Reflections of the Past

     The past seems to be escapable. For every forward thinking thought there are ten more sneaking up to bombard our minds. It is as if we are driving forward, but continually looking into our rearview mirror for direction. Charles Jencks refers to the idea of preserving the past in his article, “The Emergent Rules,” which outlines the elements of postmodern art. In the article, Jencks (1987) refers to the idea of “anamnesis,” or “suggested recollection” (p. 286). When I first read over this idea I was very excited because it was the first aha moment I’ve had in our CMC class. What I liked most about the idea of anamnesis is that it is all around us. The clothes we wear and even the buildings we erect all have a sense of past remembrance that is inescapable. The reason for this inability to elude our past is because it lives through us and in us. “[The] only escape from rule-governed art is to suppress from our consciousness the canons behind one's creativity” (Jencks 1987, p. 281). This statement creates turbulence because it means that we can’t liberate ourselves from conventional thinking. 

     An even more powerful example of anamnesis is in the art of Ann and Patrick Poirer. In their art they show a fragmented past through segmented buildings, stones, and landscape. What I like about this, is that it reflects our inability to remember the past in its totality. While the past may be present in our lives it’s only “half-remembered” (Jencks, p.286). No matter how hard we try the past can only be seen in the fractions we remember them and unfortunately only in the ways we perceived them. 

     Whether we see our past for what it truly was or for what we remember it as, the fact remains that it is alive within us. Furthermore, this idea of anamnesis lends directly to Barthes’ idea of intertextuality that we examined in class. The texts we read are a continuation of dialogue from one author to another. No matter how hard we try to escape the past it will always be there in our works. If we can remember how strong of a grip the past plays in our lives then we can learn how it shapes the meanings we get from texts, and how different each of our interpretations may be.