Heterochrony: involuntary memory and flashbacks.

Prousts Madeleine and Offreds flashbacks

Heterochrony.
Heterochrony is a term coined by Michel Foucault in a lecture given in March 1967. This term derives from a broader term: heterotopia. He defines the heterotopia as a utopia (a site with no real place.) that has been realized e.g. the cyberspace; being in the cyberspace you are in a place that does not physically exist. In that lecture Foucault states a series of six principles among which he coins and defines the Heterochrony as: a heterotopia in the terms of time, a place or a moment in which time is shifted. That shifted time is present in Marcel Prousts novel: In search of lost time in the episode of the Madeleine where the main character is transported to his childhood while eating a Madeleine. I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing it magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how: What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Involuntary memory and flashbacks.

Prousts Madeleine & Offreds flashbacks. In the quotation cited above is part of the first volume of Marcel Prousts novel In search of lost time here the writer gives us all the details of his characters trip to the past, episodes of this kind are called involuntary memories. These events are triggered by actual events in definite situations and lead to past events. We can find many of these situations in Margaret Atwoods The handmaids tale all along the pages of this novel. In Atwoods work the narrator is one of the so-called handmaids who were meant to bear children for the

government to keep the population growing. These women who had been ripped off the society and turned into two-legged wombs, as they are described in the story, these women were forced to be re-educated in the redcenters where they were brain-washed and made to believe in the ideals of the new Gilead Republic, which was actually a theocratic dictatorship. Despite all the efforts made by the power to keep the minds of the handmaids under their control they were still able to think on their own and they even found out a way to have their own small-talk and even a system based on whispers. Another leak in the governments system is that they still have their own ideas and their own memories about the past, what matters that these memories neither were nor completely erased neither were perfectly kept. This problem led to a continuum of flashbacks suffered by Offred that altogether with the repression and the inhuman situation that she was forced to live, sank her into a depressive state. Offred lives in this perpetual heterochrony. She survives in this oppressive world by living this heterochrony in flesh since she is constantly coming back to her good days that she uses as a buffer to her harsh reality. She lives submerged in this world of harsh shortage and of minimalistic pleasures (as they were taught to call the minimum goods that they had from time to time). She glides (both consciously and unconsciously) into the past as a way to find a safe and comfortable place to protect herself against the world. All along the first part of the story we may think of it as not a paradigmatic example of heterochrony; but in the end, when reaching the historical notes we will find ourselves in front of a real example of heterochrony. Because in the end this is a compilatory work (a physical object) in which someone gathered all the recordings left by Offred of her memories while being in the exile after having fled of Gilead (a memento of the past). Its the perfect conjunction of the solid present and the futile past plagued by prior memories.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Blooms Guides: The Handmaids Tale. BLOOM, H (2004) Infobase Publishing http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html