The Ontology of Retrieval
Retrieval; Memory; McLuhan, Bensusan, and Locke
Keywords:
Memory, McLuhan, Bensusan, LockeAbstract
Hilan Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages makes prominent use of the term “retrieval,” which is also a key technical term of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan. To what extent do the two authors mean something similar with this term? The differences ultimately outweigh any similiarities. Bensusan is concerned not only with Derrida and Heidegger, but especially with John Locke’s account of retrieval in the form of memory. In one sense Locke holds that memory has the additive feature of alerting us tha ta given perception was already had by us previously; in another, he stresses the inherent erosion and oblivion to which memory is inherently subjected. This article claims that Bensusan misses the latter aspect of Locke’s theory by overly emphasizing “addends” as opposed to subtractive forces in the mind. Furthermore, it is argued that Bensusan leaves no room for the figure/ground relationship that is characteristic of retrieval in McLuhan’s sense of the term.
References
Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. C.D.C. Reeve, Indianapolis, Hackett, 2018.
Bensusan, Hilan. Being Up For Grabs: On Speculative Anarchaeology. London: Open Humanities Press, 2016.
——— Indexicalism: Realism and the Metaphysics of Paradox. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021.
——— Memory Assemblages: Spectral Realism and the Logic of Addition. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.
——— “Towards an Indexical Paradoxico-Metaphysics,” Open Philosophy 1 (2018), pp. 155-172.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
Bryant, Levi R., Nick Srnicek, & Graham Harman. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne, re.press, 2011, pp. 381-392.
DeLanda, Manuel. “Emergence, Causality and Realism,” in The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, ed. L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, & G. Harman, Melbourne, re.press, 2011, pp. 381-392.
——— Intensive Science and Virtual Reality, London, Continuum, 2002.
——— Philosophical Chemistry: Genealogy of a Scientific Field, London, Bloomsbury, 2019.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. P. Kamuf. London: Routledge, 2006.
Harman, Graham. “DeLanda’s Ontology: Assemblage and Realism,” Continental Philosophy Review 41.3 (2008), pp. 367-383.
——— “Flat Ontology and Speculative Realism,” in After Speculative Realism, ed. C. Johns & H. Bensusan, London, Bloomsbury, 2025, pp. 25-49.
——— Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory, Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2016.
——— “Indexicalism and its Risks: A Response to Bensusan,” Cosmos and History, 17.2 (2021), pp. 124-144.
——— “The McLuhans and Metaphysics,” in New Waves in Philosophy of Technology, ed. J.-K. Berg Olsen, E. Selinger, and S. Riis, London, Palgrave, 2009, pp. 100-122.
——— “McLuhan as Philosopher,” in Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism, pp. 180-197. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2013.
——— “The Revenge of the Surface: Heidegger, McLuhan, Greenberg,” trans. G. Harman, Paletten, Issue 291/292 (2013), pp. 66-73.
——— “The Shipwreck of Theseus: Philosophy and Maritime Archaeology,” in Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology: Flat Ontologies, Oceanic Thought, and the Anthropocene, ed. P. Campbell & S. Rich, Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2023, pp. 57-73.
——— “Some Paradoxes of McLuhan’s Tetrad,” Umbr(a), No. 1 (2012), pp. 77-95.
——— Speculative Realism: An Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018.
——— “The Tetrad and Phenomenology,” Explorations in Media Ecology 6.3 (2007), pp. 189-196.
Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. R. Rojcewicz & D. Vallega-Neu. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Livy. The Early History of Rome, Books I-V, trans. A. de Sélincourt. London: Penguin, 2002.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Vols. 1 & 2. Peoria, IL: Royal Publishing, 2023.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time, Berkeley, CA, Gingko Press, 2006.
McLuhan, Marshall & Eric McLuhan. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
McLuhan, Marshall & Wilfred Watson. From Cliché to Archetype. New York: Viking, 1970.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Woolhouse, Roger. Locke: A Biography, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Young, Niki. “Object, Reduction, and Emergence: An Object-Oriented View,” Open Philosophy 4 (2021), 83-93.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Graham Harman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
