Gusdorf again sums up the implications of this tension between memory, time and the self:
Recapitulation of a life reveals only a ghostly image of that life, already far distant and doubtless incomplete, distorted furthermore by the fact that the [person]who remembers [their] past has not been for a long time the same being…who lived that past….narrative[therefore]confers a meaning on the event which, when it actually occurred, had several meanings, or perhaps none. This postulating of meaning dictates the choice of the facts to be retained and the details to bring out or dismiss….An autobiography cannot be a pure and simple record of existence, an account in a logbook…Every [person] is the first witness of [themselves ]yet the testimony that [they] thus produce constitutes no ultimate, conclusive authority…17
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