ABSTRACT
It goes without saying that human beings cannot function without memory, but also that memory is a permanent source of trauma and anxiety. Modernity has produced new, extremely challenging responsibilities for memory. We must remember the itemized and fragmented world that defies any coherent patterns. Simultaneously, we must learn how to forget or, at least, how to control “bad” memory, which is a source of trauma. In this chapter, I address these issues by discussing a postcard which I received from my mother shortly before her death. Drawing on Derrida’s book on the postcard and other literary and philosophical texts with extensive references to Plato’s concept of recollection as well as to the neurological mechanisms of memory, I seek to understand the message conveyed in this ostensibly banal communication.
