This essay presents a reading of Nietzsche's second Untimely Consideration and the second essay of his On the Genealogy of Morals that reevaluates the importance of animal forgetfulness in Nietzsche's conception of history and politics. On my account the insight in the value of animal forgetfulness allows Nietzsche to redefine memory as an artistic force, and historiography as an art of interpretation. This article relates this insight to the relation between politics and the promise in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, arguing that here the rediscovery of the value of animal forgetfulness allows Nietzsche to redefine politics as a realm in which the animality of the human being can take on a creative and productive role exemplified by the promise of the sovereign individual instead of being considered as an object of domination.