Abstract:
This thesis traces some of the modulations in the figuration, role and functioning of memory from the Mycenaean civilisation to the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece before taking up a reading of the modern continental philosophical engagements with this inheritance and the question concerning the irreducible mediations which lie between us and this Greek heritage. The works of Plato, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Marcel Detienne, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida are read, among others, within this study.