Memory and Forgetting

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Literatures of dementia, Alzheimer’s and lost memories.

Memory is a primary and fundamental faculty, without which none other can work; the cement, the bitumen, the matrix in which the other faculties and embedded; or it is the thread on which the beads of man are strung, making the personal identity which is necessary to moral action. Without it all life and thought were an unrelated succession. As gravity holds matter from flying off into space, so memory gives stability to knowledge; it is the cohesion which keeps things from falling into a lump, or flowing in waves.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literature and Memory: Public lecture series on life-writing, autobiography, personal narrative (UCT Summer & Winter School: January & August 2020).
Artwork above by Robin Rhode.

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