Topographies of Memory

If a literary text is by necessity a representation, then all theories of literature, whether they postulate the function of literature to be the mimetic representation of a non-textual reality or, within the broader context of intertextuality, the repetition, displacement, or reinscription of purely 'textual' entities, necessarily associate with each text a 'memory.' The representative function of the text is essentially bound to such a 'memory,' which the text is supposed to imitate, reproduce, or transcribe. Each theory of the text views the relationship of a text to its 'memory' differently, but what remains constant is the postulation of the necessary relationship of a text to a memory. Again, it does not matter whether this 'memory' is taken to be a metatextual 'reality,' a textual world-such as the medieval Book of Nature, or the Borgesian Library, which as the first sentence of The Library indicates is equivalent to the Universe--or a composite amalgamation of other texts, a textual archive. If the function of a text is assumed to be in any way re-presentational, then to every text there correspond one or more particular memories. In fact, it hardly seems relevant any longer to oppose mimetic conceptions of literature, which assign to the text the task of imitating an 'outside reality,' to non-mimetic conceptions,which characterize texts as unable, because of their representational nature, ever to reach anything beyond a textual horizon. If every text begins as repetition or representation-and after Derrida and Said this can be considered a settled point-it necessarily inscribes within itself, in no

Byzantine Studies and History · Literature and Cultural Memory · Psychology · Translation Studies and Practices