Who's Afraid of Edgar Allan Poe?

From Indexicalism to Spectral Realism: A Journey Through Hilan Bensusan

Abstract

This paper offers a critical reading of Hilan Bensusan’s Indexicalism and Memory Assemblages, focusing on the role of paradox, spectrality, and realism in both works. It first argues that the central paradox of Indexicalism emerges from its claim to reject absolute metaphysics while simultaneously presenting deixis as the unique and absolute structure of reality. It then examines how Memory Assemblages attempts to revisit and partially overcome this difficulty through the notion of spectral realism, according to which memory assemblages are themselves assemblages and therefore cannot claim immunity from addition. The paper also discusses Bensusan’s embrace of contradiction and paraconsistency as possible ways of preserving openness to exteriority. Beyond the theoretical level, it questions the proposed link between indexicalist and spectral metaphysics and specific ethical-political commitments, especially when openness to alterity seems selectively applied in concrete political contexts. Finally, the paper introduces the notion of terminality as a substantive and negative dimension of the Great Outdoors that cannot be reduced either to indexes or to spectral additions. By stressing birth, death, suffering, and the irreversible undoing of singular beings, terminality is presented as a challenge to both indexicalism and spectral realism, pointing toward a negative ontology that foregrounds finitude rather than addition.