The Invention of Memory
Professor Riccio and Dr. Dufour
Pr. Riccio and Dr. Dufour have finally succeeded in bringing a box of memory from Morel’s island back to Dallas. They have indeed. A conversation.
Dr. Dufour: However, this decision to allow the public to enter the box is a very foolish and generous decision with very little, if any, scientific outcome.
Pr. Riccio: But were not all of these memories misplaced? They needed to go somewhere!
Dr. Dufour: Ahh, you are proposing that this box is an example of the industrial exteriorization of memory, some sort of Technogenetic memory .
Pr. Riccio: I am not, but I see your point. And…
Dr. Dufour: With this we discover and prove then that a part of ourselves, like our memory, is outside of us.
Pr. Riccio: But does not memory constitute the most precious part of being human: therein, the totality of the works of spirit, in all guises and aspects, takes shape with this box!
Pr. Dufour: So, ergo, it is true that knowledge is what empowers humanity?
Pr. Riccio: And behind knowledge is memory!
Dr. Dufour: And you would agree we are, at this moment in history, in a service economy?
Pr. Riccio: But I would not characterize it in such a limited way, histories overlap, systems of understanding cannot be so constrained, how can you?
Dr. Dufour: I do agree. If service economies were to rely on such technologies as this box, whereby behavior is formalized and managed, it would be a fine example, characteristic of our hyper industrial epoch, which singularly restages Plato’s analysis of hypomnesis.
Pr. Riccio: Hypomnesis! Finally, we agree on something!
Dr. Dufour: Human memory has always been exteriorized…
Pr. Riccio: Technical from the start. It takes shape first of all as a tool, two or three million years ago. A spontaneous memory support, the tool is not however made to store memory: not until the late Paleolithic period do mnemo techniques as such appear.
Dr. Dufour: We have all had the experience of misplacing a memory bearing object – a slip of paper, an annotated book, an agenda, relic or fetish, etc.
Pr. Riccio: To write a manuscript, to create an object is to organize thought by consigning it outside in the form of traces, that is, symbols, whereby thought can reflect on itself, actually constituting itself, making itself repeatable and transmissible: it becomes knowledge.
Dr. Dufour: To sculpt, to paint, to draw is to go forth to an encounter with the tangibility of the visible, it is to see with one’s hands while giving to be seen, that is, to be seen again. It is to train the eye, body and memory of the beholder and, thus it is to trans-form it.
Pr. Riccio: Now we understand the significance of this box!
Dr. Dufour: For today, memory has become the major element in industrial development, and quotidian objects are more and more the supports of objective memory, that is, also forms of knowledge.
Pr. Riccio: Now, these techno-logical forms of knowledge, objectified in the form of equipment and apparatuses, also and especially engender a loss of knowledge at the very moment one begins speaking of…
Dr. Dufour: “Knowledge societies” and “knowledge industries” and “cognitive” or “cultural” capitalism. We are constantly in relation with mnemo technological apparatuses of all kinds, from the television to the telephone, including the computer and GPS guidance systems.
Pr. Riccio: Now, these cognitive technologies, to which we confide a greater and greater part of our memory, cause us to lose an ever-greater part of our knowledge.
Dr. Dufour: To lose a cell phone is to lose the trace of the telephone numbers of our correspondents and to realize that they are no longer in the psychical memory…
Pr. Riccio: But in the memory of the apparatus!
Dr. Dufour: But we must not forget…there are lingering concerns.
Pr. Riccio: You must voice them.
Dr. Dufour: The increase of the collective memory so generated by such public exposure of this Invention of Memory box…
Pr. Riccio: It is minimal compared to the safety threat on the same public not to have memory.
Dr. Dufour: Then memory must be dangerous!
Pr. Riccio: We will let it be known that we were only here able to present a limited version of our invention without any guarantee of this version been safe.
Dr. Dufour: A fine solution.
Pr. Riccio: One cannot be too cautious.
Dr. Dufour: And here one must ask if the industrial and massive development of mnemo technologies such as our box, does not represent a structural loss of memory, or, more precisely, a displacement of memory: a displacement whereby it can become the object of a control of knowledge, and constitute the essentially mnemo technological basis of these control societies that Gilles Deleuze began to theorize toward the end of his life.
Pr. Riccio: So, if I understand you correctly, we must continue to find ways of inventing memory otherwise we run the risk of losing it?
Dr. Dufour. It is what we must do.
Pr. Riccio: Our duty if not destiny!
Dr. Dufour: It has been very enjoyable working with you.
Pr. Riccio: The pleasure has been mine.
Dr. Dufour: We should consider a longer and more comfortable project. Thank you for coining the term "researtainment" that matches exactly our purpose in exhibiting our invention at Fair Park.
Pr. Riccio. I don’t remember coining the term “researtainment.”
Dr. Dufour: Maybe I did? I forgot! But do you like the term?
Pr. Riccio: I like it very much. Research entertainment.
Dr. Dufour: This has been a wonderful memory.
Pr. Riccio: We have been entertained.
With humble thanks for we are swimming in the memory of André Leroi-Gourhan, Gilbert Simondon, Georges Canguilehm and Henning Schmidgen.