For Then and Now: Memory and Writing

In this article, I explore the relationship between memory and writing. In the service of such an exploration, I have employed several different writing forms: first-person narrative—including self-reflection, travelogue, eulogy in epistolary form, poetry, and social science prose. WARNING: This sort of work—specifically, this sort of writing—calls for a different sort of reader. Unlike many other academic articles, the goal of this article is not to systematically reiterate, review, inform, instruct, or critique. Rather, in this article, I respectively attempt to present an alternative approach to “doing psychology”—one that would allow for an account of the process of the unfolding of one particular subject in and through writing as she¹engages with memory. By the same token, bearing witness to such a process necessitates a reader who can make sufficient space to accommodate the writer as she unfolds before her/him through an indefinite process. Such a reader should also be aware that the writer will not necessarily guide the reader as to what to think or feel. Rather, the reader is asked to do this for her/himself.