ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some of the characteristics of our time. First, the plural memories alludes to the multiplicity of cultures and languages that originate from the diaspora of peoples throughout the world today, a multiplicity that will become impregnated with a full sense of respect for one another, so that multiculturalism, multilingualism and multiracialism avoid being empty words. These self-reflecting expressions are clues to understanding the chain of representations that constitutes the process of remembering/forgetting. Sometimes a change in these conditions may break the silence and allow memories to be expressed, while at other times silence can last for so long that it effaces memory and induces oblivion. Silences, oblivions and memories are aspects of the same process, and the art of memory cannot but be also an art of forgetting, through the mediation of silence and the alternation of silence and sound.
