Names and Memory

Lowenthal, in "The heritage crusade and the spoils of history", tells us about the advantages or disadvantages of recalling the past. One of the things that seem clearly said there is that "Heritage passions impact myriad realms of life today. They play a vital role in national and ethnic conflict, in racism and resurgent genetic determinism, in museum and commemorative policy, in global theft, illicit trade, and rising demands for repatriating art and antiquities" (introduction, xiv). Although the differences between history and heritage, today we can say that, if in one hand we seek to forget the past, in other we are searching for remember it because maybe we "imagine it to embody lost values or creeds which, if only we could recover them, would cure all our present worries" (http://www.historynet.com/book-review-the-heritage-crusade-and-the-spoils-of-history-by-david-lowenthal-bh.htm). But if forgetting could bring us some positive view for the future, in the sense that we could start a new and better life, it seem pertinent to me remind Louis Carrol's Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. There is a time in the book when Alice is taking a walk, alone, when, suddenly, gets to a forest where any creature is capable of remember things, it is, anything. She finds a Fawn and "it (it, because it could not be possible to Alice, or anyone, remind any name and, therefore, suspect) looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened". The remarkable thing here is that when the Fawn decides to take Alice out of there, trying to get into a place where they can remind who they were, and introduce themselves, they are friends and sympathize with each other: "So they walked on together though the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arms. ‘I’m a Fawn!’ it cried out in a voice of delight, ‘and, dear me! you’re a human child!’ A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away a full speed". Till that time the two of them - those different creatures, Alice and the Fawn - were developing a nice relationship, but since they remember they're name-nature everything falls apart. Memory and past have deconstructed what once have been positive and possible - a relationship between two different creatures. The thing here is that if it could do like this, if we could forget names (and names carry meanings) things would be, surely, different. But the problem seems to be related with the way things happen: first we have things and, then, they're names.