The Art of Forgetting: Ricœurian Theory of Oblivion in Annie Ernaux’s The Years

In this article, we examine Annie Ernaux’s The Years (2008) in the light of Paul Ricœur's notion of ars oblivionis (the art of forgetting). By focusing on her distinctive narrative choices – most notably the substitution of the personal ‘je’ (I) with a collective ‘on’ (we/they) and her framing of the past via historical and visual images – we show that The Years constructs a collective identity out of depersonalised memory. Invoking Ricœur's ideas of narrative identity and testimony, we demonstrate how Ernaux's impersonal voice transforms individual recollection into a shared generational narrative. By displacing subjectivity into a communal perspective, we argue, Ernaux enacts what Ricœur describes as ethical forgetting, an ‘enlightened forgetting’ that serves as a guardrail to memory and allows for a ‘measured use of remembering’ in pursuit of a just memory. This way, The Years does not negate or erase memory but reconfigures it illustrating Ricœur’s claim that forgetting can preserve memory by making space for collective understanding.