Memory & Time

Marla Morris considers both by philosophically remembering her teacher’s lectures, and his torn, yellowed lecture notes.

- Marla Morris

Andrew Reck was the most influential philosophy professor I studied with at Tulane University in the 1980s. Why is this important? Because our teachers matter; our professors matter. It is curious that hardly any academic philosophers write about their college professors. It must be said that I got the courage to write this piece because of an interview I read with philosopher Michael Zimmerman in Figure/Ground.org (May24, 2015) who also stated that Andrew Reck was a major influence in his career.

I am now approaching sixty years of age. I still think about Dr Reck’s course on American Philosophy. I remember his handwritten lecture notes on yellowed paper. The paper was torn and ragged. The handwriting was scribbled. Or perhaps his lecture notes were typed. My memory is not exact. Perhaps it is totally wrong. Perhaps my mismemory – if that is what it is – is a wish fantasy, as Freud would say; it is my love affair with the romance of handwriting that I want to remember.

Whether the memory is true or not matters little to me. The memory in and of itself matters – even if I get it wrong. As the literary critic Harold Bloom once said about the interpretation of texts: every reading is a misreading. Well, perhaps every memory is a mismemory.

Time