Very much to the point, Diane! What I was mulling round was just how
something in present activity triggers memory, and how that memory, once
attended to, come-to-life as a part of present activity -- in the telling
of it with the semantic conventions of narrative, in your case -- triggers
yet more memory. But not alway immediately. Wise to wait.
What determines not just which memories come after a while, but how long it
takes them to "surface"? We think a lot about associations and intensities
of linkage among memories, but not so much about the "real-time" dynamics
of the process. Bourdieu pointed out, to Levi-Strauss and his
structuralists, that it matters not just what is done, but how soon, how
early or late. Pacing and timing also have meaning, and perhaps in the case
of memory and remembering, significance as well.
I doubt it is just a matter of brain architecture, either. The brain can do
all these things pretty quickly. And if there are "old neurons" that
haven't fired in many years (or more likely old pathways of firings through
clusters of neurons), what determines the latency, the time it takes them
to get back 'on line'? Is it just chemistry? and if so, probably not a
simple chemistry, but a complex one (i.e. nonlinear auto- and
cross-catalytic) ... in the technical sense that its timing may depend on
factors from many contexts ... one of which surely is the on-going current
neural activity, a part of which is ... what? ... that continuing but now
unconscious 'will to remember' or 'need to remember"? ... perhaps an
iteration of the truncated sequence that started to invoke the memory,
again and again until the sequence carries forward? or something like that
but not so simple?
And under those conditions, a neural chemistry hypersensitive to so much
... what sorts of meaning attach to the timings and rhythms and
disjunctions of remembering? attach because these phenomena of remembering
incorporate and index these others goings-on .... our moods, our persistent
needs, the longer timescale enduring carrier-wave of the activity of
writing, of coming to terms with ..... and also, no doubt, the technology
of narrative itself, which must also have some patterning effects on what
all the brain tends to do Next and After.
As with psycho-analysis, or hypnosis, it is quite remarkable what we are
capable of remembering ... and when we remember may tell us as much as what
we remember.
Have you noticed? :)
JAY.
>...well, as i am writing currently about events in Africa from 30 years
>ago, i am in a position of
>deliberately re-calling experience into a present context of composition:
>sometimes i write in the present tense, as though the events are immediate
>(and in memory, of course, all remembering has a dynamic of immediacy),
>other times, i revert to past tense description, to intone the quality of
>re-collection, a "then" to complement the "now" of composition -
>these are willful acts: memory in this case is purposefully appealed.
>after i've written some pages, i stop to allow my willful work to tease at
>the connections in memory,
>- other experiences emerge, and then i return to write from those. in
>other words, the purposeful remembering of past experience triggers
>spontaneous relations and connections of similar experiences in the same
>context of an African experience.
>i'd venture memory is spontaneous in the unexamined life, perhaps; ? but
>some of us draw on memory relentlessly for inspiration and insights.
>
>or have i missed your point?
>diane
>
>"I want you to put the crayon back in my brain."
>Homer Simpson
>
>diane celia hodges
>university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
>instruction
>vancouver, bc
>mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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