Traccialità, memoria, vita animale: da Heidegger a Derrida

This essay examines the relationship between life and memory in some of the main authors of phenomenology and hermeneutics of the twentieth century. In particular, the positions of Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida are investigated in the light of a presumed essential difference between human memory and animal memory. In general, while the former would result in defining the horizon of open- ness proper to the human world as connected to historicity (Heidegger) and in- tersubjectivity (Husserl), animal memory would be characterized by automatic and reactive dynamics which would prevent authentic access to the world and sharing experiences from one generation to the next. This conception would begin to be retracted in Derrida’s formulation, who places the accent on the constitutive traceability of every living mnemonic process and therefore on a continuity of life as a structure of supplement and transience within which meaning and sig- nificance are always given within the framework of a loss (death).