Thoughts on Things Forgotten

Recharging the Collective Memory Banks

Georg Schmid, Sigrid Schmid-Bortenschlager

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783631738290
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783631738306
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

We forget all kinds of things, trivial and important ones; and not just things but also topics and techniques, and we forget in different ways. Inconvenient as it is to forget your to-do list, forgetting grave political factors can lead to repeating the same mistakes. Foolish as it is to let proven solutions fall by the wayside, repression, both on a personal as on a political level, will lead to catastrophe. This book enumerates many things already forgotten (or in the process of being forgotten) and maps the tortuous paths of relinquishing useful ways of doing things. By analyzing «forgetting» in the light of historical context and psychological necessity, this study offers counter-strategies to the loss of social memory and stresses the benefits of social recollection.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Service/Self-“Service”
• 2 Going to the Movies
• 3 “Waldsterben”
• 4 On (Foreign) Languages and Their Pronunciation
• 5 Bombed Out
• 6 At the Dentist’s
• 7 On Smoking/No Smoking
• 8 Dress Codes
• 9 Childhood
• 10 Modern vs. Old-Fashioned?
• 11 Stencils, Mimeographs
• 12 The Status of Cats
• 13 Come, Fly with Me
• 14 Britain Goes Metric
• 15 Sea of Holes
• 16 What Must under No Circumstances Be Forgotten
• 17 Sexuality, Back Then
• 18 Phones
• 19 Rote Learning
• 20 When People Could Read and Write
• 21 Stalinallee
• 22 Forgetting, Repressing, Remembering
• 23 Pictures, Slide Shows
• 24 Civility
• 25 Manners
• 26 “Pygmy Cars”
• 27 Nylon Socks and Shirts
• 28 The Amnesia Chick
• 29 Profiles of Memorableness
• 30 Dirt
• 31 Playing Cards
• 32 The Loo
• 33 The European Union
• 34 Work Morale
• 35 Public Transport
• 36 Heating Your Home
• 37 Studying at the University
• 38 Some Fundamental Remarks on “Forgetting”
• 39 Austria
• 40 The Mixed Blessings of (Not) Being Able to Forget
• 41 When Agnosticism/Atheism Seemed Normal
• 42 Library Catalogues
• 43 Travelling, Passports, Credit Cards
• 44 When the West Was Still Proud of Itself
• Towards a General Theory of “Forgetting”
• The Optimal Solution Conundrum
• Bibliographical Notes
• Index