The Time of Memory

312 Pages·1999·18.814 MB·English

by  Charles E. Scott

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THE TIME
OF MEMORY
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CHARLES E. SCOTT
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1999 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States ofA merica
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Scott, Charles E.
The time of memory / Charles E. Scott.
p. cm. - (SUNY series in contemporary continental
philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914--4081-8 (hardcover: alk. paper). - ISBN 0-7914-4082-6
(pbk. : a1k. paper)
1. Memory (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series.
B0181.7.S36 1999
128'.3---dc21 98-36638
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Mildred McFall Scott
and
Wilko Buss Schoenbohm
As when water from the sea
Rises,
Becomes a cloud
Driven by north winds and
Falls to rivers
Flowing back to the sea,
So time
Becomes memory
And memory time.
Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious
way, till a void boundless as the nether sky appeared
beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and
hung over this immensity; but I said: if you please
we will commit ourselves to this void, and see
whether providence is here also.
-William Blake, The Marriage ofH eaven and Hell
CONTENTS
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Preface Xlii
CHAPTER ONE 1
Introduction: Measuring Shadows
CHAPTER TWO 25
Mnemosyne's Loss and Stolen Memories
Remembering Hans Georg Gadamer 21 ~ Mnemosyne
and Lethe 30 M-Heidegger and Derridd 35 Ia-A Notation
on Mnemosynic Thinking 43 Ia- Stolen Memories: An
Excursus on Memorial Fusions 44
CHAPTER THREE 53
On Originating and Presenting Another Time: The Art of Tragedy
First Fragmentary Image 53 Ia- Memory-Time 54 Ia
Sublime Foreigners 56 ~ A Second Fragment 61 Ia
Memory and the Future of Dionysian Thought (Without
Prophecy) 6IIa-Last Fragment 66
CHAPTER FOUR 69
Powers of Transformation within a Memorial Reading:
Narratives of Dionysus
Dionysus lIla-Dionysian Memory and Thought 16 ~ An
Excursus on Sanity and a Sublime Aspect of Dionysian
Occurrences 19 ~ Dionysian Self-Criticism 82
IX
x Contents
CHAPTER FIVE 89
The "Power" of Nond etermination with Determinations in Appearances
Engagement and Encounter 90 ~ Apollinian Force 96 ea,
Nature, Ecstasy, and the Sublime 109
CHAPTER SIX 117
Institutional Songs and Involuntary Memory:
Where Do "We" Corne From?
Locating the Present-Past 120
CHAPTER SEVEN 145
When the Company ofT ime Casts No Shadow: Memory of
Differences and Nondetermination
A Transition to Orders of Disorder by Means of Dionysus'
Masks 145 ~ Orders ofS amenesses and Differences-And
In Between Them 151 ~ Similitude and a Birth of
Difference in Binary Structures: An Exposition 153 ~
Establishing Discontinuities 155 ~ An Instance of
Establishing Discontinuity: Signs ofR epresentation 161 ~
The Space ofa Question 167 ~ Frameworks for Analyses:
An Excursus on Full Houses 173
CHAPTER EIGHT 185
Repetitions and Differenciations
Singularities 187 ~ Liberation from Common Sense and
Good Spirit 191 ~ Singularity and Memory 200
CHAPTER NINE 205
Gifts of Fire: Witnessing and Representing
Trace and Blindness: Witnessing the Touch 216
CHAPTER TEN 227
A Symptom of Life in the Absence of Light
The Worldliness of "inner," Private Experience 231 ~
Meaning Is the Face of the Other 235 ~ A Sense of the
Absence of Light in Relations 237 ~ Return to Infinite
Meaning 238
Contents XI
CHAPTER ELEVEN 243
Gifts without Fire: Thinking and Remembering
What We Philosophers Do 251 ta- Strategies for Thinking
(With Attention to Its Drawing Powers) 255 ta- Two
Strategies for Thinking 259 ta- Thought and Ethos 274 ta
Observing in a Subjunctive Mood 276
Notes 283
Index 303
PREFACE
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Three years ago when I was working on the third chapter of this
book, I read its first section, "First Fragmentary Image," to Wilko
Schoenbohm. It was twilight in a summer's evening, and we sat on his
deck which overlooked a small meadow that fell through a grove of cotton
wood trees, down to a stream. Memory and concentration defined serious
problems for him as he struggled to remain in touch with the world
around him, but his sweetness of spirit came out clearly when he regained
from time to time his perceptiveness. When I finished reading he looked
out to the tall trees and to a bridge that crossed the stream and, I thought,
remembered something that I could not know. The brevity of his memory
and the brevity of the moment of which I spoke in the few paragraphs
seemed to rise together in a moment of quiet insight. He said, "That is
beautiful." I remember that I took his words to refer not so much to what
I had read as to the moment in which his memories gave a living intensity
to what I read and turned my words into his experience, a brief experience
in which I was a participant, but one that his memories and generosity
transformed and carried beyond my grasp. And I now remember that
bygone event, which is quite beyond my reach, as I commerate him.
Many years earlier, shortly before her death and long after she had
lost most of her awareness, my mother's eyes flashed with recognition as
her grandchildren walked into her hospital room. Although no longer
capable of forming words or syntax, she laughed, reached out to them, and
made the same sounds with the same rhythms that had accompanied her
words and were tailored to each grandchild when they came to visit her,
sounds and rhythms that had welcomed them for many years when she
was "herself." She again gave each of them their place of greeting and affir-
Xlii
XlV Preface
---------------------------------
mation in her singular connections with them. Later she hummed along
as best she could as we sang familiar songs before she sank back into an
oblivion into which none of us could accompany her--only to come back
again, now and then, into the light of activated recognition which restored
us to her world and which brought with it new greetings and grandmoth
erly pleasure.
Although this book is about remembering and memory's loss that
often happen beyond people's grasp and that are quite nonpersonal, I wish
to begin with this dedication to two people who, like so many others, have
enjoyed and suffered the time of memory with a stark pronunciation that
makes unmistakable its force in our lives. I also wish to remember their
undiminished gentleness and kindness in the midst of this force that gives
us incomparably rich moments in accompaniment with unspeakable dev
astation.
The book also figures, usually in undetectable ways, the influence
and good offices of many people. Among them are Ashley Pryor, Ashley
Green, Michael Jarrett, Virginia Schoenbohm, Toni Mooney, Beth Ondo,
Rita Munchinski, John Sallis, John Stuhr, Ben Pryor, Michael Hodges, Idit
Dobbs-Weinstein, Dan Conway, Jeff Nealon, Rich Doyle, David Krell,
John Lachs, Bob Fancher, Michael Spinkle, Stephen Dedalus Swoyer,
David Goicoechea, Dennis Schmidt, and, above all, Susan Schoenbohm.
The acknowledgment:
A shorter version of chapter 2 appeared in Die Internationale
Zeitschrift foer Philosophie in 1996 under the title of "Mnemosyne's Loss:
Lethe, Gadamer, Heidegger, (and Derridd)," and a paper that constitutes
chapter 3 appeared in Epoche in 1966 under the title of" On Originating
and Presenting Another Time." I wish to thank those journals for permis
sion to publish that material.
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