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May 13, 2005
The Politics of Memory
About four hours ago, sitting in the Great Hall (the name is deceiving...) of the University of Nottingham, my arm started quivering. My brain essentially shut down. "CLR James saw the Negro question as a risk....as a deflection....as a distraction....wait, a retract...I risk deflecting the distraction for my retraction!"
I've sat for several hours today, on this very campus, writing about American Studies. Seemingly, though, there wasn't much America about it. A Caribbean intellectual, an Indian emigre, a Haitian novel, a Danish pyschologist and a sex-crazed fan of the blood consciousness with a sincere Oedipus complex. (That's right, I'm looking at you, D.H. Lawrence!)
I just downed a doner kebab whose nutritional facts would turn the food pyramid into the mayonnaise masoleum. Nevertheless, I'm hear with my 99 pence coffee mug. And some headphones.
I read this fascinating book on memory and the Holocaust not too long ago. "The Holocaust and American Life" by Robert Novick. He eschews a lot of Freudian psychoanalysis, instead focusing on the idea (and reality) of collective memory. I've since realized that my memory has become a collective memory, different parts I don't want to concede but are indeed, "me." I begrudgingly them accept as first-person memories.
Now, as my iTunes plays stinging vignette after dripping nostalgia, I'm reminded - however painfully - why I stopped remembering and started being and changing.
That summer when I put 6,000 miles on my Volkswagen in two months, not leaving a five-state radius. Well, someone wanted me to remember:
Ben Folds Five: Two years young, I stood behind the fence. The motorcycles were there.
David Gray: After catfish on a dock, I drove to Antioch to see Turin Brakes, saw you instead. Went to Murfreesboro afterwards.
Eisley: I chased you to Texas to make friends with your dad.
Song after song is a story of me going. And going. And going. I want to stop going and start doing.
Posted by houch at May 13, 2005 10:21 PM
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Comments
"if a man cannot forget he will never amount to much" - Soren Kierkegaard
Posted by: Matt Kilgore at May 14, 2005 05:30 PM