Analysis Of Thomas Wagenbaur's The Poetics Of Memory

Memory is an apparent revival of past experience. Every received stimulus leaves behind an imprint capable of being received later, thus contributing to the various manifestations of consciousness and behavior.

Memory is both individual and social. Personal memory activates historical or cultural memory. Memory depends on one hand of the group in which one lives and, on the other, to the status one holds in that group. To remember, one therefore needs to situate oneself within a current of collective thought.

In the process of our day to day life, everything cannot be remembered. But something ought to be remembered in a selective method. Memory depends on valuation and valuation depends on our historical memory. Memory in a way is bringing back of cultural history. As pointed out by Lindbladh individual and collective memory is enigmatic, fragmented, intimately connected to our senses and feelings and thereby in need of an alternative epistemology, challenging traditional definitions of knowledge and truth. In the introduction to the anthology The Poetics of Memory, Thomas Wagenbaur defines memory on the one hand as storage and on the other hand as a story. In the agreement with current trends in memory research, he underlines the importance of the narrative and poetic dimensions

This concerns the reluctance of many white young soldiers to continue fighting. There are brief snaps of conversation Jane remembers where young soldiers cursing their commanders and suggesting that left to themselves, they would have allowed to slave to do they please. Miss Jane also remembers the inability of a young soldier to stand up, given his physical condition. What emerges is that among the slave owning members of white community there was no community, past and future of slave and