategies for dealing with age-related memory loss, based on fascinating and informative research findings.


Successful Remembering and Successful Forgetting

Successful Remembering and Successful Forgetting

Author: Aaron S. Benjamin

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2011-01-07

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1136906649

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This volume provides a window into cutting-edge research in cognitive psychology on inhibition in memory, metacognition, educational applications of basic memory research, and many other topics related to the groundbreaking research of Robert Bjork. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers in learning and memory.


Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Complexities and Dangers of Remembering and Forgetting in Rwanda

Author: Olivier Nyirubugara

Publisher: Sidestone Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9088901104

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Can a society, a culture, a country, be trapped by its own memories? The question is not easy to answer, but it would not be a bad idea to cautiously say: 'It depends'. This book is about one society - Rwanda - and its culture, traditions, identities, and memories. More specifically, it discusses some of the ways in which ethnic identities and related memories constitute a deadly trap that needs to be torn apart if mass violence is to be eradicated in that country. It looks into everyday cultural practices such as child naming and oral traditions (myths and tales, proverbs, war poetry etc.) and into political practices that govern the ways in which citizens conceptualise the past. Rwanda was engulfed in a bloody war from 1990 until 1994, the last episode of which was a genocide that claimed about a million lives amongst the Tutsi minority. This book - the first in the Memory Traps series - provides a new understanding of how a seemingly quiet society can suddenly turn into a scene of the most horrible inter-ethnic crimes. It offers an analysis of the complexities and dangers resulting from the ways in which memories are managed both at a personal level and at a collective level. The main point is that Rwandans have become hostages of their memories of the long-gone and the recent past. The book shows how these memories follow ethnic lines and lead to a state of cultural hypocrisy on the one hand, and to permanent conflict - either open and brutal, or latent and beneath the surface - on the other hand. Written from a memory studies perspective and informed by critical theory, philosophy, literature, [oral] history, and psychology, amongst others, this book deals with some controversial subjects and deconstructs some of the received ideas about the recent and the long-gone past of Rwanda. About the author: Olivier Nyirubugara is a lecturer of New Media and Online Journalism at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (Erasmus University Rotterdam). In 2011, he completed a PhD in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation entitled Surfing the Past: Digital Learners in the History Class, in which he empirically explored ways in which pupils use the Web to find historical information. Nyirubugara has also been practicing journalism since 2002 and has been training and coaching journalists in mobile reporting in Africa since 2007.