Law and Everyday Forgetting: Preserving the Opacity of the Inner Self

Abstract This paper argues that law plays an important role in preserving the opacity of the inner self. For the purposes of the paper, rather than attempt to analyse the idea of the inner self in a comprehensive way, I focus on one aspect of it as an exemplar: oblivion as a facet of memory, in particular the notion of everyday forgetting or what Rapp calls the ‘ordinary oblivion of the self’. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, I introduce the idea of the opacity of the inner self and discuss how it is an essential part of our humanness. Next, I explore connections between everyday forgetting and the idea of the inner self. I then work with two case studies, laws on spent convictions and the right to be forgotten, arguing that these laws carve out breathing space for everyday forgetting. Finally, in the light of these case studies, I discuss how these laws contribute in a significant way to the preservation of the opacity of the inner self.