Memory and Narrative in Social Theory

Abstract

The author argues that contemporary social theories cannot simultaneously accommodate the diachronic and synchronic dimensions of time within their frameworks, because they reduce the complexities of social life in order to cope with them. Jacques Derrida's and Walter Benjamin's writings on memory open up the possibility of thinking about the relation between memory and narrative in multiple ways. These two theorists affirm the discontinuity and the non-recognition between past events and present discourses and analyse a broad range of possibilities in the reading of history. The author argues that the simultaneity of the diachronic and synchronic dimensions of time becomes possible only when past and present are not thought of as two separate entities, as is common practice in social theory.

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