The Ontology of Retrieval: Retrieval; Memory; McLuhan, Bensusan, and Locke

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.