Brockmeier, J (in press). Dissecting memory: unravelling the autobiographical process. From:
Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
The stories we tell about ourselves and how we remember events can have a profound effect upon our conceptions of 'the self.' Brockmeier's essay on "Dissecting memory" examines how fiction and autobiography can both shape self-perception. To analyze this concept, Brockmeier uses Ian McEwan's novel Saturday as a kind of case study, which makes the narrator's stream-of-consciousness about both mundane and important matters as its driving focus, more so than external events. Selective remembering and selective forgetting involve both cognitive and psychological factors: memory is a neurological process, but emotions also affect how and what we remember. Forgetting is not necessarily a 'bad' thing: it can enable us to experience things afresh when we revisit them, versus solely dwelling in negative aspects of the past.
I found this essay particularly interesting because of the extent to which it highlighted the different ways I have told my own story -- to myself and to others -- in the past. There are a number of various elements to my character: I am a friend, student,...
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