Remember, forget, memorize, recall: memory and modes of existence

Abstract

In autobiographical works, as the narrator tells his memories within narration time, he remembers his asleep past and also materializes his remembrances turning them into a text. In this way he leads us from absence deixis to presence deixis (both terms in tensive semiotics). However, the subject’s experiences take the opposite direction (from presence to absence) in narrated past, entering both forgetfulness and memory. This paper aims to discuss how these two directions or “pathways” (remembrance and forgetfulness) as well as their meaningful effects are performed in autobiographical discourses.

Keywords autobiographical discourses; modes of existence; field of presence; discursive semiotics