Benedict Anderson

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives_ The photograph_ is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence_ which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity_ which, because it cannot be __emembered_, must be narrated.