An original, well-informed, and profoundly provocative meditation on the untoward theme of forgetting. Focusing on the writings of Walter Benjamin in the context of authors such as Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson, Proust, and Arendt, Stéphane Symons shows how transience can be worked through from within and transmuted into a creative force.

Howard Eiland, Lecturer, Literature Faculty, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Does not obsessive remembrance—our age of commemorations—risk occluding any capacity to imagine and convey an alternative future? After several decades of ritualized praise for the ethical duties and political wisdom of memory, this highly exigent, provocative and impressively erudite book convincingly rediscovers the potentialities of the work of forgetting. Rereading through this refreshing prism a huge constellation of writers and thinkers, Stéphane Symons unveils a fascinating intellectual landscape and emphasizes the transient character of history as a creative force.

Enzo Traverso, Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities, Cornell University