Perpetual memory. Episode Review «The entire history of you« of Black Mirror (2011)

• Main Author: Natacha Salomé LIMA
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2015-10-01
• Series: Revista de Medicina y Cine / Journal of Medicine and Movies
• Subjects: memoria; objetos pulsionales; deseo; biopolítica
• Online Access: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/view/13322

<p>What would happen if man could store and recovered all its memories at will? <em>The</em><em> </em><em>entire</em><em> </em><em>history</em><em> </em><em>of</em><em> </em><em>you</em><em> </em>is an episode of the British television drama series which presents a futuristic scenario of a very old situation: jealousy. Human passions disturb our soul, trouble our reflections, and pushes us to action. Memory will be a privileged object for our analysis; not organic memory, but significant memory: this means the trace of memories that perform our body. We will try to analyze the possibilities of our actions against the technological dangers and “progresses”. The scope of biopolitics presented by Michel Foucault in the 70venties could be taken up by the contemporary idea of the current decline of love, desire and sexuality. We will visit some of the Freudian early works to think how memory and the possibilities of remembrance are a singular construction of human being. This significant memory is capable of knotting remembrance, fantasy and desire. But memory could also become perpetual when it is object of manipulation producing devastating effects on human´s subjectivity.</p>