SECOND-ORDER FORGETTING: SATURATION, ARCHIVING AND THE CRISIS OF THE SYMBOLIC IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of second-order forgetting as an original philosophical category that captures a transformation in the nature of memory in the age of technical and symbolic saturation. Unlike classical forgetting—linked to absence, repression, or trauma—this contemporary form of forgetting results not from failure to remember, but from an indiscriminate excess of technical memory, fostered by databases, algorithms, networks, and devices that record everything, including what has never been symbolized. This new mode of forgetting, marked by hyperavailability, dissolves meaning, disables narrative construction, and weakens the formation of subjectivity. The methodology is theoretical-conceptual and hermeneutic, articulating diverse philosophical traditions: Nietzsche’s active forgetting, Ricoeur’s narrative memory, Heidegger’s forgetting of Being, Derrida’s archive, Byung-Chul Han’s positivity, Agamben’s inoperativity, Levinas’s ethical listening, and Gadamer’s notion of tradition. The central thesis argues that the saturation of technical storage erases the symbolic negativity essential to experience, transforming symbols into interfaces and knowledge into performativity. As an allegorical dramatization of the hypothesis, the article draws on the literary-philosophical work O Último Grão de Areia (ISBN: 978-65-266-1447-7), which portrays a fictional village where everything is archived, yet nothing retains existential depth. The article concludes that philosophy, in the face of the collapse of symbolic mediation and curatorial memory, is called to listen to the vestige, sustain the fragment, and curate what resists total codification.