Drama of Mnemic Signs

Abstract

The remembering narrator may be credible or unreliable. He may have the only perspective on the past, or only one among competing perspectives. His memorial project may seem fully accomplished, a work in progress, obstructed and repressed, or even entirely frustrated. His memory may be bound determinately to character or seem more free-floating, like a personality trait. He may imply one or another psychological models for how the mind works. She may appear to remember differently from “him.” But despite these and other differences, such narrative paradigms predominately convey the impression that memory is private and a matter of self-possession.