Representing Involuntary Memory in Goli Taraghi’s Fiction: A Walter Benjaminian Approach

Informed by Walter Benjamin’s concept of “involuntary memory,” this study examines the representation of memory and the process of recollection in Goli Taraghi’s oeuvre. Benjamin distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary memory: the former operates through conscious will, while the latter is triggered suddenly through sensory stimuli, bringing the past into the present in a fragmented, instantaneous, and nonlinear form. In Taraghi’s fictional world, sensory experiences—ranging from hearing, smell, and taste to sight, touch, and even bodily movement—serve as gateways for the activation of such memories. An analysis of stories such as “The First Day,” “The Unfinished Game,” “The Pear Tree,” “A House in Heaven,” “The Incident,” and “The Return”—used here as case studies—demonstrates how minor sensory triggers can summon a network of blurred, fragmented, and quasi-cinematic images that intertwine past and present. These narratives reveal that the body and the senses play a central role in shaping involuntary memories, where recollection is less the linear reconstruction of the past than a fleeting, dialectical event between remembering and forgetting. Thus, in Taraghi’s works, memory is not merely a narrative construct but an ontological foundation that reflects individual experience in relation to history and the collective lifeworld. The findings further suggest that the imagistic and montage-like qualities of these memories resonate with Benjamin’s visual metaphors of memory. Accordingly, Taraghi’s fictional universe can be seen as a site for the embodiment of Benjamin’s idea of involuntary memory, where sensory experience becomes the point of convergence between past and present.
 
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
In the works of Goli Taraghi, as one of the most prominent contemporary Iranian novelists, memory plays a central and constructive role. Informed by Walter Benjamin’s concept of “involuntary memory,” this study examines the representation of memory and the process of recollection in Goli Taraghi’s oeuvre. The central question of this study are: How is the relationship between sensory experience, the body, and memory configured in the fictional world of Taraghi, and how does this representation relate to Benjamin’s conceptualisation of involuntary memory? This article aims to reveal that sensory experiences—ranging from hearing, smell, and taste to sight, touch, and even bodily movement—serve as gateways for the activation of involuntary memories.
2. Methodology
This research adopts a descriptive-analytical approach and a qualitative content analysis method. The statistical population of the research includes stories such as “The First Day,” “The Unfinished Game,” “The Pear Tree,” “A House in Heaven,” “The Incident,” and “The Return.”
3. Theoretical Framework
Memory is a fundamental intellectual conceptualisation of Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher and theorist. According to Benjamin, recollection is less the product of a rational attempt to recreate the past and more a sudden event that brings hidden and forgotten experiences to light in the present. Benjamin distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary memory: the former operates through conscious will, while the latter is triggered suddenly through sensory stimuli, bringing the past into the present in a fragmented, instantaneous, and nonlinear form. Benjamin emphasises that involuntary memory has a sensory and corporeal basis. He repeatedly resorts to cinematic metaphors to explain memory. He likens the structure of memory to a film reel: a collection of disconnected frames that only acquire new meaning in the montage process. Just as cinema confronts the viewer with sudden cuts and unexpected juxtapositions, involuntary memory functions as montages of the past that joins the present in a shocking moment.
4. Discussion and Analysis
In Taraghi’s fictional world, sensory experiences—ranging from hearing, smell, and taste to sight, touch, and even bodily movement—serve as gateways for the activation of such memories. An analysis of stories such as “The First Day,” “The Unfinished Game,” “The Pear Tree,” “A House in Heaven,” “The Incident,” and “The Return”—used here as case studies—demonstrates how minor sensory triggers can summon a network of blurred, fragmented, and quasi-cinematic images that, intertwine past and present. These narratives reveal that the body and the senses play a central role in shaping involuntary memories, where recollection is less the linear reconstruction of the past than a fleeting, dialectical event between remembering and forgetting. Thus, in Taraghi’s works, memory is not merely a narrative construct but an ontological foundation that reflects individual experience in relation to history and the collective lifeworld. Accordingly, Taraghi’s fictional universe can be seen as a site for the embodiment of Benjamin’s idea of involuntary memory, where sensory experience becomes the point of convergence between past and present.
5. Conclusion
The present analysis showed that involuntary memory, according to Benjamin, is the fundamental mechanism shaping the fictional world of Goli Taraghi. In this world, the past is evoked suddenly and through sensory stimuli. These memories, which are not the product of will and linear reconstruction, are evoked through sensory shocks and the body’s kinesthetic perception—from hearing a familiar name to feeling a touch or tasting a food. In Taraghi’s fictional world, sensory experiences serve as gateways for the activation of such memories and connect a network of fragmented times and places (home/abroad, childhood/middle age). Thus, memory is not a purely psychological or narrative phenomenon, but rather has an ontological and bodily foundation that defines the individual’s presence in his or her personal  and collective history. The present analysis also reveals that this sensory appeal is also reflected in the expressive and stylistic level of the narrative itself. To represent involuntary memories, Taraghi frequently employs terms and metaphors borrowed from cinema and photography. The past in these narratives is rarely reconstructed in a linear and coherent form, but rather appears as fleeting images, broken fragments, or slow shots that carry a paradoxical mixture of presence and absence, clarity and ambiguity. Overall, Goli Taraghi draws on these narrative techniques to portray the transient, elusive, and multilayered nature of memory.
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