TALKING WITH THE DEAD - SELF-CONSTRUCTION AS DIALOGUE

The first notion to get rid of is that memory is primarily or literall y reduplicative, or reproductive..... It is with remembering as it is with the stroke in a skilled game. We may fancy that we are repeating a series of movements learned a long time before from a textbook or fr om a teacher. But motion study shows that in fact we build up the stro ke afresh on a basis of the immediately preceding balance of postures and the momentary needs of the game. Every time we make it, it has its own characteristics. (Bartlett, 1932/1995, p. 204) When the narrator pretends to remember how, exactly, the wind was blowing at seven o'clo ck in the evening, twenty-one years ago, why do I not smile? I assume it. But I have to confess, that I do not remember anything, whatever h appened, like a witness in court, or a narrator pretends to remember. I do never know how it was. I know it differently, not as a story, but as future. As a possibility. (Frisch,(1) 1960/1983, p. 8)