The persistence of memory : organism, myth, text /
Kuberski, Philip.
Berkeley : University of California Press,
c1992.
Seen at a certain moment, or in a certain light, things familiar and unfamiliar - a subway entrance, a classical ruin, a constellation, a map - can evoke powerful feelings. Are these feelings an effect of memory, the unconscious, the body? To answer that question, Philip Kuberski leads us on a brave and beguiling exploration of memory, uncovering the many associations that join our physical bodies, personal and cultural myths, and aesthetic and literary experiences. Our very existence as individuals depends on the faculty of memory, to recall or maintain all that we are and offer an ever-changing prelude to all that we will become. But is memory our own, a kind of personal data base, or is it a worldly process in which we are all participants? Drawing on an expansive array of sources, from microbiology to cosmology, from Ovid to Proust, from Egyptology to cinema, Kuberski shows us a web of associations in which we both remember and are remembered. His lucid essays search out the echoes of antiquity within our daily experience, the correspondences between the unconscious and myth, the linkages between the stars and conceptions of the self, and the ways in which aesthetic forms are related to organic patterns. Memory, far from being a passive agency of recollection, can be understood as an integrating, endlessly fascinating relationship. The Persistence of Memory provides a thoughtful and tantalizing read for those interested in literature, psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-142) and index.
Seen at a certain moment, or in a certain light, things familiar and unfamiliar - a subway entrance, a classical ruin, a constellation, a map - can evoke powerful feelings. Are these feelings an effect of memory, the unconscious, the body? To answer that question, Philip Kuberski leads us on a brave and beguiling exploration of memory, uncovering the many associations that join our physical bodies, personal and cultural myths, and aesthetic and literary experiences. Our very existence as individuals depends on the faculty of memory, to recall or maintain all that we are and offer an ever-changing prelude to all that we will become. But is memory our own, a kind of personal data base, or is it a worldly process in which we are all participants? Drawing on an expansive array of sources, from microbiology to cosmology, from Ovid to Proust, from Egyptology to cinema, Kuberski shows us a web of associations in which we both remember and are remembered. His lucid essays search out the echoes of antiquity within our daily experience, the correspondences between the unconscious and myth, the linkages between the stars and conceptions of the self, and the ways in which aesthetic forms are related to organic patterns. Memory, far from being a passive agency of recollection, can be understood as an integrating, endlessly fascinating relationship. The Persistence of Memory provides a thoughtful and tantalizing read for those interested in literature, psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy.
Memory (Philosophy)
History
Natural history
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