Narrative cultures need no memory because recitation itself is contemporaneous

Evidence

By way of a simplifying fiction, we can hypothesize that, against all expectations, a collectivity that takes narrative as its key form of competence has no need to remember its past. It finds the raw material for its social bond not only in the meaning of the narratives it recounts, but also in the act of reciting them. The narratives’ reference may seem to belong to the past, but in reality it is always contemporaneous with the act of recitation. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 204

Categorization

• QUESTION: This claim that narrative memory is actually anti-mnemonic is surprising — worth tracing how it feeds into Jameson’s critique of Lyotard’s historicism.
• XREF: connects to: Listening and remembering can occur simultaneously in the present — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 317; Ritualized Quran recitation engages text non-hermeneutically rather than extracting meaning; Traditional Hebrew schooling taught recitation without grammatical understanding (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Listening and remembering can occur simultaneously in the present #corroborates (0.85) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 317
• Ritualized Quran recitation engages text non-hermeneutically rather than extracting meaning #exemplifies (0.75)
• Traditional Hebrew schooling taught recitation without grammatical understanding #exemplifies (0.72)