The flow of memory. Representations of absent, intimate memory outside the official narrative in Los Rubios (2003)

Abstract

Received: 01/07/2025

Approved: 03/02/2025

Abstract

Memory, far from being a hermetic archive, static monument, or museum of certainties, is a meandering stream that makes its way through the mists of oblivion, crossing them and assimilating them. The desire to remember accelerates its flow, only to be slowed down by fragmented routes. In his book The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks (2017) defends the fallibility of memory, arguing that human beings do not have the neurological mechanisms to guarantee an accurate account of the past, an absolute truth: our memories are fragile, fragmentary, but also flexible and creative. Sacks proposes the image of the river as this changing entity, which transforms with every second of existence, becoming more and less at the same time.