Marc Augé argues in Oblivion (trans. Marjolijn de Jager, Minneapolis, 2004) that the personal narratives that weave together our memories -- and help us to form an idea of who we are -- do not depend solely upon the constructive work of memory. They depend just as much on the destructive work of forgetting. Memory in some sense depends upon oblivion.Memories are crafted by oblivion as the outlines of the shore are caused by the sea.' Oblivion plays a neglected or repressed part in narrative construction.

In this reviewTony Milligan says that Augé manages to trace three figures of oblivion which are bound up with our personal narratives:

The first is the figure of the return, the forgetting of the future and present in a nostalgic attempt to find a lost past... The second figure is suspense, the excitement of the moment that is a forgetting of both past and future...The third figure is rebeginning, not in the sense of repetition but of 'radical inauguration'. The new future cuts itself off from what has gone before