Addition, Exteriority, Return

A Reflection on Bensusan's Memory Assemblages

Abstract

In this contribution, I read Hilan Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages in terms of its resonance with deconstructive accounts of technicity, supplementation and archivization, focusing on the entanglement of retention and retrieval. Using the example of computational compression, I consider the excessive and spectral nature of this entanglement vis a vis its relation to intelligence, cognition and memory.  As Memory Assemblages shows, what is retained and retrieved is always incomplete, subject to unpredictable reactivation. Situating Bensusan alongside Derrida, Stiegler, and Vygotsky, the paper suggests that current shifts toward digital externalization may mark an epochal transformation in mnemonic assemblages. It concludes by questioning whether Bensusan’s emphasis on return and spectrality adequately accounts for rupture, loss, and radical exteriority.