Auto-memoration, Con-memoration: A ‘Self’/Reflection

Abstract

Exploring who, what and how we remember, this piece proposes that to remember requires, on the one hand, an auto-memoration (the means by which we remember ourselves, and therefore how we shape and present ourselves to others), and at the same time, on the other hand, auto-memoration always detours through the world and through the other, which requires ‘con-memoration’ (remembering with the other). Referring to Derrida and Nancy, this piece argues that the memories of ourselves, and of others, is always already mediated because structured by differance and the other, and thus entails also a forgetting.