Skip to main content
Return to home
Publisher Logo: Click to return to the browse pagePublisher Logo: Click to return to the browse page
  • Home
  • Projects
Projects

Of Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing

On the Verge

by David Farrell Krell

Memory, reminiscence, and writing have been a central issue throughout the history of Western philosophy. Socrates' wax tablet of the soul, Aristotle's signet ring impressing memories in the mind, Descartes' ceraceous pineal gland, Hobbes' and Locke's tabula rasa, Freud's "mystic writing pad" of the psyche, and the contemporary neurophysiologist's computer storage depot—all are variations on the theme of how we remember. Identifying typography, iconography, and engrammatology as the basic characteristics of these models, in Part One David Farrell Krell traces the history of memory from Plato to the present. Turning in Part Two to the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, Krell finds that the traditional models of memory and reminiscence, which promised to recollect and restore the past to full presence, have broken down. Emerging from their writings, he concludes, is a new and more modest appreciation of memory as being always on the verge of a never present past. Readers in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and literary theory will be challenged by this provocative book.

Project Hero Cover

Table of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Dedication
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Part One Typography, Iconography, Engrammatology
    • One. Slabs of Wax: Aristotle and Plato on Memory, Reminiscence, and Writing
      • Mneme, Lethe
      • Anamnesis
      • Typos
      • Eikon
      • Grammata
    • Two. Waxen Glands and Fleshy Hollows: The Body of Memory from Descartes to Merleau-Ponty
      • August Mnemotechnic
      • Descartes
      • Hobbes and Locke
      • Coleridge, Erwin Straus, and Merleau-Ponty
    • Three. Wax Magic: Freud and the Typography of Effraction
      • Memory, Malady, and Therapy
      • Quantity no
      • Quality
      • “The Introduction of the ‘Ego’”
      • Signs
      • Wax Magic
  • Part Two On The Verge
    • Four. Of Tracings without Wax: The Early Work of Jacques Derrida
      • Scripture, Scription, Script
      • The Absolute Past
      • Plato’s Dream
    • Five. Of Pits and Pyramids: Hegel on Memory, Remembrance, and Writing
      • The Situation of Erinnerung in Hegel’s System
      • The Psychology of Erinnerung and Gedachtnis
      • Erinnerung and Gedachtnis in the Philosophical Propaedeutics of 1808
      • Er-Innerung in the Phenomenology of Spirit
    • Six. Of Having-Been: Heidegger and Nietzsche on the Time of Remembering and Forgetting
      • Forgetting Being
      • Remembering Time
      • Mnemosyne
      • Let Bygones Be Bygones
    • Seven. Of Ashes: The Promise of Memory in the Recent Thought of Jacques Derrida
      • Anamnesis, Amnesia, Affirmation
      • Impossible Mourning Possible
      • Gedachtnis and Andenken: In Memory of Hegel and Heidegger
      • Mirth
      • Ashes
  • Notes
  • Index

Metadata

  • isbn
    978-0-253-05581-1
  • publisher
    Indiana University Press
  • publisher place
    Bloomington, Indiana USA
  • restrictions
    CC-BY-NC-ND
  • rights
    Copyright © Trustees of Indiana University
  • rights holder
    Indiana University Press
  • rights territory
    World
Press Site
    • Log In
    • Projects
    • Home
    • Email
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Log In
    • Projects
    • Home
    • Email
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
Copyright © Trustees of Indiana University. All rights reserved
Powered by Manifold