Mneme
noun
1. Psychology. the retentive basis or basic principle in a mind organism accounting for memory.
2. (initial capital letter) Classical Mythology. the Muse of memory, one of the original three Muses.
Ann Hamilton, Mneme, page 25, (left; ‘privation and excesses’, detail).
‘Speech leaves no mark in space: like gesture it exists in its immediate context and can reappear only in another’s voice, another’s body, even if that other is the same speaker transformed by history. But writing contaminates, writing leaves its trace, a trace beyond the life of the body. Thus while speech gains authenticity, writing promises immortality, or at least the immortality of the material world in contrast to the mortality of the body’. (Susan Stewart).
