What is it Like to be a Memory Assemblage?

Abstract

The following text seeks to outline a somewhat idiosyncratic engagement with Hilan Bensusan’s proposal of spectral realism as set out in his 2024 book Memory Assemblages, employing a heterogeneous set of elements to situate this framework within a particular psychological problematic. Initially taking up Whitehead’s distinction between sciences of exclusive and cross classification, we seek to show how the latter can be seen as relevant within Bensusan’s perspective, such that assembled entities present a fundamentally “cross-classificatory” character, which counteracts logics that understand entities via exclusive mechanisms. Following this, we draw out a distinction between the size of objects in space and their size in time as it pertains within Imari Walker’s Assembly Theory, seeking to understand this research program as a current exemplar of a cross-classificatory science, and more particularly showing how its understanding of this contrast implies a commensurate increase in cross-classificatory relations within a temporal “depth” of an essentially contingent, assembled kind. This allows us to draw out the dual aspects of contingency and diachronicity as vital properties of assembled entities as they appear within Bensusan’s outlook. Finally, we develop the foregoing considerations within a specifically psychological problematic as it relates to the aggregation and disaggregation of intentional subjects, taking assembly depth as the condition which operates this transition.