Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University (Winter 2006, Winter 2007)
While “memory” and “forgetting” are often posed as opposites, it is possible that these terms are complementary aspects of larger phenomena. In this seminar we will explore how these concepts depend upon and define one another. We will examine the tensions between individual and collective memory, memory and history, forgetting and forgiving, and memory and justice. How do the processes of remembering and forgetting shape individual and collective identities? In order to remember, do we need to forget? How are memory and forgetting used and abused? How does the threat of forgetting encourage memorialization? How do particular memorials enforce or encourage different kinds of memory and forgetting? For the final project, students will be required to examine and/or design arts of memory and/or forgetting, and to examine their potential uses and abuses. Readings include selections from texts by Aristotle, Heinrich Böll, Jorge Borges, Paul Connerton, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Nora, Friedrich Nietzsche, Cynthia Ozick, Plato, Marcel Proust, Frances Yates, Yosef Yerushalmi, and James Young, as well as selections from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Film screenings of Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hirokazu’s After Life, Marker’s La Jetée, and Soderbergh’s Solaris.