This profound study by Marc Aug??? analyzes the cultural functions of forgetting and its various forms of ritualization, since forgetting is intimately related to remembering and is as necessary as the latter for social and personal identity. Remembering and forgetting have a relationship of interdependence similar to that of life and death: in order to live, both the individual and society must be able to forget certain past experiences. The psychoanalytic conceptions of memory and forgetting in relation to the ...
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This profound study by Marc Aug??? analyzes the cultural functions of forgetting and its various forms of ritualization, since forgetting is intimately related to remembering and is as necessary as the latter for social and personal identity. Remembering and forgetting have a relationship of interdependence similar to that of life and death: in order to live, both the individual and society must be able to forget certain past experiences. The psychoanalytic conceptions of memory and forgetting in relation to the reconstruction of experiences, Ricoeur's elaboration of narrativity versus Geertz's symbolization, or the rituals of possession and change of role in certain cultures (where the continuity of subjective time and identity is suspended in order to ???restart??? a new life) are the subject of the French anthropologist's reflection, which combines questions of transculturality with cognitive, semantic and ethical approaches. In conclusion, the duty to remember is reaffirmed for later generations, while there would be a ???duty to forget??? for those who have suffered certain horrors whose ???presentification??? would hardly allow them to live.
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