Quotes

Realms of Memory – Pierre Nora

“Memory has begun to keep records: delegating the responsibility for remembering to the archive, it deposits its signs as the snake deposits its shed skin.”

Memory images – Siegfried Kracauer

“The meaning of memory images is linked to their truth content. So long as they are embedded in the uncontrolled life of the drives, they are inhabited by a demonic ambiguity, they are opaque, like frosted glass which scarcely a ray of light can penetrate. Their transparency increases to the extent that insights thin out the vegetation of the soul & limit the compulsion of nature. Truth can be found only by liberated consciousness which assesses the demonic nature of time drives.”

Space & the Collective Memory – Maurice Halbwachs

“Auguste Camte remarked that mental equilibrium was, first & foremost, due to the fact that the physical object of our daily contact change little or not at all, providing us with an image of permanence & stability. They give us a feeling of order & tranquility, like a silent & immobile society unconcerned with our own restlessness & changes of mood.”

Matter and Memory – Henri Bregson

“To imagine is not to remember. No doubt a recollection, as it becomes actual, tends to live in image: but the converse Is not true, and the image, pure and simple, will not be referred to the past unless, indeed, it was the past that sought it, thus following the continuous progress which brought it from the darkness to the light.”

Matter and Memory – Henri Bregson

“Other metaphors suggest themselves: movement from the depths to the surface, from shadows to the light, from tension to relaxation, from the heights to the lower levels of physical life. Such is the ‘movement of memory at work.”

Space & the Collective Memory – Maurice Halbwachs

“No image of a blackboard can recall what was once written there. The board could not care less what had been written on it before & new figures may be added freely. But place & group have each received the imprint of the other.”

Matter and Memory – Henri Bregson

“Spontaneous recollection is perfect from the outset, time can add nothing to its image without defusing it, it retains in memory its place and date.”

Realms of Memory – Pierre Nora

 “The less memory is experienced from within, the greater its need for external props & tangible reminders of that which no longer exists except qua memory – hence the obsession with the archive that marks an age & in which we attempt to preserve not only all of the past but all of the future as well. The fear that everything is on the verge of disappearing coupled with the anxiety about the precise significance of the present & uncertainty about the future, invests even the humblest testimony, the most modest vestige, with the dignity of being potentially memorable.”

The unreality of time – J. M. E. McTaggart.

“describing an event as past, present or future at different times is circular because we would need to describe those “different times” again by past, present, or future, and then again describe that description by past, present, or future, and so on.”