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A Primer for Forgetting
"We live in a culture that prizes memory--how much we can store, the
quality of what's preserved, how we might better document and retain the
moments of our life while fighting off the nightmare of losing all that
we have experienced. But what if forgetfulness were seen not as
something to fear--be it in the form of illness or simple
absentmindedness--but rather as a blessing, a balm, a path to peace and
rebirth? A Primer for Forgetting is a remarkable experiment in
scholarship, autobiography, and social criticism by the author of the
classics The Gift and Trickster Makes This World. It forges a new vision
of forgetfulness by assembling fragments of art and writing from the
ancient world to the modern, weighing the potential boons forgetfulness
might offer the present moment as a creative and political force. It
also turns inward, using the author's own life and memory as a canvas
upon which to extol the virtues of a concept too long taken as an evil."
Here is an excerpt from Lewis Hyde's latest work.
http://www.dailygood.org/story/2345/a-primer-for-forgetting-lewis-hyde/
