HOW TO RECAPTURE SELECTIVE MEMORIES
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autobiographies of seventeenth-century seekers for evidences of grace
or the integrity of their conversion. But it is often the unmistakable
subplot. Even should authenticity be what Henry Louis Gates called
"one of the founding lies of the modern age," how far back does that
other untruthful term "modern" extend? I prefer to adopt a phrase
from Shelley and think of authenticity as an "illustrious superstition ."
Jeffrey Meyers:
Thank you, Geoffrey. It is now question and comment
time.
Millicent Bell:
In response
to
Jay Martin's talk, I was stimulated to
reflect on the whole meaning of appearance and essentiality that con–
cerns us as either depictors of other selves, or even reflectors upon our–
selves. In reviewing the two biographies of Gore and Reagan, Jay
described how these fictive personalities of our politicians are created,
and the chameleon nature of change dictated by the externalities of
political programs and political contests. Although he didn't extend his
discussion
to
this question, I am prompted
to
ask if human beings are
always in the business of creating fictive selves. Is there no other essen–
tiality, a belief
to
which we cling? One thinks of discussions that go back
to Shakespeare,
to
Hamlet, who, when challenged by his mother, for
seeming to think the death of fathers uncommon, says, "Seems, madam?
Nay, it is; I know not 'seems'" and then goes on
to
say, "I have that
within which passes show." Whether one has "that within which passes
show" is of course the great question, even for Hamlet, who is com–
pelled
to
assume a form, a plot, which is not his own creation bur which
is something he is concerned with, something he has inherited from the
traditions of literature, namely the revenge plot. He has had that
imposed upon him, and was compelled to enact and fulfill this dictated
plot. We heard yesterday of the dictated Biblical plot of the Jewish per–
son who feels that he must follow a certain course. Interestingly, I
thought I heard in O'Brien's account of his own experience on arbitrat–
ing between the dictated plot, we might say, of political necessity in his
role as an Irish politician, and the examination that he subjects himself
to in the writing of his memoir, which leads him
to
say that "what I
really was at the time was something else."
And, finally, in Geoffrey Hartman's talk the question also arises (it's
the haunting question of this conference): Are we complete skeptics?
One thinks of the ending of
HlIis c/os,
in which I think Inez says to
Garcin, who has been proclaiming that within himself he was somewhat
different from the terrible things that he did, that condemned him
to
