Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
Interpretation
Remembrance allows us to redefine the past, giving life to what could have been while acknowledging what was.
This quote by Giorgio Agamben explores the concept of remembrance as a transformative act. It suggests that remembering is not merely recalling events as they occurred but is an active engagement with the potential of those memories, enabling us to reinterpret and reimagine our past. In this sense, memories can be incomplete or unrealized, but they possess the power to evolve and take on new meaning, thus affecting our present and future perspectives.
In practice
A speaker reflecting on personal growth at a reunion could use this quote to inspire others about learning from the past.
Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.
One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.
He can make the dry parched ground of my soul to become a pool and my thirsty barren heart as springs of water. Yes he can make this habitation of dragons this heart which is so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations to be a place of bounty and fruitfulness unto Himself
I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think about today..." "No, that's giving up... I'm still hpoing that yesterday will get better.
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.
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