Gammes de mémoire

Abstract

The Memory is not this simple and unique function that the definite article improperly determines. It includes many facets and modalities, addressed by philosophy and whose functioning can be analyzed with the help of neuroscience. But literature itself, which transcribes the experience, brings many elements to the knowledge of this function: whether we think of the genre of Memoirs, of Proust's “involuntary memory” or of “Brulard's syndrome”, according to Stendhal. I propose to present an analysis of the “ranges of memory” that contemporary French literature makes us discover, focusing on the most original ones, according to a double approach: methods of execution and works which deploy them. As for the modalities, we will distinguish, with the help of contemporary literary examples, acquired memories (personal memories, literary “memories”), learned memories (“duty of memory”), transmitted memories (the embodied story, with its oral and physical emotions), omitted memories (silenced or repressed memories), conquered memories ("memory work", memory inquiries, investigations and research), to which are added disturbances of two orders: spectral memory (phenomena of involuntary memory superimposition), impaired memory (by amnesia or neurological pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease). Of all these possible modalities of memory, literary texts provide examples. Even more: they invent specific forms, suitable for making them heard.

Keywords

• french contemporary literature
• memory
• forgetting
• transmission
• investigation
• memory ranges