Pamięć i zapominanie w Pogrzebanym olbrzymie Kazuo Ishigury
Memory and Forgetting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the theme of memory and forgetting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2015 novel The Buried Giant. The novel offers a reflection on the role of forgetting in dealing with a traumatic past, an issue which remains relevant for individuals and societies alike. Although Ishiguro does not provide easy answers to the question of whether it is better to remember or to erase difficult memories, temporary amnesia emerges in the novel as a legitimate strategy: it allows individuals to maintain relationships and helps to prevent feuding nations from resuming violence. The other related issues that the article discusses include the problem of memory which inevitably returns after temporary amnesia/amnesty with its entrapment in competing politics of memory, the issue of collective memory and the relationship between memory and forgetting as well as the role of involuntary memory in the undermining of official discourses about the past. Twentieth-century conceptions and discourses on memory – Maurice Halbwachs’, Walter Benjamin’s, Marcel Proust’s, as well as Galen Strawson’s – have been mobilized to illuminate the concerns that the novel raises.

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