On Violence and Memory: Nietzsche, Forgetting, and War
Giorgio Chambers and Isola Chambers
26 December 2024
This is the first instalment of a collaborative project exploring the interaction of violence with memory and forgetting. Subsequent sections will be published over the next six months.
FORGETFULNESS.—It has never yet been proved that there is such a thing as forgetfulness: all that we know is that we have no power over recollection. In the meantime we have filled up this gap in our power with the word “forgetfulness,” exactly as if it were another faculty added to our list. But, after all, what is within our power? If that word fills up a gap in our power, might not the other words be found capable of filling up a gap in the knowledge which we possess of our power?
(Nietzsche, Book II of Daybreak)
Humans are often accused of having short memories, but to completely forget something is more difficult than we might think. In order to forget absolutely, all traces must be erased. If traces endure, there remains the possibility of noticing them, and of recalling that which appeared lost. Noticing is one of our more bothersome tendencies; we notice in spite of ourselves, and often to our own discontent. Noticing dislocates us from experience, because it presents an other of experience. This in turn can set us on the path toward a different kind of experience. It is only possible to “simply” experience something if we do not notice anything else, if nothing comes to interrupt us in the purity of our present moment.