Literature against Amnesia
Résumé
This chapter explores the connections between time, history, writing and identity in the works of Alasdair Gray. By drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theory of history, memory and forgetting, as well as on Hayden White's theory of employment, the chapter examines the implications of what Jean François Lyotard calls "the historical condition", and shows how Gray construct his own theory of identity, and artistically creates the history and existence of his country by relying on the figures of the amnesiac, the historian and the artist. The chapter shows how, with Gray, literature can be "the memory of history", by ascribing a performative role to art, and striving for what Ricoeur, in another context, calls "la juste mémoire".