What is an autobiographical memory?
June 2nd, 2007 | by Ben Hoare |Autobiographical memory has been defined in various ways in the field of psychology, but the basic concept is simple: it is a subjective, constructive account of the past based on personal memory.
I became interested in autobiographical memory when I started asking myself how auto/biographers might solve the problem of chronology: the fact that a chronological account is both the most common way of telling an auto/biographical narrative and the least satisfying. I had seen some intriguing alternatives to the chronological method, perhaps most notably in Chris Heath’s Feel: Robbie Williams, and in Theodore Zeldin’s Oxford Muse project, both of which are predominantly governed by memory. Put crudely, in both texts, events from the past are narrated in the order in which they are remembered, rather than the order in which they happened.
Shortly afterwards I was introduced to the concept of drabbles by Ramesh Satkuranath, a reader, writer and thinker whom I admire. Drabbles are pieces of writing of exactly 100 words, and they are usually fictional. My understanding of the genre, from the little I have read about it, is that the aim with drabbles is to cover as much ground in as little space as possible: the original concept was that a drabble could be seen as something like a very short novel.
The idea of very short pieces of writing appealed to me, for a number of reasons. Most of all, the word limit was convenient for people who, like me, wanted to write but had little time in which to do so. I had lots of ideas but was daunted by the scale of some of them, and ended up writing very little at all. But the idea of sitting down regularly, perhaps once a night, and producing just 100 words, seemed more manageable.
When I started writing these short pieces, I found myself interested not so much in trying to cover as much ground as possible, as focussing on a single concept, covering it in as much depth as the word limit allowed. The pieces I was writing were not fictional, but autobiographical, and generally described a single memory, dwelling on a particular instance from my life and conveying my subjective recollection of it.
This was my original conception of the autobiographical memory: it would be a piece of autobiographical writing of exactly 100 words which described an event or group of events as remembered by me. Over time, this definition evolved. I found myself increasingly interested not just in the incidents themselves, but in how I remembered them. The process of memory fascinated me, and in my writing I was conscious that, just as the events I was describing had occurred at a specific point in time, so had the act of remembering them. Memory is not fixed, but fluid: how I remember something today is different from how I will remember it tomorrow, or in five years’ time. In theory I could revisit the same events on different occasions and produce entirely different autobiographical memories.
In my autobiographical memories, then, I have tried to incorporate an account of what it feels like to remember these occasions, and some of my pieces have been overtly about memory. Some of them have been too preoccupied with this theme, and the quality of the writing has suffered. I am gradually learning the craft of writing autobiographical memories, and I feel that the best pieces are those in which a vivid portrayal of the remembered event is seasoned with some kind of acknowledgement of the act of remembering.
The following autobiographical memory, written by Ramesh Satkuranath, is an excellent example of what I aim for. It focuses predominantly on a remembered event, but certain references in the text highlight the fact that some time has passed since the event actually happened – the act of remembering has its own temporal context:
In my first or second year at my new school the teacher asked for me and another kid. Confused, I wondered what I and this boy who wasn’t my friend could have done wrong.
In the corridor was a teacher and a girl. The teachers conferred over our heads. The girl looked as confused as I was.
When we were made to stand in front of our two classes I understood. The black boy, the oriental girl, a couple of other coloureds and me: exhibits to teach the white kids about ‘diversity,’ or whatever language they coached it in then.
It is the last sentence that gives us the clues: “diversity” is not a word that was used in this context when Ramesh was at school. He cannot remember what word was in fashion at the time, so he superimposes terminology from the present onto his memory of the past. The piece shows both a consciousness of the constant evolution of language, and a weariness at its constant inadequacy in this particular context.
This kind of temporal duality is important to me: successful autobiographical memories are able to account on some level for at least two separate points in time. But what interests me the most about Ramesh’s account is the autobiographical detail: I feel privileged to have had this glimpse into his memory, and to know a little more about the feelings and processes that have contributed to the making of the person I know. This statement seems banal, given all the complex things I have read and thought about autobiography, but it remains a fact that my principal pleasure when reading autobiography comes from the sense, however illusory, of getting to know the autobiographer.
With that in mind, I would like to invite you to tell me your autobiographical memories. I want to hear from my friends, my readers, my favourite writers, and people I have never yet encountered, and read their lives as they remember them. What are the dominant memories in your mind? What dormant memories did today’s events jog for you? Until I embarked on this project, I had not realised quite how much of our lives are influenced by memories of the past. I want that past to speak, and I want to hear not just the voice of my own history, but that of anyone else who remembers.
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