NCRM NOVELLA - The Deep and Wide World of Autobiographical Memory: Hindsight and Beyond (Lecture)

Description:

Much of the available literature on autobiographical memory focuses on bias and distortion: because we do not, and cannot, re-present the past "as it was" and because our picture of the past is inevitably filtered through the eyes of the present, replete with its sundry wishes and needs, the stories we tell about our lives (this view maintains) are bound to be fictions, even lies. Much of this literature also sees autobiographical memory as a largely intra-individual, cognitive affair, issuing from the brain's complex machinery. Both of these assumptions bear some validity and warrant our attention. In this presentation, however, Mark Freeman will try to shift this dominant emphasis by highlighting the extraordinary "depth" and "width" of autobiographical memory, focusing especially on the phenomenon of hindsight.By "depth," he refers mainly to the idea that autobiographical memory - specifically, the process of looking backward over the terrain of the past and seeing it anew - is at the very heart of the examined life. Far from being a mere source of bias and distortion, it is a vitally important source of self-understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. It is also at the heart of moral life and our life with others more generally. Far from being confined to the individual mind or the personal past, it extends into the very fabric of culture and history and is intimately connected to those regions of otherness, from the intergenerational all the way to the transcendental, that are part and parcel of the human condition. By "width," he refers to the simple fact that there is perhaps no sphere of human experience that applies to so wide a range of disciplines, and so wide a range of ideas and questions and concerns, as autobiographical memory.In order to underscore the vastness of the world of autobiographical memory as well as the special significance of hindsight, this lecture will explore a range of fundamental principles that might be said to characterize the phenomena at hand. To the greatest degree possible, these principles will be rooted in the context of "real life" human realities. For, it is here, in the midst of these realities, that the promise of narrative inquiry is most readily realized.HindsightThe Promise and Peril of Looking BackwardMark Freeman, Professor of Psychology, College of the Holy Cross, USADrawing on psychology, philosophy, literature, memoir, and personal experience, Hindsight is an engaging volume that provides an insightful exploration of the role of hindsight both in discerning the truth of one's past and in crafting a good and worthy life.OUP USAHardback / 978-0-19-538993-7 / £14.992010 / 261pp

Cost:

This event will take place between 2 - 3.30pm and is free to attend.

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Region:

Greater London

Keywords:

Narrative Methods, Biographical Methods/Oral History

Related publications and presentations from our eprints archive:

Narrative Methods
Biographical Methods/Oral History

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