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Oblivion, or: Situating Our Understanding of Forms of Memory

Summary/Abstract: Sendyka discusses the discourse on memory as potentially multilayered (Deleuze/Guattari, the theory of ‘minor literature’), simultaneously pointing out the weakness of the vernacular layer that is most narrowly located (Haraway). Further research is clearly needed regarding these processes, marked as they are by opposed forces or vectors: memories about a given event are maintained while at the same time being blocked. Such phenomena can be understood in terms of ‘oblivion,’ which differs from ‘forgetting’ in that ‘oblivion’ does not privilege verbal contact as a norm in the transfer of memory. It connects deformed symbolic means (narratives that have become myths, sentences, broken-off sentences) and parasymbolic means (non-verbal elements of speech, gestures) with somatic activities and performative acts (interaction with objects and people). In the realm of ‘oblivion,’ ‘silent knowledge’ and ‘refraining from speech’ help transmit an emotional and bodily experience of the past where that experience is still undecided and not ready to be verbalized.

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