Abstract

Our memory has an obvious cognitive value: it provides us with information about our past. But memory also has another role: what we remember is in some cases not only information about the past, but also evocation. The interpretation I give here of this phenomenon heavily relies on Roland Barthes' notion of 'punctum' in Camera Lucida and also remarks made by Proust on memory and death. The evocative power in virtue of which some past event is vividly present to our minds also makes us aware of an irremediable loss and of the unavoidability of forgetting: we remember that we forget. This experience can, as is shown by Proust, reconcile us with our own finitude