The Eros of Memory

Abstract

The author considers the tension and contradiction between memory and consciousness. Memory brings to the surface the critical peaks of our lives and weaves them into the present, but in a seemingly arbitrary way that the author describes as the ‘instinct of consciousness’; memory constructs a secret story, a personal ‘golden age’, of our lives that diverges from the official story we try to legitimize, not only to the external world but also in our own personal world. This secret story is unsettling, subversive and, in the only possible sense of the word, true.