The Specter of Irreversibility, or The (Im)Possible Dialogue of Bensusan and a French Philosopher

Abstract

This paper stages a speculative yet methodologically grounded dialogue between Shajara néeHilan Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages and Vladimir Jankélévitch’s philosophy of time, in order to interrogate the concept of irreversibility and its relation to addition, memory, and temporality. Rather than proposing a strictly exegetical comparison, the paper advances a re-reading that mobilizes Bensusan’s notion of iterability as productive retrieval, aligning it with Jankélévitch’s account of temporal irreversibility while exposing tensions between their respective frameworks. The central argument contends that irreversibility, while only marginally explicit in Bensusan’s text, is structurally embedded within his concept of asymmetrical addition. Every act of retrieval or recollection entails transformation, such that the past is never reinstated identically but reconfigured through additive processes. This resonates with Jankélévitch’s thesis that irreversibility constitutes the very essence of time; however, the paper argues that Bensusan displaces this primacy by grounding irreversibility in addition rather than temporality itself. The analysis further challenges Jankélévitch’s strict opposition between reversible space and irreversible time. Drawing on Bensusan’s “geological” model of memory assemblages, the paper demonstrates that space, no less than time, bears the traces of irreversible addition. Through a re-reading of Jankélévitch’s interpretation of the Odyssey, it is shown that nostalgia does not merely reveal temporal irreversibility but also the additive transformation of space itself. The paper then extends the discussion to ethical and metaphysical consequences. Jankélévitch’s notion of the irrevocable (what is done cannot be undone) is reinterpreted through Bensusan’s framework, highlighting the persistence of traces beyond full presence or recoverable content. This raises the problem of retention without retrieval and the status of the “quod” as an irreducible yet content-poor trace within a broader ontology of memory. Ultimately, the paper argues that bringing these two thinkers into dialogue not only clarifies the implicit role of irreversibility in Bensusan’s work but also reconfigures Jankélévitch’s philosophy beyond its anthropocentric limits. The encounter reveals addition as a fundamental ontological operation through which time, space, and memory are jointly constituted.