La dialectique de la mémoire et de l’oubli dans Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. La clé du bonheur selon Michel Tournier
The dialectic of memory and oblivion in Friday or the Other Island. The key to happiness according to Michel Tournier

Summary/Abstract: A whole tradition of thought has endorsed a true cult of memory as an essential faculty of the mind, as well as the conception of a destructive and dangerous, therefore essentially negative oblivion, which would only be the absence or the loss of memory. Contrary to this tradition, several philosophical and anthropological approaches to oblivion have multiplied the arguments in favor of a necessary and beneficial forgetfulness, understood as a liberating and creative power, as a component and the very strength of memory. This article aims to reread the tournierian philosophical novel Friday or The Other Island in the perspective of the relationship between memory, oblivion, time and person, of the ambivalence and the duality of memory and oblivion and their joint contribution to the apprehension of the world and to the construction of the self. The dialectic of memory and oblivion, underlying Robinson’s initiatory adventure and his quest for superhumanity, leads to a wisdom of the moment that transcends it and consists in dominating time by breaking all solidarity with it.

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