Amnesia as a Type of Social Forgetfulness: Toward Refining the Concept

Sergey Potseluev,
Doctor of Political Sciences, Associate Professor
Department of Theoretical and Applied Political Science
Institute of Philosophy and Social and Political Studies, Southern Federal University,
Rostov-on-Don, Russia,
E-mail: spotselu@mail.ru

Abstract: The article is devoted to refining the concept of social amnesia, the need for clarification of
which is caused by its contradictory use in the discourse of socio-humanitarian disciplines. Meanwhile, interest in
the problems of forgetting is growing in the framework of memory studies. To clarify the concept of social amnesia,
the author uses the methodology of concept analysis, primarily in the version proposed by the Russian political
philosopher M. Ilyin. While discussing the differences between social amnesia and other sociomnemonic deficits,
the existing experience in typologization of social forgetting (F. Ankersmit, P. Connerton, A. Assmann, and others)
is critically evaluated. The author comes to conclusion that in the modern scientific literature, instead of the
declared typologies of sociomnemonic deficits, their phenomenology is often put forward. Based on the levels of
forgetfulness specified by St. Augustine in Confessions, the author identifies forgetting, oblivion, and amnesia as the
three most common types of sociomnemonic deficits, giving a number of linguistic (by comparing the semantics of
the corresponding terms) and theoretical (based on conceptual distinctions suggested by P. Ricœur, B. Vivian and
others) reasons in favor of this typology. In the definition of social amnesia offered by the author, the complete
dysfunction of symbolic figures of memory is a key point; this dysfunction, on the one hand, leads to the loss of
identity of the corresponding social actor, and on the other hand, is a necessary condition for the formation of new
identities.

Keywords: memory studies, sociomnemonic deficits, forgetting, oblivion, amnesty

Introduction
Perhaps nowadays it is hard to find a rapidly growing area of socio-humanitarian research
as memory studies. The phenomenon of memory has been studied in many aspects, from the
perspective of various sciences and methodological traditions. But only with some delay the
maxim expressed thirty years ago by the British historian Peter Burke become a methodological
guide here: “It is often illuminating to approach problems from behind, to turn them inside out.
To understand the workings of the social memory it may be worth investigating the social
organization of forgetting, the rules of exclusion, suppression or repression, and the question of
who wants whom to forget what, and why. In a phrase, social amnesia” (Burke, 1997, p. 56-57).
At first glance, the concept of social amnesia seems simple and abstract, but this is where
its problematic nature lies, since the interpretation of the phenomenon of amnesia substantially
depends on the subject of the related science. Such a disciplinary discord leads to the fact that
not only different authors use the term “social amnesia” in a specific way; often fundamentally
different phenomena are meant by social versions of amnesia within the same study. In general,
in the discourse of modern socio-humanitarian disciplines, the semantics of terms like “cultural”
or “social” amnesia oscillates, according to Greek literary scholars Apostolos Lampropoulos and
Vassiliki Markidou, “between the relative clarity of its medical connotations and a rather
uncertain figurative use” (Lampropoulos & Markidou, 2010). In this context, these authors
reasonably wonder whether it is worthwhile to preserve the initial meaning of amnesia as an
involuntary and pathological condition that should be “treated” when metaphorizing this term in
the language of social and humanitarian sciences.
The purpose of this study is to clarify the status of the concept of social amnesia over the
disciplinary boundaries and in the context of various types of social forgetfulness. At the same
time, the author of the research proceeds from the hypothetical assumption that the indicated
meaning of “social amnesia” is substantially modified in social sciences; however, retaining its
difference from other types of social forgetting. Accordingly, the scope of this research included
to identify, firstly, the main types of sociomnemonic deficits associated with social amnesia;
secondly, its specificity in relation to these types; and, thirdly, theoretical and linguistic reasons
to substantiate this specificity.
A reservation should be made outright: “social amnesia” will be understood here as an
umbrella term for expressions like “collective (cultural, historical, national, etc.) amnesia”. We
interpret all these types of amnesia as manifestations of social amnesia, which we contrast, on
the one hand, with social memory, and on the other, with the medical concept of amnesia caused
by pathologies of the human body. We abstract from the internal differentiation of social
amnesia, up to its personality-related manifestations, in this work. Further, we denote all social
versions of forgetting, oblivion, amnesia, etc., by the general term “sociomnemonic deficits” or
(as its synonym) by the term “forgetfulness”. The latter, in particular, is used in translating that
passage from Augustine’s Confessions, where “oblivionem” is opposed to “memoria”. The term
“sociomnemonic deficits” was chosen by analogy with the term “mnemonic deficits” that is
found in modern cognitive science (Modulation, 1995).

Literature Review
Obviously, social amnesia is a typical example of a metaphor that has become a concept.
Michael Ilyin, a Russian political scientist, speaks in this case of a metaphorical doubling of
meanings as the basis for the full development of the concept (Ilyin, 1997). But the meaning,
serving as an origin for metaphorization, is expressed in it both in excessive and in insufficient
way.
In the first case, the concept of social amnesia is too close to the medical sense of amnesia;
and that is why the specificity of amnesia as a sociocultural phenomenon is lost. Needless to say,
this terminology is useful as explanatory metaphors, but without a rigorous definition of the
concept of social amnesia proper, medical metaphorics is fraught with methodological
reductionism. On the contrary, excessive metaphorization of the original meaning in the concept
of social amnesia can be exemplified by Russell Jacoby’s interpretation of the latter as memory
driven out of mind by the social and economic dynamic of society. However, to qualify social
amnesia as “psychic commodity of the commodity society” (Jacoby, 1975, p. 5) is clearly not
enough for revealing its differentia specifica among other types of social forgetting.
Thus, the explication of various types of forgetfulness turns out to be by no means trivial
upon closer examination. Paul Ricœur rightly wrote about “crushing polysemy of the word
forgetting” (Ricœur, 2004, p. 413). And in order to sort out this polysemy somehow, analytical
tools are needed that can distinguish between different types and kinds of mnemonic deficits in
order to build a logically coherent typology of social amnesia in the future.
Let us consider how this kind of experience is presented in the scientific literature devoted
to the phenomenon of social forgetting.
Most authors focus on the fact that social memory includes not only the processes of
remembering, but of forgetting. Moreover, the concepts of forgetting, oblivion, and amnesia are
often used as synonyms, neither their correlation is clarified, nor any clues are given to the
difference between “social amnesia” and the medical concept of amnesia. As a consequence, it
remains unclear how social amnesia, on the one hand, “leads to disorganization of social
memory as a symbolic reconstruction of the past,” and on the other, “is also evident in ‘rewriting
history’” (Dyuzhikov et al., 2015, p. 35). In other words, it is not clear how the concept of social
amnesia combines negative (destructive) and positive (constructive) functions.
In general, two extremes are presented in the scholarly publications regarding the
conceptualization of social amnesia.
One of them can be exemplified by the refusal of the Israeli historian Guy Beiner of the
term “social amnesia”. Instead, he suggests using the concept of “social forgetting,” which is
thought of as an umbrella for all socio-mnemonic deficits. However, this rather causes more
confusion than clarifies the typology of these deficits. The initial motivation of G. Beiner is clear
– he wants to substantiate the thesis that “social forgetting is not collective amnesia, which is too
readily taken to mean that specific historical episodes can be completely expurgated at will from
the collective memory of an entirely society” (Beiner, 2018, p. 24). Indeed, within the
framework of critical scientific reflection, the phenomenon that intends to seem real amnesia
should not be taken for it. Because the belief that memory can be turned off on command (at the
whim of politicians and in alliance with historians) stems from a simplified understanding of
collective memory, which supposedly can be canceled just because it can be constructed.
However, it does not yet follow that social amnesia is a fiction in itself from the fact that
the experience of purposeful forgetting at the individual and group levels leads not so much to
erasing memory, but to its new form (“forgetful memory”, as Beiner puts it). And precisely such
a conclusion is instilled by replacing the concept of social (collective) amnesia with the concept
of “social forgetting”. Alongside this, Beiner’s approach raises the question of the status of such
conceptual distinctions as “forced” vs. “conscious” amnesia or “voluntary” vs. “involuntary”
amnesia. Aren’t expressions like “conscious amnesia” a conceptual nonsense as an effect of
mixing different types of forgetfulness?
While G. Beiner proposes to completely abandon the use of the concept of social amnesia,
the Dutch literary critic Liedeke Plate, on the contrary, proposes “amnesiology” as a term for a
separate theoretical direction in the framework of memory studies. Moreover, “amnesiology”,
according to Plate, explores the phenomena of forgetfulness rather as states that are socially
produced and reproduced, including in a conscious way, than as natural memory failures.
Because of this, amnesiology “enables us to inquire into the dynamics of remembering and
forgetting as a process that stands at the heart of culture” (Plate, 2013, p. 149).
Although the idea to make the phenomenon of forgetfulness a subject of a special research
direction is quite justified, the choice of the term to denote it does not seem successful, since it
conceals the essential difference between social amnesia and other sociomnemonic deficits. For
example, the desire to cover all manifestations of forgetfulness with a single term “amnesia”
leads the American literary critic Andreas Huyssen to the need to distinguish between amnesia as
“part of the dialectic of memory and forgetting” and amnesia as “radical other” of this dialectic,
when there is “nothing to remember, nothing to forget” (Huyssen, 1995, p. 9). And this example
once again shows that the question of the specific difference between amnesia and other types of
forgetfulness is impossible to bypass so simply.
Meanwhile, the consciousness of the need to make this differentiation has already been
presented in the scientific literature. First of all, one should point out the types of “forgetting”
identified by Franklin Ankersmit. This refers to the description of a number of typical cases of
sociomnemonic deficits, however, without denoting them with some special terms and without a
visible single basis for their classification or typologization. However, the Dutch philosopher
does not pose the question – what place is occupied by social amnesia among these “types of
forgetting”? Is it possible, for example, to designate the traumatic experience which is “both
forgotten and remembered” and which is “a constant reminder that there is something that we
should or wish to forget” (Ankersmit, 2005, p. 322) as amnesia in a strict sense?
A similar picture can be seen in the “types of forgetting” described by Paul Connerton
(Connerton, 2008). Upon closer examination, the typology proposed by the British researcher,
like that of F. Ankersmit, turns out to be not so much a typology as a phenomenology, which has
several overlapping grounds: the degree of state participation in forgetting, the nature of the
forgetting practice bearer, etc. Moreover, separated consideration of such two “types of
forgetting” as “planned obsolescence” and “annulment” complicates the disclosure of the
existing systemic relationships between them.
It can be concluded from a selective analysis of the typologies (classifications) of
sociomnemonic deficits available in the literature that the authors do not make a strict distinction
between proper amnesia and other types of forgetfulness, and this is explained by their
descriptive-phenomenological attitude. But are there any examples of a strictly typological
approach to sociomnemonic deficits in the intellectual tradition? According to the author, such
an experience exists, and it is associated primarily with the name of Saint Augustine.
 Materials and methods
Concept analysis is the main method of this study; its purpose is to “to clarify the intension
of a concept, its relations to other concepts and its location in a concept system and to create thus
a basis for elaboration of concept definitions and reveal synonymy and equivalence between
terms in different languages, etc.” (Nuopponen, 2010). In particular, the author of the research
relied on the version of the concept approach proposed by the Russian scholar M.V. Ilyin, which
“considers some models of the development of word-concepts and their creation of new
meanings by using the metaphorization mechanism, and also highlights the fundamental
importance of the internal form of the word and its rethinking” (Ilyin, 1997, p. 9).
Concept analysis, as understood in such a way, constitutes the core or a complete analogue
of the methodology known in the scientific literature under the names “terminological analysis”
or “terminological concept analysis” (Nuopponen, 2010). Although, terminological analysis is
sometimes considered to be broader in scope than proper concept, but in this article, the
difference between these types of analysis is not relevant, since here we consider concepts rather
taken in conjunction with their speech representatives in a public (political) discourse than pure
concepts. And, in the methodological spirit of analytical philosophy, this invites us not only to
“battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language”, as Ludwig
Wittgenstein said, but also to draw conceptual conclusions from linguistic games.
The triadic conceptual scheme of forgetfulness (forgetting – oblivion – amnesia) proposed
by Augustine in his Confessions and extrapolated by the author to a macro level of social
relations is a theoretical basis for the explication of the concept of social amnesia.

Results
The well-known passage from Augustine’s Confessions devoted to the phenomenon of
forgetfulness is often referred to; however, the conceptual distinctions underlying the
Augustinian concept of remembering-forgetting are not always properly evaluated. The thinker
differentiates between the three types of forgetfulness, reflecting the degree of its depth, albeit he
does not distinguish them terminologically. This differentiation is based on the idea of the trace
which is left in the memory by the forgotten-lost part of it.
This trace is not a simple analogue of the imprint of an object on a soft surface. Rather, it is
a gap, a dehiscence in the holistic cognitive structure of memory, “since the memory perceived
that it did not revolve together as much as it was accustomed to do, and halting, as if from the
mutilation of its old habit, demanded the restoration of that which was wanting” (St. Augustine,
1876, p. 257). This situation describes the first type of forgetfulness, in which there is a routine
(everyday) and temporary deficit (gap) of memory, which is restored owing to its semantic
whole, encouraging this recovery. At this level, a person knows not only that he forgot
something, but also what exactly he forgot (the name of a familiar person, for example). Such
forgetfulness is removed by a reminder, and the memory itself helps in this, driven by an internal
balance.
However, in addition to the above differentiation there is another distinction in this
fragment of Confessions, which can be described as the difference between forgetting and
oblivion. Moreover, oblivion implies a deeper level of forgetfulness, when traces of the forgotten
are erased from memory. Oblivion means that memory as an integral cognitive structure cannot
serve as a context that requires and enables to restore the content that was lost by memory. The
quantity and quality of these lost elements is so great that the memory becomes like a text that
has lost its general semantic structure because of the critical mass of gaps.
The uselessness of reminders acts as a marker of the difference between this level of
forgetfulness and the previous one, since they no longer help remember the forgotten. It should
be added that reminders may also be prohibited, as the complete erasure of remembrances from
the memory often refers to sacred, tabooed topics. However, despite all its completeness,
according to Augustine, this level of forgetfulness is not the most radical one, “for we have not
as yet entirely forgotten what we remember that we have forgotten” (St. Augustine, 1876, p.
257). This memory of the very fact of oblivion gives rise to cognitive discomfort in a person,
attempts to remember, even if it is not known what exactly it should be. The absence of such a
memory of a mnemonic loss forms, according to Augustine’s logic, the third type of
forgetfulness, the most radical one when a person does not even remember that he forgot
something, and therefore he/she has no desire to find the content that was lost by his/her
memory. And this is the actual level of amnesia.
If someone suffering from amnesia says, “I have amnesia for this,” then we get an
analogue of the liar paradox, as there is actually no amnesia in the strict sense: “The symptoms
of amnesia are primarily detected by those not suffering from it, and are related both to the
amnesiac’s total inability to trace the past and to an exigency to help him/her to remedy this state
as soon as possible” (Lampropoulos & Markidou, 2010). And if we preserve the original
(available in the medical concept) meaning of amnesia that differs from simple forgetting in the
concept of social amnesia, here we must accept as fundamental the difference between the
subject-researcher of social amnesia and the subject-carrier of this amnesia, and the latter cannot
make statements about it claiming to be true.
Thus, taking cue from Augustine, three types (and simultaneously degrees or levels) of
mnemonic deficits can be distinguished and designated as forgetting, oblivion, and amnesia with
the increase in the degree of forgetfulness. It can be assumed that this typology of forgetfulness
is universal in nature and can be transferred to all types of social memory, both individual and
collective.
We will give a number of linguistic and conceptual reasons in favor of this statement.
Using the Russian analogues of the terms forgetting [zabyvaniye] and oblivion [zabveniye]
to express the mentioned (pursuant to Augustine) differences between the first two levels of
forgetfulness, we take into account the peculiarities of similar but non-identical semantics of
these terms. Moreover, the difference between forgetting and oblivion is not just a difference
between a process and a result; oblivion, especially in the word combination “to condemn to
oblivion”, expresses an aspiration (as in the case of amnesty) or a fact (as in the case of amnesia)
of the loss of traces of the forgotten.
A Russian linguist Olga Revzina points to the conceptualization of oblivion, characteristic
of the Russian language, “as the erasure and disappearance of traces through a certain cover that
hides these traces: the snow of oblivion, the duckweed of oblivion, oblivion-blanket ...”
(Revzina, 2006, p. 24). Finally, language connects oblivion with death in its naive worldview,
which is reflected in the mythological character of Lethe. Thus, forgetfulness can be understood
in two ways: in the sense of a systematic memory deficit leading to oblivion and amnesia, and a
temporary, sporadic deficit in the sense of “to slip one’s memory”, “to forget partially”. The
enantiosemy of the Russian words “remember” [zapomnit'] and “slip one’s memory”
[zapamyatovat] noted by M. Ilyin (Ilyin, 1997, p. 24) is a marker of the fact that in the latter case
we have a special kind of mnemonic deficit. And in the same way as in Russian “forget” [zabyt']
the prefix “za-” means closing the access to the being rather than its denial into non-existence,
the process of “slipping one’s memory” [za-pamyatovaniye] implies only closing the access to
the memory rather than its disappearance (amnesia).
Note that the difference between the Russian terms zabyvaniye and zabveniye is close to
the difference between the English words forgetting and oblivion. Like Russian zabyvaniye the
English noun forgetting suggests the procedural-situational, pragmatic and earth-bound nature of
its meanings yet by its morphology. The English term oblivion has a slightly different semantics.
Though this word may be a synonym for forgetting, it, firstly, (like Russian zabveniye),
expresses rather the result than the process of forgetting; secondly, it means a more radical
degree of forgetfulness, implying the erasure of traces of the forgotten (sink into oblivion);
finally, it has some stylistic elevation (symbolism, sacredness) even more than in Russian
zabveniye (Act/Bill of Oblivion).
Etymologically, the English verb to forget (like the Dutch verb vergeten and German
vergessen), according to the interpretation of L. Plate, goes back to the meaning of “miss or lose”
(Plate, 2016, p. 145). Russian linguists also paid attention to the fact that the verbs “imet'-
poteryat' - nayti - nakhodit'- iskat'” [have – lose – find – retrieve – search] correspond strictly to
the verbs of the semantic series “pomnit'- zabyt' - vspomnit'- vspominat'” [remember – forget –
recollect – reminisce] according to their linguistic properties. This results in an important (in the
context of this study) assumption that, “if forget is interpreted through lose and remember is
explained through find, it becomes clear that when forgetting we lose not the information itself,
but only an access to it, which is restored in remembrance” (Turovsky, 1991, p. 94). Thus, we
have here another linguistic argument in favor of Augustine’s distinctions mentioned above.
Let us now look at the conceptual triad “forgetting – oblivion – amnesia” from the
perspective of the term “amnesia”. In the Greek-English Dictionary by H.G. Liddell and R.
Scott, the word αμνησία is indicated as a synonym for Lethe [Λήθη] with two meanings:
forgetfulness and an act of amnesty (Liddell & Scott, 1996). In this case, a closer connection
than in modern languages is found between the meanings of oblivion and amnesty in the
semantics of both αμνησία and αμνηστία (non-remembrance, absolution (of resentments),
forgiveness, amnesty), as well as its Latin counterpart amnestia (oblivion, forgiveness, amnesty).
In Latin, noun oblivio also served as a synonym for Greek borrowing amnestia, which, however,
differed from it in its internal form (Ilyin, 1997). In the semantics of oblivio, forgetting is rather
the effect of complete annihilation than that of a convention, a prescription: see verb oblinere
(obliterate, spread, rub out something written on wax, strike out). Needless to say, the internal
form of a word does not intrinsically determine the content of a concept, which is denoted by this
word. Accordingly, the image of a record made on wax or slate does not mean that a person’s
memory can also turn into tabula rasa at some point of time. But in the case of collective forms
of social amnesia, this is no longer obvious and requires a separate justification.
Thus, there are a number of linguistic and theoretical reasons in favor of clear
distinguishing of social amnesia from other sociomnemonic deficits.
To begin with, amnesia should be strictly distinguished from purposeful forgetting. Any
memory (individual or collective) acts selectively: in order to remember something, one must
focus on one thing and weaken attention on the other, that is, forget about it. But as such, this
selectivity of remembering-forgetting has no direct relation to amnesia: forgetting is an assistant
to memory. However, social amnesia is associated with a dysfunction of social memory in the
sense of its ability to maintain a given social identity. But it does not result in the fact that social
amnesia plays a destructive role in the formation of new (alternative) identities as well. On the
contrary, amnesia is conditio sine qua non for this process. Aleida Assmann convincingly shows
on the example of American immigration policy that the traditionally accompanying it rituals of
the “melting pot” were rather a structural amnesia than “prescriptive oblivion”. In other words,
this implied a real “fading” of the immigrants’ memory about their origin, which was a condition
not only of adaptation to new living conditions, but of the transformation of their identity
(Assmann, 2013).
Thus, amnesia, understood as a prescriptive oblivion, is not amnesia in the strict sense. It is
important to understand that oblivion (prescribed, voluntary or spontaneous) is a special type of
mnemonic deficits, irreducible to forgetting and amnesia. Whether voluntarily or involuntarily,
personal or public consciousness comes to the state when it only remembers that something is
forgotten, but nothing more. Such an attitude is always associated with some kind of threshold,
dramatic social experience (war, armed conflict, catastrophe, genocide, terror, etc.) that must be
forgotten without going into details, but at the same time the fact of its existence cannot be or is
impossible to forget. Then this memory is removed by tabooing – a ban on recalling the
circumstances of the drama and a demand to remember the very fact of its oblivion.
Oblivion as a paradoxical type of forgetfulness, when “they can remember that they cannot
remember” (Weiskrantz, 1999, p. 105), must be distinguished from the paradoxical feature of
purposeful forgetting when they “remember to forget.” Similarly, Paul Ricœur замечает, что
“amnesty, as institutional forgetting, touches the very roots of the political, and through it, the
most profound and most deeply concealed relation to a past that is placed under an interdict”
(Ricœur, 2004, p. 453). This tabooing gives the memory of the past (as the experience of the
symbolic policy of nation-building shows) “symbolism of oblivion”, which is not always used in
the prejudice of “forgetting” (Vivian, 2010, p. 39). It should be noted that magical mysticism of
taboos is naturally complemented by “ghosts” of social memory. References to these ghosts in
literature refer to the figures of memory that are invisibly present in the symbolic places that are
subject to oblivion as part of the official policy of memory. Furthermore, “some ghosts (such as
old identities, old buildings, old stories, old stereotypes or memories) are evoked and
transformed into visible presences such as images, stories, slogans, tourist sites, etc.” (Vanolo,
2017, p. 16). The ghosts of memory are ghosts because the frames of this memory are destroyed,
just as the souls deprived of their body are spectral and ghostlike. But to what extent these
“ghosts” expose hidden narratives of injustice, they can show the way to alternative political
projects (Nagle, 2018).
The very presence of these “ghosts” indicates that although traces of the former memory
are destroyed, the cognitive tools of memory as such continue to function despite all bans;
therefore, there is no reason to talk about amnesia. In fact, amnesia refers to the deficit of the
very ability to remember rather than to the loss of specific memories as fragments of historical
memory. The ability to judge is given by categories, and the ability to remember is given by
symbols, or, as Jan Assmann puts it, symbolic “memory figures” as culturally formed and
socially binding memory formation which are characterized by specific “interplay between
concepts and experiences” and refer “not only to iconic but also to narrative forms” (Assmann,
2011, p. 24).
Distinguishing the so-understood social amnesia from forgetting and oblivion, one should
also remember the metaphorical roots of this concept. On the one hand, social amnesia has
something in common with amnesia as a medical case, that it also represents a memory
dysfunction that poses a threat to retaining the identity of its carrier. However, social amnesia is
not limited to this negative feature, and this differs it from a similar medical concept. In some
polity, oblivion can become social amnesia over time, after several generations, when it ceases to
be accompanied by the mentioned “ghosts”. But from this, the community loses only its former
identity, and not the identity as such.
When Ernest Renan said with full confidence in 1882 that no French citizen knows
whether he is a Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale, or a Visigoth, he stated the fact of social amnesia
as a final effect of successful pragmatics of memory. But the next part of his phrase – “yet every
French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the massacres which
took place in the Midi in the thirteenth century” (Renan, 2010, p. 11) – expressed only the wish
for such amnesia, which then was not yet obvious – just as the amnesia of the French nation on
the bloody episodes of the Great Revolution was not yet a fact. But by simply “crowding out”
these episodes, the amnesia desired here is not achieved; here we need a joint study of a difficult
past.

Discussion
The phenomenon of forgetting from the above triad “forgetting - oblivion - amnesia” in its
difference from amnesia is most discussed in the scientific literature. In this regard, the
constructiveness, objectivity and pragmatism of forgetting are noted as an instrument of
historical (political, national) memory. At the level of the pragmatics of forgetting, the
interconnectedness of the procedures of remembering the past and forgetting it is ensured by a
single mode of human consciousness functioning when the same mechanisms work to save and
forget historical information.
Now let us examine what reasons in favor of the conceptual triad “forgetting – oblivion –
amnesia” exist in the research literature devoted to social memory.
First of all, we find them in the well-known work of P. Ricœur, where the initial distinction
in the analysis of the phenomena of forgetfulness is found, on the one hand, in the difference
between memory and amnesia, and on the other hand, between amnesia and “ordinary
forgetting” or “pragmatics of forgetting”. In this pragmatics “ordinary forgetting is … on the
same silent side as ordinary memory. This is the great difference between forgetting and all the
types of amnesia” (Ricœur, 2004, p. 427). Regarding both mentioned distinctions, amnesia is
understood by Ricœur as a memory dysfunction, as “an attack, a weakness, a lacuna” (Ricœur,
2004, p. 413), but still as something different from “profound forgetting”. The latter is
represented by two types: “forgetting through the erasing of traces” и ‘a backup forgetting, a sort
of forgetting kept in reserve” (Ricœur, 2004, p. 414). The French philosopher also calls the first
type as “definitive forgetting”, bringing it closer to amnesia as a memory dysfunction, since it
refers to irrevocable erasure of traces in contrast to “reversible forgetting” (Ricœur, 2004, p.
417). Thus, Ricœur’s distinction between “ordinary forgetting,” “profound forgetting,” and
“amnesia,” comes close to Augustine’s distinction between the types of forgetfulness.
The case of “forgetting without oblivion”, described by the American philosopher
Bradford Vivian, also supports this difference. Vivian’s forgetting serves as an umbrella concept
for sociomnemonic deficits, including at least two different verbal tropes: “willed oblivion” and
“symbolic erasure” or “strategic amnesia”. Forgetting and amnesia, regardless of their common
use in public discourse, are not obvious synonyms, according to Vivian. Forgetting can open
space for “reconfiguring memory”; therefore, the notion of “neglect” sometimes seems closer to
“forgetting” than amnesia, which means “the profound, potentially absolute loss of memory's
object” (Vivian, 2010, p. 46-47). Moreover, according to the American scholar, the conceptual
separation of “forgetting” from “amnesia” can be justified not only by linguistic nuances, but
also in essence. Thus, forgetting resists its equalization with amnesia in the case of amnesty after
crimes against humanity. And “willed oblivion” (and amnesty is its typical case) is not really
what it claims to be: amnesia for negative experience. It is possible to agree and declare
something as forgotten, but it is impossible to forget only by order and desire; furthermore, “the
presumption that their mutual enmity is indeed forgotten and obliterated might make future
conflict more likely rather than less” (Vivian, 2010, p. 50).
The theoretical relevance of the concept of oblivion with respect to forgetting and amnesia
is most debated in the case of amnesty as a type of “prescriptive forgetting” (in P. Connerton’s
terminology) (Connerton, 2008), pretending to be amnesia. (It should be noted that prescriptive
forgetting or oblivion are also not reduced to amnesty, likewise oblivion as such is not confined
to prescribed oblivion, but consideration of these scenarios is beyond the scope of this article). In
case of amnesty, a consensus of oblivion regarding the bloody past of the civil war is assumed as
in post-Francoist Spain, under the so-called “Pacto del Olvido”. This is possible with a change of
generations in the context of a long-lasting social world; however, even in these conditions,
amnesty as such never acts as a synonym for amnesia. Accordingly, the desire to designate the
practice of amnesty as “a national form of amnesia” (Kolia, 2018) is fundamentally
controversial.

Conclusions
The main conclusion that can be drawn from the above is the need for a conceptual
distinction between amnesia and other sociomnemonic deficits, among which the difference
between the dialectic of forgetting/remembering (when forgetting can be a form of remembering
and vice versa) and the sublime symbolism of oblivion is significant. Whereas forgetting, like
remembering, is the effect of memory selectivity acting on the basis of frame cognitive
structures, in case of forgetting, including the prescribed one, these structures (symbolic figures
of memory) are turned off by the suggestion of taboos; and therefore, they no longer serve as a
context to restore the forgotten through a simple reminder. On the contrary, neither amnesia nor
the pragmatics of forgetting need symbolic prohibitions, although for various reasons.
The desire to present amnesty as a social (collective, national) amnesia is an illusion and/or
political manipulation, substituting the wish for the reality. Forgetting does not lead to the loss of
the very ability to remember, which distinguishes it from amnesia and is expressed in the
“ghosts” of memory, opposing to amnesty and other practices of official memory policies.
 On the contrary, social amnesia can be defined as a type of social forgetting that is
impenetrable for restorative procedures, analogues of Socratic dialectic or Freudian
psychoanalysis. Social amnesia presupposes the outright disappearance of those moments of
their past experience from the memory of social (including collective) actors that constitute a
prerequisite for the existence of their identity. Simultaneously, social amnesia can be a condition
for the formation of new (alternative) identities, in virtue of which it should not be identified
with the medical concept of amnesia. The total dysfunction of memory as a cognitive ability of
social actors, their inability to connect mnemonic experience by means of symbolic figures of
remembering in the full knowledge of this is a common source of all amnestic effects.
Further research on the topic of the article is necessary, first of all, to distinguish between
different types of social amnesia – just as we tried to distinguish between types of
sociomnemonic deficits here. In addition, the correlation of types of social amnesia referring to
various spheres of social life: cultural, political, historical, national, etc. amnesia deserves a
separate study. Moreover, the possibility of transferring the typology of individual forgetfulness
proposed by Augustine to the level of collective identities needs additional substantiation.
Finally, the question of the extent to which amnesia can be voluntary, organized, and selective,
and in what sense it is generally possible to speak of “the politics of amnesia” requires a separate
discussion.

Acknowledgments
The reported study was funded by Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don, Russia).

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