The Memory of Place

A Phenomenology of the Uncanny

Dylan Trigg

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780821420393
• eBook ISBN: 9780821444047
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

From the frozen landscapes of the Antarctic to the haunted houses of childhood, the memory of places we experience is fundamental to a sense of self. Drawing on influences as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Freud, and J. G. Ballard, The Memory of Place charts the memorial landscape that is written into the body and its experience of the world.

Dylan Trigg's The Memory of Place offers a lively and original intervention into contemporary debates within "place studies, " an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of philosophy, geography, architecture, urban design, and environmental studies. Through a series of provocative investigations, Trigg analyzes monuments in the representation of public memory; "transitional" contexts, such as airports and highway rest stops; and the "ruins" of both memory and place in sites such as Auschwitz. While developing these original analyses, Trigg engages in thoughtful and innovative ways with the philosophical and literary tradition, from Gaston Bachelard to Pierre Nora, H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger. Breathing a strange new life into phenomenology, The Memory of Place argues that the eerie disquiet of the uncanny is at the core of the remembering body, and thus of ourselves. The result is a compelling and novel rethinking of memory and place that should spark new conversations across the field of place studies.

Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and widely recognized as the leading scholar on phenomenology of place, calls The Memory of Place "genuinely unique and a signal addition to phenomenological literature. It fills a significant gap, and it does so with eloquence and force." He predicts that Trigg's book will be "immediately recognized as a major original work in phenomenology."

Part One
From Place to Memory

CHAPTER ONE

BETWEEN MEMORY AND IMAGINATION

My memories begin with my second or third year. I recall the vicarage, the garden, the laundry house, the church, the castle, the Falls, the small castle of Worth, and the sexton’s farm. These are nothing but islands of memory afloat in a sea of vagueness, each by itself, apparently with no connection between them.

—Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“In the memory,” so writes Augustine, “everything is preserved separately, according to its category. Each is admitted through its own special entrance” (1961, 214). If our faith in memory’s ability to preserve events in a discrete manner, as Augustine suggests, has diminished, then there is much to be said for the notion of memory as being essentially spatial. While Augustine’s notion of memory as being like “a great field or a spacious palace, a storehouse for countless images of all kinds” (214), may have been replaced by virtual spaces and electronic servers, we nevertheless expect memory to occupy a “place.” But is there anything inherent in the content of memory that generates a spatial structure? Do my memories “encircle” one another, some falling into a less present “zone” than others? Similarly, do some memories remain “dormant,” awaiting their moment of resuscitation?

Implicit in the notion of memory as being stored for retrieval is the suggestion of continuity. Along with the familiar image of memory as a storehouse is the idea that memory remains motionless while the object itself is not being remembered. Yet motionlessness does not, of course, mean transparency. Even Augustine will admit that the storehouse becomes dusty, concealed, and submerged with confused memories, stating suggestively that “some [things] are forthcoming only after a delay, as though they were being brought out from some inner hiding place” (1961, 214). The hiding place in which memory recedes testifies to the significance and power of preservation: a power that continues to haunt both memory and place.

In this chapter, I will assess the status of memory as an experience preserved in time. The focus on the preservation of memory coincides with the broader emphasis on the spatiality of memory. As such, in beginning to think about the experience of memory in time, we will be in a position to gauge how space and place interact, coexist, and contribute to the formation of individual memory and collective memory. I shall have more to say below on episodic or autobiographical memory, in contrast to habitual memory, as involving a particular mode of spatiality. At this stage, however, all we need to note is how episodic memory is prima facie compelled to negotiate with an image that allows the past to be articulated. Can this relation between memory and its image be trusted?

On the one hand, as remembering agents, we are inclined to speak in such a way of having a “picture” of things in the world as the content of memory. Sometimes, I will say to myself how I can “still see the dashboard.” Later on, I might be prepared to say I can “still smell the leather interior,” and even that I can “still feel the touch of the steering wheel.” Images, sensations, and haptic encounters persist. On the other hand, there is clearly a difference between being in a place and remembering that place. The kinesthetic, cognitive, and affective dimensions of recall delineate a division between perception and recollection.

To speak of a memory-image means questioning how the image relates to the past. An image emerges: The “feel” of the steering wheel presses down, the sight of the dashboard appears, as though reframed in its original locality. Suddenly I have “returned” to the childhood garage in which my father’s car was housed. At the same time, the return is also virtual: in effect, a concurrent blending of presence and absence. In imagining myself being in a place, I join a past experience with a playful reworking of that past in the present. Because of this overlapping between remembering and imagining, the relationship between memory and its mental image becomes a foreground issue.

Pursuing this relationship will mean confronting, first, the possibility, and second, limits of a phenomenology of memory. In this chapter, I will begin with an account of the phenomenology of memory before moving on to a preliminary investigation of the structure of place memory. In this way, the purpose of this chapter is to serve as a broad theoretical foundation for the ensuing chapters. My concern, above all, is to consider how place memory differs as a unique mode of remembering, involving its own affective and conceptual tensions.

SCENE AND SURROUNDING

As mentioned in the introduction, phenomenology’s receptivity toward ambiguity and process entails empty intentions’ becoming fulfilled in time. The result of this is that phenomenology captures appearances as being resistant to enclosed borders and fixed points. Taken up in perception, objects present themselves to us in a manifold fashion, shifting through stages of presence and absence in time. With memory, the motif of absence gains a special quality. How, after all, can an object that is absent in one sense simultaneously be present as an intention in another sense? The singular quality of memory is realized in contrast to other worldly phenomena. Unlike the desire toward an object or the fear of a situation, both cases that are structured around a momentum of fulfillment or failure, memory presents itself, at least initially, as an appearance of what is temporally past, thus absent.

Clearly memory persists in some sense into the present. Once lived, the past does not temporally expire, even though the event itself may have ceased to exist. Instead, it stretches out into the present, resonating in such a way that personal identity and collective identity become reinforced. This gesture of reinforcement does not mean that memory is solely the province of mental content, however. Memory is not simply confined to our heads, as it were. While it is true that without our brains, recognition of the past would crumble, it is nonetheless the interaction between persons and world that provides the genesis for remembering. Things in the world activate our brains, directing us in different paths accordingly.

But what binds this diversity is the thematic direction of a re-collective and self-reflexive intentionality. Memory “points” us toward the past, as Aristotle states: “Memory relates to the past. No one would say that he remembers the present, when it is present” (1941, 608). But does memory really “point” us, as though the past were a landscape seen from behind our shoulders? Do we really “turn” to the past? “Pointing” and “turning” capitalize on a spatial account of memory as having been left behind. The logic underpinning this spatial language is understandable enough: Memory is thought of as involving the notion of completion, so distancing the object of remembering from experience in the present. Indeed, unless it involves a preemptive nostalgia, to speak of remembering the present is wholly incoherent.

However, when we encounter things in the present—apples, an earthquake, an eclipse—then such things provide the grounds for our remembering. Doing so, things act upon the body in the present, such that the body stands ready to express the content of memory. To say that my experience of eating an apple, to conjure something of a Proustian image, returns me to a childhood orchard is not to say that I have been temporally transplanted back to that lost world. Rather, it suggests that my body in the present is the ground, into which an experience is being relived. As the ground for a relived experience, the germs of the apple experience were there all along, only now revitalized through coming into contact with a physical object in the world. The apple contains the seeds of an experience in it, thus alerting me to a part of myself that was previously concealed.

A major implication follows: If memory is concerned with the past, then we can also think of a distinction between the activity of remembering and the content of what is being remembered. This distinction is classically phenomenological, insofar as it calls on Husserl’s (1999, 86) division between the noesis of memory (the act) and the noema of memories (the what). For Husserl, the “act” and the “what” constitute the structure of intentionality, marking in each case an inseparable union. He writes:

Perception, for example, has its noema, most basically its perceptual sense, i.e., the perceived as perceived. Similarly, the current case of remembering has its remembered as remembered, just as its remembered, precisely as it is “meant,” “intended to” in the remembering; again, the judging has the judged as judged, liking has the liked as liked, and so forth. In every case the noematic correlate, which is called “sense” here (in a very extended signification) is to be taken precisely as it inheres “immanentally” in the mental process of perceiving, of judging, of liking; and so forth; that is, just as it is offered to us when we inquire purely into this mental process itself. (quoted in Moran and Mooney 2002, 136; italics in original)

Husserl is describing the transcendental structure of experiencing an object, the perceived as perceived. With this, Husserl distances the objective reality of the object in question and underscores its sensible and mental reality. The “act” of remembering concerns the mode and the form in which the past is recollected, and thus signifies nothing less than the work of consciousness. But this has a temporal consequence, too. For something to be “remembered as remembered” we must be remembering in the first place. This apparently obvious remark in fact highlights something that is often overlooked: The object of remembering comes to light as a memory only when we are in the act of remembering. The same object may pass us by or otherwise be experienced as a nonremembering act. Either way, only by the noetic act is the noematic object discernible as a memory.

Husserl’s noetic/noematic distinction is helpful in establishing the formal structure of remembering. Alongside Husserl, Henri Bergson provides broader assistance in terms of distinguishing between habit memory and independent recollection. Bringing Bergson and Husserl together, we begin to get a richer picture of the specificity of remembering, as such.

Key to Bergson’s analysis of memory is the question of how the past can differ from the present, given that, for Bergson (2001, 2004), consciousness is structured as a continuous and indivisible unfolding of duration (durée). Bergson’s response to this, famously, is to establish two forms of memory.

First, Bergson describes “habit memory” (2004, 86–87). Habit memory is a practical mode of memory, which utilizes the past for the sake of being oriented in the present. “Sometimes,” Bergson writes, “it lies in the action itself,” while at other times, “it implies an effort of the mind which seeks in the past, in order to apply them to the present, those representations which are best able to enter into the present situation” (87). In each case, habit memory contends with the notion of putting the past into use. This means that habit memory’s relation with the performative dimension of learning places it in the remit of mere survival. Moreover, the correlation between habit and survival positions habit memory as a largely automated, physiological response to stimulus. In learning to perform actions—walking, writing, talking—before repeating those actions, our engagement with the world is such that the fluidity of movement confers a sense of continuity upon our actions.

Central to this adaptable involvement with the world is the function of the brain. During habit memory, an editorial process unfolds, in which actions and movements are modified in accordance with a given end. Although immersed in the body, habit memory’s special relationship with the cognitive process of the brain produces a different variant of “body memory.” The primary function of habit memory is its realization in action. If that realization is blocked due to brain damage, then the existence of the habit memory is abolished. Thus, habit memory is marked not only by its dependency on being realized, but also by its need to be practiced. Should the stimulus of my habit memory disappear from the world—hills to ascend, oceans to swim, and people to speak to—then so, too, would the memory itself.

All of this is quite different from Bergson’s second mode of memory: independent memory. The term “independent memory” refers to the autonomy of memory from its practical actualization. As if there were any doubt as to not only the thematic difference but also the evaluative difference between habit and independent memory, then Bergson goes so far as to describe the latter as “perfect from the outset,” involving a “will to dream,” which “man is alone capable of” (2004, 94–95). How does this second type of memory gain such a distinction? To answer this, we need to look at the causal basis of independent memory.

Whereas habit memory actualizes itself through practice, filtered at all times through the action of the brain, independent memory has its basis in the “memory-images,” which record “all the events of our daily life as they occur in time; it neglects no detail; it leaves to each fact, to each gesture, its place and date” (Bergson 2004, 92). Furthermore, all of this experience is recorded quite independently of its potential to be employed practically. Rather than being limited to the sphere of cognition, with independent memory, we are issued a memory that occupies the entire body.

Because of its ability to prolong the past into the present independently from external stimulus, it is only this second type of memory that Bergson is prepared to term “memory par excellence” (2004, 95). This claim is underpinned by memory’s relation with the spontaneity of the imagination. Indeed, at stake in the genesis of independent memory is the question of whether the memory-images being recalled fuse “dream with reality” (96). In contrast to the practical orientation of habit memory, Bergson is left wondering just how memory can retain its place in consciousness without inducing an “immense zone of obscurity” as “certain confused recollections, unrelated to the present circumstances,” arise in the present (97). Such questions point to the depth and richness of memory as recollection. Losing their automated structure, pure memory signifies a highly personal memory, peculiar to the self experiencing it. As such, the mode of language distinct to Bergson’s independent memory resists absolute clarity. Experienced from the inside out, it falls to the body to become the voice of expression for such forays into the past.

Bergson’s distinction between habit and independent memory marks two ways in which objects of memory appear for consciousness. The distinction is neither absolute nor exhaustive. Indeed, within the twofold division, several subdivisions demarcating different modes of remembering present themselves (Casey 2000b, 52–64). Given the focus of this chapter, however, it will suffice to concern ourselves with memory as an affective retrieval of an episodic experience. The emphasis on affectivity testifies to episodic memory’s distance to the performative dimension of habit memory. Independent memory is not simply the remembering of objective information, nor is it the processing of factual data. Instead, it embodies the meaningful retrieval of an experience, encompassing a surrounding world of place, time, and corporeality.

In Husserl, we discovered a distinction between the “act” of remembering and the “what” of memories. Having touched upon the act of remembering, our attention falls to the content of that act. In the very least, we can say that there is a “thing” being recollected. Being more ambitious, we can go on to survey such things as conversations, places, emotions, and thoughts, all of which fulfill the content of memory and vary in their presence respectively. Following Casey’s (2000b, 61–67) incisive exposition of remembering, we can speak here of “remembering-what” as the category that designates particular things, which form part of a broader experience. Above all, the idea of remembering-what implicates a push toward the encompassing event. That is, the “what” emerges against a backdrop, in which the specific thing elicits a point of entry to the event being remembered, as Casey states: “This structure represents the nominalization of the complex, its subsumption under a description that is itself singular and without internal complication” (61; italics in original). The “what” and the “that” of remembering thus form a respective parallel to object and event, or, as Casey terms it, “state of affairs” (67).

Remembering that certain things were the case means situating the “what” of remembering in a context. To remember what she was wearing when I met her means remembering that we were in a different country. Object and event occupy a relation of inseparability, but mark a different emphasis in terms of intentional content. Further still, the twofold emergence of object and event are remembered in an entirely heterogeneous and qualitatively disparate manner, a disparity encompassed by what Casey terms the “memoryframe” (2000b, 68).

For Casey, “memory-frame” refers to the heterogeneous setting in which the content of memory is presented, thus producing a distinct “ambience” upon that content. Less a monolithic structure, the memory-frame emerges as a broad outline in which the content and context fuse. For Casey (2000b, 68), the presence of the memory-frame recedes and intensifies in varying ways, forever achieving the task of placing memory. Through emphasizing the spatiality inherent in remembering, Casey’s idea of “memory-frame” is especially helpful. This spatial dimension is reinforced, as Casey proceeds to subdivide the memory-frame into different factors, concluding with the memory of space and time. Before pursuing spatiality generally, it will be useful to focus on Casey’s first contributing factor: worldhood.

Casey’s model of “worldhood” (2000b, 68–69), a term taken from Heidegger, refers to the “embrace of an environing world” (69), which situates the object and event of remembering in both a temporal and a spatial locality. The emphasis on totality in Casey’s understanding of worldhood is prefigured in Heidegger’s (1996, 67–83) account of the concept in Being and Time, as the world of Dasein occupying a particular world peculiar to it, as well as the pregiven environment in which Dasein is placed in a ready-to-hand fashion. For Heidegger (69–70), the preontological understanding of the world as an environment means that Dasein is inseparably involved in the world, an involvement that is discovered only as the ready-to-hand placement of the world is disturbed. In Casey’s analysis of the worldhood of remembering, the same interdependence of worldhood becomes the implicit background on which the content of memory is presented to consciousness. Because of this role, worldhood retains a containing aspect, which engenders it to the role of border.

Corroborating this view of worldhood as a border, Casey goes on to make an internal division between scene and surroundings, where scene entails the “immediate setting for the specific content remembered” and surroundings “refer to the nonimmediate setting” (2000b, 69; italics in original). Both scene and surrounding situate the object of memory, reinforcing the particularity of what is being remembered, but simultaneously withdrawing from the main attention of remembering.

The particularity central to worldhood, he goes on to say, is made possible by the presence of the remembering agent (Casey 2000b, 69). Not only is our presence within memory the basis of all remembering, but as remembering agents, we ourselves become constitutive of the memory, as he writes: “We have internal evidence that we were there—there in the very midst of the remembered” (69; italics in original). With the insertion of the self, scene and surrounding are brought to a tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface: Touching the Past
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Phenomenology and Place
• Part one: From Place to Memory
• Part Two: From Flesh to Materiality
• Part Three: From Black Holes to specters
• Conclusion: This Place Is Haunted
• References
• Index