Memory (mneme) and recollection (anamnesis)

    I heard that we were beginning to discuss the concept of anamnesis in class on Friday, and while it has been introduced in my previous classes with Dr. Sexson, I find it important to think back (hah) and reexamine my conception in light of the theme of this class: memory.

“What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?”

    Prospero asks this of Miranda when she is trying to recall her childhood before exile on the island. The simple way for Prospero to initiate this conversation would been to have said, “What else do you remember?”. But as we know, Memory isn’t about what is simple. It is about the memorable, the extraordinary, the convoluted imagery and phrasing of such things as “what seest thou else”. Prospero is asking Miranda to pierce the surface of her consciousness and dig for something deeper and essential to her existence. (Miranda remembers that she once had four or five women that tended her, “Thou hadst, and more, Miranda” Prospero replies. How many do you think she had? Probably nine)

By ‘thinking backwards’ we are thinking of the past as the source of the present. We are reaching past a temporal frame into the realm of the mythic.  

    Anamnesis is derived from the Greek roots ana (meaning “re”) and mimnḗskein (meaning “to call to mind”) (dictionary.com). So it denotes the recollection or remembrance of the past. What then is the difference between memory (mneme) and recollection (anamnesis)? I think, most basically, if anamnesis is the process or act of remembering, then the memory must be what is represented by the culmination of those processes of recollection, or the faculty of an individual in regards to those processes.

    Where does ‘memorizing’ fit in then?  The verb for “learning” or committing to memory? And further, the act of recitation, which delves into the recollection of what was memorized?  I’m not sure.

    From the Wikipedia article on Anamnesis: “He [Socrates] suggests that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the shock of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten. (Once it has been brought back it is true belief, to be turned into genuine knowledge by understanding.) And thus Socrates (and Plato) sees himself, not as a teacher, but as a midwife, aiding with the birth of knowledge that was already there in the student.”

    Through this understanding, knowledge is not something to be learned…but to be regained. The initial discussion centers on the existence of universals and universal understanding. Is there a source other than the accumulation of perceptions that creates for us a basic understanding of our universe? Is it the structure of nature and the human brain that guides our senses and perceptions, or is it the immortality of the soul that allows for progression from sense perception to reasoning?

These are obviously huge questions.

    More lucrative for our purposes than the deliberation of epistemological and/or ontological assertions of anamnesis though, I think, is the consideration of remembering versus forgetting. The two initially seem opposing, but are yet both integral to memory and anamnesis. Anamnesis is remembering that which you have forgotten. And is not memory affected by that which you remember as much as that which you have forgotten?

 You already know everything, you have just forgotten it.

“In one way or another, recollecting implies having forgotten…forgetting is equivalent to ignorance, slavery (captivity), and death” (Myth and Reality, Mircea Eliade).

You all must go out and read Mircea Eliade, it is seriously imperative.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a mythological lesson of the day (gathered from wiki, of course):  

·         River of Lethe, one of the five rivers of Hades, and whoever drank from it experienced forgetfulness.

·         Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified.

·         In Classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness," or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (ἀλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".