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In modern societies, forgetfulness plays a strategic role in the production of identities. Such is the « paradigm » of Onofrio, the ambiguous hero of Eduardo Mendoza's novel La Ciudad de Los Prodigios. Under the reign of a temporality fragmented by the succession of catastrophes and miracles, by the inrushing of negative reason (Hiroshima), the dethroned subject of modernity, depicted as « a current event », sees al1 the premisses of a securely grounded self-definition give way. The subject can only answer the question « Who are you ? » by maintaining at al1 costs the continuity of his own self-narrative, even if this means periods of amnesia or bouts of disturbing recovery. The much-praised collective memory comes to play the predictable role of healer of ravaged identities in these metamorphoses and dubious miracles.