Non-subsumptive memory and narrative empathy

Hanna Meretoja

doi:10.1177/1750698020976458

Abstract

This article shows the relevance of a model of non-subsumptive understanding for theorising memory as a mode of sense-making that can contribute to understanding the other in ethically sustainable ways. It develops a theory of non-subsumptive memory and narrative empathy. While understanding is often seen as a form of appropriation, assimilation, and subsumption of the singular under the general, a hermeneutic approach suggests that there are also non-subsumptive, non-appropriative, dialogical forms of understanding. In dialogue with Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Gehen, ging, gegangen ( Go, Went, Gone), the article argues that cultural memorial forms, as (narrative) models of sense-making, tend to be productive when they adapt and change as they are applied to new situations and harmful when they subsume new experiences under fixed meaning templates. The article envisages memory as a resource for learning and other-oriented empathy in processes of dialogical understanding.

Highlights

Memory plays a crucial role in our sense-making processes – in our ways of orienting ourselves in the world as individuals and communities
We always encounter a new situation from a horizon of understanding shaped by our earlier experiences
Memory is mediated by cultural models of sense-making that can be called cultural memorial forms

Summary

Introduction

Memory plays a crucial role in our sense-making processes – in our ways of orienting ourselves in the world as individuals and communities. In the act of subsumption, a particular phenomenon (experience, event, etc.) is subsumed under a memorial form that functions as a model of sense-making so that the phenomenon is taken to be the ‘same’ as something of which we have a memory or with which we are familiar, for example through cultural narratives.

Results

Conclusion