ABSTRACT

Coerced forgetting was one of the malign features of the twentieth century. Forgetting as repressive erasure appeared in its most brutal form in the history of totalitarian regimes where, in the words of Milan Kundera, the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. This chapter discusses seven types of forgetting. The first type is what the author would call prescriptive forgetting. A second type of forgetting is that which is constitutive in the formation of a new identity. A third type of forgetting might be called annulment. A fourth type of forgetting may be called repressive erasure. A further type of forgetting, structural amnesia, was identified by John Barnes in his study of genealogies. Yet another type of forgetting flows from the planned obsolescence built into the capitalist system of consumption. There is a seventh type of forgetting in which, though an element of political expediency may play a significant role.