Memory Assemblages

A Messianic Approach to Specters on the Cosmopolitical Table

Abstract

 This article presents a critical and dialogical analysis of the spectral project developed by Shajara néeHilan Bensusan in her work Memory Assemblages, examining her onto-epistemological and cosmopolitical positions. It assumes that Bensusan adopts three postulates: (a) a pan-mnemonic conception; (b) an objective spectral realism; and (c) a logic of addition. It highlights the transformations in relation to her previous work, Indexicalism, which still had a strong conception of interiority, now abandoned, as well as paradoxical metaphysics, which also abandoned paradox in the name of a "sufficient consistency." It also presents a critique of the association between transcendence and exteriority, drawing on Denise Ferreira da Silva, in order to contrast the image with that of an immanent exterior. Finally, it links, in cosmopolitical terms, Bensusan's project to Jewish messianism, understanding it as a "fever for justice" to specters.