Spectral Realism, Actual Idealism

Is Truth in the Making?

Abstract

This paper presents a critical discussion of Hilan Bensusan’s pan-mnemism, the metaphysical theory that everything possesses a memory-like structure. The analysis is guided by two key excerpts from Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages, concerning the nature of the past and the relationship between past, memory, and truthmaking. After presenting the basic tenets of pan-mnemism, with its reliance on a two-layer model of memory, the paper develops two main lines of argument. First, it challenges the claim that something can be added to the past by insisting on a firm distinction between memory as a cognitive phenomenon and the past itself. It is argued that memory, as a representation, subtracts from rather than adds to the past event it represents. Second, the paper questions the notion that truth is “in the making”, proposing that semantic properties like truth are logically prior to the cognitive act of remembering. Finally, after an analysis of Bensusan’s use of “the spectral” as a central metaphor for memory and reality, a parallel is drawn between pan-mnemism and semantic anti-realism to argue that Bensusan’s spectral realism functions as a form of idealism.