Transforming Past Agency and Action in the Present

Abstract

A weakness of contemporary ‘forensic’ models of memory is their reliance on the belief that ‘a chain of successive memories’ creates a sense of continuity and stability in the self. This literal presentation of memory forecloses an attending to its practical use (in specific contexts and moments in time) and the subsequent ambivalences individuals experience when trying to make sense of past episodes of child sexual abuse. Drawing variously on Haaken, Campbell and Bergson, we use these approaches to call for a reworking of memory by inviting an engagement with its relational, practical and collective qualities. This paper examines these reworkings of the concept of memory and explores issues of social space, the localized contexts of remembering and the manner through which memories transform understandings of agency and action, with specific attention to how the past and present intertwine in regard to managing adult survivor identities.