Anamnesis

Summary

Dominique Pagani understands anamnesis as the return of what had first been forgotten, a reconquest over the scythe of time1. It never comes without amnesia: in Plato, reminiscence presupposes the prior forgetting brought by the Lethe23. He considers it both individual and collective. He also defines it as recalling what one knows but does not want to know4. He asks whether memory should be dug down to the primal scenes or whether one should prefer, with Nietzsche, a dose of forgetting. Taken back to the most distant past, anamnesis is for him fidelity to the precariousness of the newborn, and it makes humanity a community5. He follows its forms in Racine (Hippolytus's love, Phaedra's deceptive anamnesis) and in Sophocles with Oedipus. In Wagner's Götterdämmerung, the Norns scene is an "aborted anamnesis" because the future is not yet decided6. Finally, he credits Nerval with making anamnesis a privileged literary subject.

1. 1#5 Benefits and harms of amnesia…19 Nov 2020 · 25:31
2. 2#1 Benefits and harms of amnesia…8 Oct 2020 · 2:51
3. 3#5 Benefits and harms of amnesia…19 Nov 2020 · 2:16
4. 4#3 Benefits and harms of amnesia…6 Nov 2020 · 1:00:13
5. 5#10 Benefits and harms of amnesia…24 Dec 2020 · 33:09
6. 6#9.18 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation3 Apr 2021 · 44:32

Summary produced automatically from 17 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.