In the Beginning there was a Past

Response to Symposium Contributors

Authors

Keywords:

Memory assemblages, Spectres, Spectral realism, Pan-mnemism, Ultrametaphysics

Abstract

This is the author's responses to the papers on the book Memory Assemblages presented in the two symposia around the book. 

Author Biography

Hilan Nissior Bensusan, University of Brasilia

Department of Philosophy

Lecturer / Professor

References

Aristotle. Metaphysics, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2016.

Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share, 3 vols., New York, Zone Books, 1988–1993.

Bensusan, Hilan. Being Up for Grabs: On Speculative Anarcheology, London, Open Humanities Press, 2016.

Bensusan, Hilan. “Cosmopolitical parties in the post-human age”, &&&, November,

, https://tripleampersand.org/cosmopolitical-parties-post-human-age/, accessed

in October, 2023.

Bensusan, Hilan. “Geist and Ge-Stell: Beyond the Cyber-Nihilist Convergence of

Intelligence,” Cosmos and History, 16, 2, 2020, 94–117.

Bensusan, Hilan. Indexicalism: Realism and the Metaphysics of Paradox, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2021.

Bensusan, Hilan. Memory Assemblages: Spectral Realism and the Logic of Addition, London, Bloomsbury, 2024.

Bensusan, Shajara. “Pan-perceptualism and pan-mnemism: process philosophy in ultrametaphysical terms”, Process Philosophy, 55, 2026.

Bensusan, Shajara, Joan Simó and Guilherme da Silva. “Even monsters demonstrate: Indexical expressions and reference-fixing procedures”, Manuscript submitted for publication.

Bhabha, Homi. “Dissemination”, in Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London, Routledge, 1994.

Butler, Octavia E. Kindred, Boston, Beacon Press, 1979.

Cabrera, Julio. “Who’s afraid of Edgar Allan Poe?”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Celan, Paul. “Entretien dans la montagne”, in Paul Celan, Gesammelte Werke, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1983.

Charbonnier, Pierre, Salmon, Gildas, and Skafish, Peter (eds.). Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology After Anthropology, London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

De Brigard, Felipe. “Simulationism and Memory Traces”, in Sara Aronowitz and Lynn Nadel (eds.), Memory, Space and Time, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2025.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Derrida, Jacques. “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’”, in Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson (eds.), Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, New York, Routledge, 1992.

Derrida, Jacques. “Introduction to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry”, in: Husserl, The Origin of Geometry, 23-154.

Derrida, Jacques. La vie la mort, Paris, Seuil, 2019.

Derrida, Jacques. “Marx and Sons”, in Michael Sprinker (ed.), in Ghostly Demarcations, London, Verso, 1999.

Ferreira, Matheus. “MA ⇒ MA’: Memory Assemblages as Matter Assemblies”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Ferreira da Silva, Denise. Unpayable Debt, London, Sternberg Press, 2022.

Goldgaber, Deborah. “Decompression, Memory, Exteriority”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Harman, Graham. “Ontology of retrieval”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Harman, Graham. The Quadruple Object, Winchester, Zero Books, 2011.

Hartman, Saidiya. “The End of White Supremacy – An American Romance’, Bomb Magazine, 2020, §74.

Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Heidegger, Martin. Aristoteles, Metaphysik Θ 1–5, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1981.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, New York, Harper & Row, 1962.

Heidegger, Martin. Bremen and Freiburg Lectures, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2012.

Heidegger, Martin. “Metaphysics as History of Being”, in Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, New York, Harper & Row, 1973.

Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language, New York, Harper & Row, 1971.

Heidegger, Martin. “Time and Being”, in Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, New York, Harper & Row, 1972.

Heidegger, Martin. Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen, Neske, 1959.

Husserl, Edmund. The Origin of Geometry, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1989, pp. 155-180.

Kaplan, David. “Demonstratives”, in Joseph Almog, John Perry and Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989.

Klossowski, Pierre. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Kripke, Saul. Reference and Existence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Lafetá, Gabriela. “Specters animate the corners of the earth”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than Being, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1974.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1969.

Li, Ming, and Vitányi, Paul. An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications, New York, Springer, 1997.

Lispector, Clarice. The Passion According to G.H., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

Livingston, Paul. The Logic of Being, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2012.

Livingston, Paul. “Undecidable sense and the logics of ineffectivity”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

McLuhan, Marshall and Eric McLuhan. Laws of Media: The New Science, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1988.

Magalhães, José Antonio. “Index and nomos”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Malabou, Catherine. “The End of Writing?”, in Catherine Malabou, Changing Difference, Cambridge, Polity, 2011.

Martin, C. B., and Deutscher, Max. “Remembering”, The Philosophical Review, 75 (1966), 161–196.

Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude, London, Continuum, 2008.

Menon, Walter. “Radical exteriority and incorporeal”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Moten, Fred. The Universal Machine, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018.

Nieto, Federico. “The spectral ethics of syntax and excess”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Norman, Oliver. “The Specter of Irreversibility”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Ostos, Elena. “On Traces and Addends”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Pinedo, Manolo. “Memory with an erotic addition”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Pinho, Pedro. “Memory as Form and as Trace”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Pinto Neto, Moysés. “Memory Assemblages”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Polydoro, Felipe. “Ghosts against necropolitics”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Povinelli, Elizabeth. Geontologies, Durham, Duke University Press, 2016.

Schirmer dos Santos, César. “Spectral Realism, Actual Idealism”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Schmitt, Carl. The Nomos of the Earth, New York, Telos Press, 2003.

Sexton, Jared. “The social life of social death: On afro-pessimism and Black optimism”, InTensions, 5, 2011.

Sharma, Abhishek, Dániel Czégel, Michael Lachmann, Christopher P. Kempes, Sara I. Walker and Leroy Cronin. “Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution”, Nature, 622(7982) (2023), 321–328.

Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”, Diacritics, 17 (1987), 65–81.

Stephan, Cassiana. “Cosmic austerity”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Stephan, Cassiana. “O sol da meia-noite”, Avesso, 1, 2025.

Tewers, Micah . “The specter of the American Revolution”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Villani, Phillip. “What is like to be a memory assemblage”, Cosmos and History, 22(1).

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. Os Deuses Canibais, São Paulo, Ubu Editora, 2022.

Walker, Sara Imari. Life as No One Knows It, New York, Riverhead Books, 2024.

Downloads

Published

13-04-2026

How to Cite

Bensusan, H. N. (2026). In the Beginning there was a Past: Response to Symposium Contributors. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 22(1), 368–430. Retrieved from http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1597

Issue

Section

Conference Proceedings