MA ⇒ MA’: Memory Assemblages as Matter Assemblies

Abstract

Reassemblaging memories after the reading of Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages, one is obliged to respond (responsibly) with (at least) one more addend, an extra addition. Our addition, which intends to extend the chain reaction initiated in the book, is that of MA’ as matter assemblies, a material activating-key to retrieve memories otherwise. Starting with the memory of matter, we introduce assembly theory as our activating-key for initiating the reassembly of memory assemblages through a materialist lens. We then make matter and memory collide in exploring the nuances of memory-production as a material process, which also shows how matter has always been mnemonic (a matter of memories). The next step leads us to the exterior Other as itself a matter of materiality, a constraining force that constitutes the very matter of self-hood (and of any substantial ontology, which can ‘only come second’, after the exterior contact with an always a posteriori incoming Other). We finally have our ‘stopping point’ (or comma, a short break in an always-additive production chain) at the exteriority-materiality-productivity triptych, where we explore this ‘three-body problem’, briefly seaming through the spectral exteriority of the outside, the queer (trans-)materiality of diffractive spacetimemattering and the anastrophic productivity of an ultrametaeconomic addition-centered Marxism.