Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Editorial

2026-04-08T23:53:47+00:00

The papers in this volume of Cosmos & History present the proceedings of two book symposia on Memory Assemblages: Spectral Realism and the Logic of Addition (London: Bloomsbury, 2024) by Hilan Bensusan.

An Alternative Alternative to Metaphysics

2026-04-04T01:38:39+00:00

This is a precis of the book Memory Assemblages to introduce the discussion of the two symposia around the book.

Undecidable Sense and the Logics of Ineffectivity

2026-04-09T03:09:33+00:00

In Indexicalism and now, again, in Memory Assemblages, Shajara Bensusan has insightfully perceived how a main occupation of the historical tradition of metaphysics, and a central project of global contemporary capitalism (perhaps culminating in the massive contemporary ideological project of “artificial intelligence”), can be seen as united in what is essentially a single program: that of the extraction of intelligibility in a unitary form from phenomena and events for the purpose of their comprehension, mastery and control.[1] This project of violent extraction may also be seen -- as Bensusan’s critique suggests, and as I shall argue further here -- as a project of the attempted extraction and stabilization of the senses of the beings and lives of the earth: that is, of the extrication and appropriation, in a unitary form, of the possible direction and directedness of their temporal becoming and possibilities of significant presentation, to or for one another. Seen in this way, what gives unitary direction to this project of the extraction of senses is the value, assumption or ideological form of an effective – that is, in principle effectively decidable -- predictability, comprehension and control by means of the exercise of a (presumptively human) capacity of rational intelligibility and intelligence.

In recent work and publications, I have tried to critically investigate and interrogate the underlying logic of this project of effectivity, which (I have argued) begins with Aristotle’s application of the idea and value of a general and unitary rational capacity of decision or judgment, thought to be possessed uniquely by human beings, and finds a characteristic contemporary form in the idea of the human subject or agent as the possessor of language.[2] By reflecting on the logical-metaphysical form and foundations of the project of effectivity, I have argued, we also are in a formal position to begin to articulate what I have called, by contrast, several “logics of ineffectivity” that (I have argued) could both critically witness the limits of the coherence of these assumptions of effectivity and rational capacity and, thereby, point to alternative forms of life no longer as much marked by their characteristic violence.

The main aim of this paper is to further develop the underlying idea of a logic of ineffectivity by developing the formal connection between the formally demonstrable undecidability of presentational sense and the actual witnessing of this ineffectivity on the level of practice: that is, of the forms of a collective global and geopolitical life. In particular, I will consider how a formally grounded consideration of the question or problem of sense and its direction, developed in the neutral positional terms of the (essentially indexical) relationships of a(ny) one with (any or all possible) others, can orient both a critique of the logic and ideology of presumptive effectivity that underlies the contemporary techno-capitalist project of extraction, and (more positively) a series of critical logics of practice that witness the consequences of the undecidability of sense on the level of the global organization of collective life. I consider how critical reflection on the logical and formal-semantic determinants of the extractive project within (what Emmanuel Severino terms) the “nihilistic” project of Western cosmopolitics offers to evince the alternative development of logics of ineffectivity that thus provide a possible response on the practical level to this global nihilism, without relying on something like a metaphysical principle of full presence or a theological position of the plenitude of possible sense. In the last section of the paper, I raise a couple of interpretive and critical questions about Bensusan’s development of (what he terms) some of the possible “routes” to ineffectivity, in the specific context of the spectral realism and pan-mnemism he argues for in Memory Assemblages, and thereby to reassess, from a slightly shifted perspective, some of the positive claims of justice, historically oriented memory, and messianic anticipation that he offers on behalf of spectral realism there.

On Traces and Addends:

2026-04-09T04:41:05+00:00

This paper opens a dialogue between the philosophical account of memory developed by Bensusan in Memory Assemblages and contemporary debates in the analytic philosophy of memory. I take the notion of the trace as a point of departure to examine the way Bensusan shifts from the traditional view of memory as a psychological faculty toward a broader ontological perspective—pan-mnemism—according to which memory constitutes a fundamental dimension of reality. Embracing this move, Bensusan offers an account of the conditions of possibility that underlie memory as a psychological term. I then analyse the conception of memory that derives from this framework, where traces do not preserve stable contents from the past but instead function as open structures that acquire meaning only through “addends.” I contrast this view with classical causal theories of memory and argue that Bensusan’s proposal can be understood as a radicalization of constructivist and post-causal theories, one that emphasizes the situated character of memory.

Spectral Realism, Actual Idealism

2026-04-09T05:14:15+00:00

This paper presents a critical discussion of Hilan Bensusan’s pan-mnemism, the metaphysical theory that everything possesses a memory-like structure. The analysis is guided by two key excerpts from Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages, concerning the nature of the past and the relationship between past, memory, and truthmaking. After presenting the basic tenets of pan-mnemism, with its reliance on a two-layer model of memory, the paper develops two main lines of argument. First, it challenges the claim that something can be added to the past by insisting on a firm distinction between memory as a cognitive phenomenon and the past itself. It is argued that memory, as a representation, subtracts from rather than adds to the past event it represents. Second, the paper questions the notion that truth is “in the making”, proposing that semantic properties like truth are logically prior to the cognitive act of remembering. Finally, after an analysis of Bensusan’s use of “the spectral” as a central metaphor for memory and reality, a parallel is drawn between pan-mnemism and semantic anti-realism to argue that Bensusan’s spectral realism functions as a form of idealism.

The Ontology of Retrieval

2026-04-09T05:39:22+00:00

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.

Addition, Exteriority, Return

2026-04-09T22:03:47+00:00

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.

Who's Afraid of Edgar Allan Poe?

2026-04-10T00:01:29+00:00

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.

Index and nomos

2026-04-09T23:35:59+00:00

In this article, I seek to make a contribution to speculative realism by adding, to the “imperfect coupling” formed by Hilan Bensusan’s books Indexicalism and Memory Assemblages, a juridico-political dimension centred on a mythical concept of nomos, drawing mainly from Carl Schmitt and ontological turn anthropology. I introduce the concept of nomos at the intersection between the (universal) necessity of contingency defended by Quentin Meillassoux and the contingency of necessity that Markus Gabriel extracts from Schelling’s philosophy of mythology. I propose that it can help accounting for the actuality of contingent necessities in local world-orders. I argue that an open metaphysics is less politically relevant than a good-enough heuristic for mapping out the ways in which local necessities are made and undone. In my reading of Memory Assemblages, I play down the distinction between memory and myth, as well as the parallel one between spectres and spirits. Finally, I seek to show how the nomic indexicalism proposed throughout the paper allows speculative thought to avoid the common charge of “armchair speculation”, inasmuch as it grounds any possibility of metaphysical speculation on a “great outdoors” composed of multiple others.

Memory Assemblages

2026-04-11T00:08:20+00:00

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.

Specters Animate the Corners of the Earth

2026-04-06T13:05:05+00:00

From Memory assemblages, I will address the trait of para-ontological intelligibility that has sustained its cosmopolitical scope according to the specificity of the spectrum, whether in the structure of its own thought – in the “narrow thread of its purpose” – or
from the “moving background” of its theoretical influences that result in additions and a significant absence, in my view. If the absence of interiority erases irrevocable contours; these, always mutable and always under some social appeal, depend on the tracing of a psyche. If this is a para-ontological choice, sometimes speculative, sometimes hanthological, it seems to me that an ontology is remade amid notions-in-erasure.

What is it Like to be a Memory Assemblage?

2026-04-11T00:39:21+00:00

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.

MA ⇒ MA’: Memory Assemblages as Matter Assemblies

2026-04-11T04:40:52+00:00

Reassemblaging memories after the reading of Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages, one is obliged to respond (responsibly) with (at least) one more addend, an extra addition. Our addition, which intends to extend the chain reaction initiated in the book, is that of MA’ as matter assemblies, a material activating-key to retrieve memories otherwise. Starting with the memory of matter, we introduce assembly theory as our activating-key for initiating the reassembly of memory assemblages through a materialist lens. We then make matter and memory collide in exploring the nuances of memory-production as a material process, which also shows how matter has always been mnemonic (a matter of memories). The next step leads us to the exterior Other as itself a matter of materiality, a constraining force that constitutes the very matter of self-hood (and of any substantial ontology, which can ‘only come second’, after the exterior contact with an always a posteriori incoming Other). We finally have our ‘stopping point’ (or comma, a short break in an always-additive production chain) at the exteriority-materiality-productivity triptych, where we explore this ‘three-body problem’, briefly seaming through the spectral exteriority of the outside, the queer (trans-)materiality of diffractive spacetimemattering and the anastrophic productivity of an ultrametaeconomic addition-centered Marxism.

Cosmic Austerity

2026-04-11T06:05:44+00:00

This essay has a fabulist tone that blends philosophical writing with literary expression. It is an attempt to compose memory assemblages through poetic plasticity tied to the play between retention and retrieval. This play is based on the logic of addition, as conceived by Bensusan in Memory Assemblages: Spectral Realism and the Logic of Addition. With this aim in mind—an aim that is simultaneously ethical, political, and aesthetic — I divide the text into six more or less connected parts. The opening section functions as an introduction to the ineffectivity of knowledge in the face of the vastness of the cosmos. The second part constitutes the first assemblage of the text: here, I attempt to show the creative character of retrieval, which adds origins to a single history or different histories to a single origin. The third part refers to the second assemblage, where I retell a love history constructed through the logic of addition: this spectral history deals with the non-reciprocity between the self and the other in the kinetic and poetic composition of a fluid relation with the memory of the disappeared who, although expropriated from the future by the rupture of the present, still possess an ancestral genealogy to be retraced on account of a somewhat unreasonable feeling, namely, homesick. The fourth part of the essay corresponds to the third assemblage: in it, I seek to retrace, through the errancy typical of cockroaches, the possible genealogies of the disappeared. More precisely, drawing on cockroaches, I argue that spectral ultrametaphysics is a submetaphysics, since the transcendence pertaining to the addition of errancy takes place in cosmic immanence—or better, along the path of horizontal displacement toward the multiple recesses of the world that open by the exercise of the future-and-the-past, i.e, the agglutination between the future and the past. The fifth part of the text is the fourth assemblage: at this point, I return to the love history previously narrated to retell it under the sign of Saturn, the planet of slow revolutions and delays. In this assemblage, I attempt to indicate the extent to which the ineffectivity of Saturnine love corrodes the ethos of capitalist despair. Finally, in the last breath of the text, I seek to quickly explain what I understand by cosmic austerity and how it relates to the spectral demand for justice.

Memory with an Erotic Addition

2026-04-11T04:50:04+00:00

In this paper, I follow Bensusan’s lead regarding the need of addition for the constitution of memory and explore in what sense love can in occasions provide the necessary addition while improving, rather than jeopardizing, the normative standing of memory. To illustrate the relationship between memory as a source of knowledge and love, I make use of a variety of examples taken from films by Buñuel, Bergmann and Kore-eda, from literature and history, and from personal experience. Likewise, I rely on ideas from traditions ranging from feminist and antiracist standpoint epistemology to Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following.

Ghosts Against Necropolitics

2026-04-11T05:50:44+00:00

This article examines how videos of police brutality in Brazil – specifically the Favela Naval scandal (1997) and the murder of Genivaldo Santos (2022) – produce spectral rather than merely evidentiary effects. Drawing on Derrida, Avery Gordon, Hilan Bensusan and Denise Ferreira da Silva, it argues that the power of these images lies not in visibility or transparency but in their capacity to evoke the ghosts of slavery and dictatorship, destabilizing hegemonic narratives of justice, empathy, and race in Brazil’s necropolitical order.

Memory as Form and as Trace

2026-04-11T06:49:53+00:00

In this text, I attempt to account for Hilton Bensusan’s reading of Catherine Malabou’s break with Jacques Derrida in the book Memory Assemblages. I begin by outlining a brief overview of Freud and the Scene of Writing, in order to establish a horizon within which Derrida’s position can be appreciated and contrasted with Malabou’s. To present Malabou’s position, I first move through Bensusan’s own assessment of this critique. Finally, I conclude that, by considering plasticity as a restricted version of retention, Memory Assemblages overlooks the possibility of a more fruitful dialogue with Malabou’s work, as can be glimpsed in a reading of Are There Still Traces?

The Specter of Irreversibility, or The (Im)Possible Dialogue of Bensusan and a French Philosopher

2026-04-12T07:47:05+00:00

This paper stages a speculative yet methodologically grounded dialogue between Shajara néeHilan Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages and Vladimir Jankélévitch’s philosophy of time, in order to interrogate the concept of irreversibility and its relation to addition, memory, and temporality. Rather than proposing a strictly exegetical comparison, the paper advances a re-reading that mobilizes Bensusan’s notion of iterability as productive retrieval, aligning it with Jankélévitch’s account of temporal irreversibility while exposing tensions between their respective frameworks. The central argument contends that irreversibility, while only marginally explicit in Bensusan’s text, is structurally embedded within his concept of asymmetrical addition. Every act of retrieval or recollection entails transformation, such that the past is never reinstated identically but reconfigured through additive processes. This resonates with Jankélévitch’s thesis that irreversibility constitutes the very essence of time; however, the paper argues that Bensusan displaces this primacy by grounding irreversibility in addition rather than temporality itself. The analysis further challenges Jankélévitch’s strict opposition between reversible space and irreversible time. Drawing on Bensusan’s “geological” model of memory assemblages, the paper demonstrates that space, no less than time, bears the traces of irreversible addition. Through a re-reading of Jankélévitch’s interpretation of the Odyssey, it is shown that nostalgia does not merely reveal temporal irreversibility but also the additive transformation of space itself. The paper then extends the discussion to ethical and metaphysical consequences. Jankélévitch’s notion of the irrevocable (what is done cannot be undone) is reinterpreted through Bensusan’s framework, highlighting the persistence of traces beyond full presence or recoverable content. This raises the problem of retention without retrieval and the status of the “quod” as an irreducible yet content-poor trace within a broader ontology of memory. Ultimately, the paper argues that bringing these two thinkers into dialogue not only clarifies the implicit role of irreversibility in Bensusan’s work but also reconfigures Jankélévitch’s philosophy beyond its anthropocentric limits. The encounter reveals addition as a fundamental ontological operation through which time, space, and memory are jointly constituted.

Contributions of the Doctrine of Memory Assemblages

2026-04-12T09:37:39+00:00

The aim of this article is to appropriate the most important concepts from Hilan Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages in order to revise my philosophical concept of education. To this end, emphasis will be placed on the concepts of addition, retention, and retrieval. But it will also be considered the broader perspective from which Hilan Bensusan conceives Memory Assemblages. Rather than representing another kind of metaphysics, his doctrine of memory assemblages stems from what Bensusan calls ultrametaphysics. Unlike metaphysics, ultrametaphysics—here's the difference—does not assume any single, primordial principle for everything. Thus, I will attempt to show how the concepts of Memory Assemblages renew my concept of experience—a fundamental aspect of my philosophical concept of education. Finally, I will point out a question which Bensusan does not develop in Memory Assemblages regarding the concept of force—which is frequently mentioned in his text, but without adequate consideration.

The Spectral Ethics of Syntax and Excess

2026-04-12T23:39:46+00:00

In the following paper, we would like to expand on certain issues latent in Shajara Bensusan’s recent Memory Assemblages, and in particular to the feedbacking circuits at work in the text which evidence the rich enmeshment of aesthetics, racial politics and ethics. By using the framework at hand in the aforementioned work, we present a response that builds upon the pragmatical and theoretical consequences of what could be called a “spectral ethics” by applying two concepts we find could be usefully disseminated as a form of political stratagem in the form of a double-bind: syntax and excess. In regards to the first concept, we propose a politico-ontological reading of syntax as congenial to what Bensusan has named as “minor existents”, and which we put at use in the context of how racialized bodies have been instrumentalized and subjugated by capitalism by specifically observing its embedding in production and value-use which is also indissociable to certain developments in the production of aesthetics and culture at large. For the second concept we bring forth the idea of subverting or overcoming the subjugation and instrumentalization of “minor existents” by way of excess as an erasure and transgression to the inner limits of capitalism.

The Specter of the American Revolution

2026-04-12T09:55:03+00:00

This essay presents a reading of Shajara Bensusan’s Memory Assemblages alongside a dilemma in the U.S.A. over the meaning of its commonwealth. Across two and a half centuries, America’s republic has drifted toward despotism under the disguise of a liberal democracy. A consolidating class of monopolists compete to reign over the commons like landlords, while an increasingly indebted majority struggle through anti-socialist politics to find any mutually persuasive solution and aim. This essay capitalizes on Bensusan’s call to “reshuffle the archives” of memory as a method for imagining what may yet be added to this reality, bringing the unfulfilled republican ideals of the first American revolution to the forefront. The focus especially lies in restoring a notion of the commonwealth advanced by this revolution’s founding philosopher, Thomas Paine, and how this notion might re-contextualize the troubled social projects which followed.

Radical Exteriority and Incorporeal. A Brief Commentary about Memory Assemblage

2026-04-12T10:14:10+00:00

This essay examines the concept of memory and its connection to exteriority, indexicals, and incorporeals. It delves into the philosophical perspectives of Émile Bréhier, Deleuze, and the Stoics, emphasizing the omnipresence of memory and its role in constituting the past through addition. It discusses the importance of exteriority for ontology and the collective nature of memory, which transcends individual experiences. It highlights the role of indexicals in memory and the incorporeal nature of meanings, propositions, space, time, and other concepts. I propose that memory and addition involve a collapse of logical and ontological instances, leading to a dynamic and plastic understanding of being and history, as well as political engagement.

In the Beginning there was a Past

2026-04-04T01:42:34+00:00

This is the author's responses to the papers on the book Memory Assemblages presented in the two symposia around the book.