Memory, Imagination, Archive. An approach to the Metaphors of Memory

Abstract

Throughout history different thinkers who addressed memory have used the metaphor as figure of speech to explain its operation (“photographic memory”, “Palaces of Memory”, among many others). Today, perhaps the most used are the metaphor that compares the brain with a computer or the archive metaphor. This article aims to present them critically pointing their limitations, they can suggest how the storage processes works and the functions of memory but they are inadequate in the question of meaning. Based on these reviews and establishing a theoretical framework where neuroscientists (Steven Rose, Gerald Edelman), memory scholars (Aleida Assmann), sociologists (Alfred Schutz) and psychologists (Lev Vygotsky) converge, we will think the memory as a creative process, giving space to think the place of imagination in our relationship with the past.