Connerton Modernity Forgetting

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How Modernity Forgets is an analysis of how ubiquitous the phenomenon of forgetting is in modern societies. Connerton builds on arguments from Jameson and others that contemporary societies have ‘begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past’ (page 2) both in the individual and uniquely collective senses. It is explained that modern society exists in a permanent or hyper-present state which foils the usual methods of memory at almost every step. Connerton chalks up this mass forgetfulness to a great many things such as megacities and the ‘short lifespan of urban architecture’ (Page 5). Crucially all of the reasons provided are characteristics of the fast-paced, large scale modern world that are now quite often taken as standard.
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This is the first temporality of forgetting: labour process. In the past an artist’s signature on clothing or manufactured objects would cause them to ‘personal’ whereas in the modern age of replicable ‘phantom-like’ (page 42) objects it becomes easy to misperceive and not spend enough time acknowledging them to be able to enter the human consciousness. This ‘opacity’ (page 45) of the production process is manifested ever more remarkably through the use of catalogues (or perhaps from a more modern perspective, the internet) where each item available for consumers is lost in a myriad of others such that most would be forgotten. It is argued, under the banner of the second temporality of forgetting: ‘consumption’ (page 53) that one of the key mechanisms through which modern societies forget is the impermanence and ‘fleeting’ (page 61) nature of commodities. From choosing cigarettes over cigars to plastic over natural substances the increasingly fast paced, disposable nature of life and fashion. In a world in which fashionable products ‘disappear as quickly as [they] appear’ (page 61) society moves from fad to fad, scarcely understanding or appreciating them to the point of generating genuine …show more content…

He argues that the third temporality of forgetting: Careers, in the modern age is characterised by a sense of neophilia. In the past, he asserts children or apprentices spent a great deal of time observing and learning from masters of a craft or occupation. However a key characteristic of modern societies is occupational hopping, in other words a tendency for individuals to follow their own plans for their careers by moving from one occupation to another, enjoying the novelty of it before moving on. In this way he argues that the shared memory of an occupation and its processes is lost to the capitalistic

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