The way this makes sense is almost satisfying: not so much the vein of "the court fool turned out to be the smart one in the end" as much as it brings to mind the fact that in order to use irony, satire, parody, or pastiche well, one must have a "good grasp" of the source material.

This gives me an idea for a lesson plan, actually. The instructor would give their class a reading, and instead of asking them to respond to it, the instructor would have them satirize it. It would probably require more work to make good use of this, though.

It's somewhat inspired by a potential assignment my high school psychology teacher conceptualized: an alternative means of getting a perfect score on a multiple choice test. Essentially, a student could opt into this - if the student was able to answer every single question incorrectly, the student would score perfectly. But even a single question wrong would result in the student being graded as they normally would.

Living memories may be the most potent sort of primary sources.

While I'm not sure how I feel about the phrase, I think this might have a deep connection to the idea of "meme culture." A big part of the dissemination of a meme (at least the way I've come to consider them) is creating more instances of it. For instance, once people found out about the "Longcat" meme, if one were browsing the internet, one would begin to encounter more images edited to contain the cat in question.

Certainly, the "contemporary memory boom" has resulted in referencing becoming far, far more common, and I'd argue a reference can be a form of commemoration. I'd like to write more on this at some point.

It may just be because I'm a huge fan of Walter Benjamin's work, but I feel like it would be around this period that it there would have been plenty of time for his writing to be at least partially discussed. I wonder how one could go about connecting his work to ideas of memory. Certainly "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" would be a place I'd start, at least.

This is an incredibly interesting phrase, on a number of levels. I wonder: how else could it be utilized? Could any other historical text make good use of the idea of something not having "a yesterday?"

This reminds me of the idea of history being "written by the victors." That is, in order to maintain one's memory and use it in a meaningful manner, one must be:

• Alive.
• Physically able to communicate.
• Socially able to communicate meaningfully (I.E., in power, possessing the privilege needed to communicate meaningfully)

To avoid repeating past mistakes, one must look back at one's memory, or, baring that, history. History is crafted from the recorded memories of those who lived it.