Impersonal memories: phenomenology of quasi-remembering

Pierre-Jean Renaudie (Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University)

What do we mean when we say that our memories are our own? In what sense can we claim that our memories are personal? Does remembering the experience E necessarily imply that we ourselves were the experiencing subject of E? The aim of this talk is to offer some answers to these questions by re-evaluating the notion of “quasi-memory”, introduced in the context of analytic philosophy of mind by Sydney Shoemaker and Derek Parfit in order to highlight the impersonal dimension of our memories. In response to critiques that challenge the phenomenological legitimacy of this notion — from Gareth Evans to Claude Romano – I will draw on Edmund Husserl’s analyses of memory and imagination to explore the roles that the appropriation of experience and the personalization of memory play in the act of remembering. This phenomenological defense of impersonal (quasi-)memories will emphasize their intersubjective function in the sharing of memory.