MEMORY, UBUNTU: I AM, FOR WE ARE, FOR WE REMEMBER(ED)

SOU, PORQUE SOMOS, PORQUE LEMBRAMOS

Abstract

Our main aim is, in nuce, developing a study on memory. For this purpose, throughout our discussion, that is, along with our own reflexions, we resorted to arguments from many areas of knowledge (in particular, humanities; above all, literature) which, having memory as its object, thought it in what we noticed were different, significant and complementary forms, in its most plural relationships; for instance: Augustine’s philosophical perspective; Maurice Halbwachs’ sociological one; Umberto Eco’s cultural one; Mikhail Bakhtin’s one from sociolinguistics; Aristotle’s and Cicero’s rhetoric-discursive ones; regarding to the literary field, Marcel Proust’s and, with an emphasis on testimony matters, Primo Levi’s, Graciliano Ramos’ and Elie Wiesel’s ones. Our efforts of dialogue and integration do justice to the multivalence, the statute and the functioning of memory, which is never set alone, imperiously claiming the other in order to be and to preserve itself.