Ontology of Avulsion: Posthuman Freedom and Accidental Becoming Page: 75
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This process is what was demonstrated earlier in terms of the neural processes of
forgetting. As connections fail to be reactivated and reconsolidated, they begin to degrade. When
the connection between a consolidated memory engram can no longer be reactivated due to any
number of failures from functional amnesia to chemical inhibition or ineffective retrieval cues,
the memory becomes forgotten.'53 Neurologically speaking, memory is encoded engrams and
vast networks of connectivity and consolidation. In this way, cognition resembles any other
assemblage as a vast network of connectivity and material processes. The only difference present
here between a gradual process of forgetting and an avulsive one is that by which the gradual
does not entail an immediate break in vast webs of connection all at once. Rather, gradual
forgetting is a continual, ongoing process built into the nature of becoming whereby unused
connections degrade over time.1 Part of establishing new connections means interfering with
older ones and, at times, disentangling old connections to make room for new ones. This gradual
process of learning is critical to development and continual becoming, although there is
something rather unique which happens when forgetting moves more in the direction of an
avulsive nature. The avulsive forgetting process entails not a standard and gradual movement of
forgetting but a sudden and complete dis-connection. Under many circumstances, the materiality
is abruptly shifted as well-established retrievals of memory engrams become blocked and the
mind unravels.
In a similar process, riverine avulsion renders visible a traditionally geological
manifestation of forgetting. When the embodied river abandons the portion of its co-constitutive
becoming recognized as the riverbed, it demonstrates a dramatic disentanglement by which the
153 Susumu Tonegawa, Michele Pignatelli, Dheeraj S. Roy, and Tomis J. Ryan, "Memory engram storage and
retrieval," Current Opinion in Neurobiology 35 (2015): 102.
154 Davis and Zhong, "The Biology of Forgetting-A Perspective," 491.75
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Grossman, Jacob Wayne. Ontology of Avulsion: Posthuman Freedom and Accidental Becoming, dissertation, December 2021; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1873811/m1/81/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .