Forgetting
Posted October 18th, 2007 by mah
in
In class on Tuesday we discussed the notion of purposive forgetting which Burke describes as the only way of remembering (271). After I left class I was a little unsure as to what I initially thought he meant by this notion of forgetting. In particular, in class there was an argument put forth that one can't entirely forget something, such as experience/memories about one's mother (I apologize if I misstated this). Anyway, to help clarify this for myself, Burke isn't actually talking about a total collapse in memory, that one can't remember anything. Rather, is what he referring to only a temporal forgetting in the moment, so we can can make meaning out of a symbol at that time?
What's a ball?
I’m also struggling with this concept. I keep thinking about a very young child playing in a room with a ball. There are many items in this room and the room is exceptionally ornate. The child has not figured out the term for the ball yet. To the child the ball is only an object in the room. Suddenly someone tells the child “that is a ball.” But what is the ball? Is the ball an object in the room or is the ball an item not specific to the room? Maybe, by forgetting the context we first learn an object’s term, like the room above, we can then associate the term ball with other like objects, rather than referring to every item in the room as ball?
Duder, you seem to suggest
Duder, you seem to suggest that we acquire language by forgetting the context in which we learn the words. Perhaps most (structuralist) linguists would argue that we learn words in opposition to other words. Do you think that Burke is opposing the view of the structuralist linguists of distinguishing words by opposing them to other words?
Part of this may refer back
Part of this may refer back to the idea that language is an arena of conflict. The only way for us to understand that a ball is a ball is based on our sociolinguistic knowledge that the object is a ball. In other words, the ball represents a social connotation that it is a ball because it has been determined to be a ball. The same object, in a different social context, could just as easily be labeled blue – that is to say the object shares a pattern of existence similar to the socially accepted principle of blue. In other words, by selectively forgetting everything that does not represent the ball or the color blue we understand ball or blue, so it becomes an idealistic type of forgetting rather than a terministic type of forgetting. So, maybe, the context we forget, ignore, or focus on when learning are the conflicting social aspects of the situation?
what the ball is not
I'm interested in your ornate room v. the ball metaphor. I think it highlights that the meaning-making process is also involved in determining what the ball is not. Here, the ball is not the rest of the room and not the other objects in the room. Can the process of negation be, in this way, part of forgetting? By identifying what the ball is not, we remove those aspects from what we "see" when we look in the ornate room.
Mark, the notion of
Mark, the notion of "purposive forgetting" has made me reflect on the idea of forgetting in relation to language and objects. As Dr. Blakesley mentioned in class, we do think through our language and if language does not give us a work for a certain "reality" (I do not like the word but I am using it for lack of a better one), we do not "see" it. Thus, I would say that it is not that we do not "see" it but that we may "purposefully forget" this unnamed reality as we know it prior to having it named by language. After we have a name for this "reality" we "remember" it through language. I agre that Burke does not mention a total erasure of memory.