Memory

Abstract

When we think of memory, some kind of container for storing things or surface for inscribing information usually comes to mind. It is thought that experiences are put into or written on these surfaces as memories and then taken out when remembered in roughly the same form as they were put in. This conception dates back to Plato, who first described memory as a wax tablet in the mind, on which experiences were inscribed. In Plato’s time, literacy was becoming a more widespread social practice and the wax tablet was one new technology that helped sustain it. The dominance of literacy since this time has contributed to the persistence of this metaphor of memory (Danziger, 2008), such that, today, we talk of memories metaphorically as being inscribed on a computer hard disk (rather than wax tablet), or inscribed in the brain as an ‘engram’ (literally ‘that which is converted into writing’). If we follow this metaphor closely, then, creativity and memory have little to say to one another, because memories are understood in terms of their fixity and fidelity to the past, whereas creativity is conceptualised as just the opposite. In fact, only those that are able to ‘forget’ or stand outside tradition are seen to be truly creative, as the solitary genius image has it.