The Technical Substrates of Unconscious Memory: Rereading Derrida's Freud in the Age of

Teletechnology
Author(s): Patricia Ticineto Clough
Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Nov., 2000), pp. 383-398
Published by: American Sociological Association
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 The Technical Substrates of Unconscious Memory:
Rereading Derrida's Freud in the Age of Teletechnology
PATRICIATICINETOCLOUGH
City University of New York

In a rereadingof Jacques Derrida's writings on Freud, I trace the connections between

his treatmentof differanceand his treatmentof technology and unconscious memory.I
focus on the challenge which Derrida s writings pose for a certain idea of history
including the history of technological development,and I locate that challenge in Der-
rida's deconstruction of the opposition of nature and technology, the human and the
machine, the virtual and the real, the living and the inert. In proposing that these
opposed elements are better thought of as deferrals of each other and that, therefore,
neither of the opposed elements can be ontologically privileged, Derrida's writings
offer a shift in ontological perspective befitting the age of teletechnology. In all this,
Derrida s writings show that Freud'streatmentof unconscious memoryis still relevant,
even while Derrida s writings offer a thoughtof unconscious memorythat goes beyond
Freud's, that is to say, goes beyond thought of the unconscious when it is conceived
narrowly as a possession of the individual subject. Rather than referring unconscious
memoryto the individual subject, Derrida returnsunconscious memoryto thoughtand
its technical substrates. It is in doing so that Derrida's writingspropose an ontological
shift.

In a reading of Jacques Derrida's treatment of differance and Michel Foucault's treatment

of the force relations of power, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has suggested that poststruc-
turalism has ontological implications. As she puts it, poststructuralism is "thought ...
trying to touch the ontic" (1993: 30). Taking my lead from Spivak, I want to offer a reading
of Derrida's writings, especially those early writings which focus on technology and Freud's
treatment of unconscious memory. This reading is part of a larger project of realizing the
ontological implications of poststructuralism and further elaborating the relationship of
poststructuralism and teletechnology long noted by a number of cultural critics.' In con-
trast to these cultural critics, however, I am proposing that the development in the late
twentieth century of teletechnology or telecommunications drew poststructuralism to the
future of thought about ontology. Specifically, it drew Derrida's writings to the deconstruc-
tion of the opposition of nature and technology, the human and the machine, the virtual and
the real, the living and the inert. Each of the opposed elements is treated by Derrida as a
deferral of each other, so that no element is ontologically privileged. My reading, there-
fore, traces the way Derrida's writings are implicated in rethinking ontology in relation-
ship to teletechnology. I, thereby, make more explicit the relationship of Derrida's writings
to the age of teletechnology.
By the age of teletechnology I mean the full interface of computer technology and
television that promises globalized networks of information and communication, such that
layers of images, texts, and sounds flow in real time or constitute a reality rather than
'The largerproject concerns a considerationof culturalcritics who have drawn on poststructuralthought and
who have elaboratedits ontological implications,often inadvertently;see myAutoaffection:UnconsciousThought
in the Age of Teletechnology(2000). Among the culturalcritics who have more specifically treatedthe relation-
ship of poststructuralismand technology, see Avital Ronnell (1989); GregoryUlmer (1989); MarkPoster (1990);
Manuel Delanda (1991); Samuel Weber (1995); Sadie Plant (1997); Charles J. Stivale (1998).

Sociological Theory 18:3 November 2000

? American Sociological Association. 1307 New YorkAvenueNW, Washington,DC 20005-4701
384 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

representone. As such, the adjustmentto the vulnerabilitiesof exposure to teletechnology

is beyond the human subject's mere decision to turn "it"on or off. Teletechnology, there-
fore, refers to all matterof "knowledge objects,"2 technoscientific productionsof every
kind of intelligent machine.As such, teletechnology is both a register and an actualization
of posthuman thought. That is to say, thought is released from its reduction to human
consciousness; thought is understoodinstead as the process of ascribing to beings of var-
ious kinds the power of thinking.
Teletechnology,therefore,does not only refer to an environmentor a set of knowledge
objects; it also refers to agencies other than human agency, so that the teletechnological
becomes inextricably entangled with the social-structural.That is to say, teletechnology
has urgedand is partof a rethinkingof the social-structuraldeterminationof humanagency
or the derivation of human agency out of that certain social-structuralconfiguration of
family and nationalideologies, the state and civil society, and the public andprivatespheres
presumedin subject-centered,nation-centricdiscourses, such as the modernWesterndis-
course of Man. In the age of teletechnology, this configurationof social spaces is being
"smoothed out" or "ungrounded,"to use Gilles Deleuze's terms (1987: 474-500); it is
being "unbundled,"to use Saskia Sassen's term (1998: 81), such that the speeds of the
territorialization,deterritorialization,and reterritorializationof social spaces are at issue.
Yet, I do not mean to suggest that the teletechnological refers simply to the denation-
alization of the state or to the disappearanceof any distinction between the public and
private spheres,the family and the nation, the economy and the state, and surely not to the
deterritorializationof all social spaces once and for all. What is to be expected instead is
variousreterritorializationsin the reconfigurationof social spaces conditionedby the tran-
snationalizationof capital and the globalization of teletechnology, such that the transna-
tional or the global are betterunderstoodas nodes in various networksalongside the local,
the singular,the immanent.As the relevant distinction for political economy is no longer
that between circulating capital and fixed capital but ratherbetween capital effected by
state apparatusesand capital effected by multinationalsand globalization,the functions of
nation-states and the aims for their interrelationshipin terms of a transnationalismare
being revised.
However, no matterhow social spaces are being reconfigured,the age of teletechnol-
ogy, I would argue,is characterizedby an increasedpossibility of the release of the human
subject'sagency from non-reflexive relationshipsto tradition,community,and large social
structures,as social theorists have already noted (see, for example, Beck, Giddens and
Lash 1994). But there is also the increased possibility of the human subject's becoming
aware of nonhumanagencies-those of various knowledge objects as well as those imma-
nent to matteritself. That is to say, there is the increasedpossibility of the humansubject's
becoming aware of the displacement of the transcendentalfigure of Being by the dyna-
mism of matter,or what Pheng Cheah has referredto as the subindividual,singular,finite
forces of "mattering"(1996: 108-139). In referringto the agencies immanentto matter,
however, I do not mean to suggest a mere returnto the forces of natureas opposed to the
conditions of culture.While natureis not to be conceived merely as a culturalconstruction,
nature also is not separable from culture or technology. The agencies of the singular,
subindividual,finite forces of mattering,therefore, refer to an interimplicationof nature
and culture all the way down, such that nature and culture are best understoodas tech-
nonature and technoculture, that is, as technoscientific effects. After all, the forces of

2I am indebted to Karin KnorrCetina's discussion of "knowledge objects" and their agencies (1997). Knorr
Cetina suggests that the ontology of knowledge objects is "volatile and unfolding."It is the ontological volatility
of knowledge objects that has provoked my interests in the ontological implications of poststructuralism.
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATESOF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 385

matteringare realized as self-organizing agencies through a technoscientific production.

As Manuel DeLanda argues, what "has allowed us to 'see' matteras self-organizing is the
advance in technology that materially supports the (non-linear)mathematics,and with it
mathematicaltechnology" (1992: 134). Similarly,Donna Harawayproposes that agencies
such as those belonging to the fetus, the chip, the genome, or the databaseare technosci-
entific productions, only realizable as "material-semioticobjects" or "material-semiotic
agencies" which, however, in no meaningful way can simply be or only be referred to
human agency (1998: 129).
Finally, in the age of teletechnology, the problematic of human agency can also be
referred to the discourse of unconscious fantasy and unconscious memory about which
there also is an increased possibility of the subject's intensified reflexivity. As Anthony
Elliott has suggested, there is a strong link between an intensified reflexivity aboutuncon-
scious fantasy and the transformationof the human subject's agency; that is, the human
subject's awareness of agencies other than human agency blurs the opposition of human
and machine, nature and technology, the virtual and the real, thereby also blurring the
opposition of reality and fantasy or promotingan increased awareness of the productivity
of unconscious fantasy in the constructionof reality (1996). It follows that there also is an
increasedpossibility of an intensifiedreflexivity aboutunconsciousmemorysince teletech-
nology brings about a change for the humansubjectin the relationshipof time and space-
that is, a change in historicity and memory. This change in the relationship of time and
space, of memory and historicity, is a change in the ground of Being.
In linking these certain features of the age of teletechnology with Derrida'searly writ-
ings about technology and unconscious memory,I want to highlight the ontological impli-
cations of Derrida's writings. I want to show that in taking unconscious memory as the
groundof Being and rethinkingit in termsof teletechnology,Derrida'swritings, beginning
with his early rereadingof Freud in "Freudand the Scene of Writing,"allow for a shift in
thought to an ontological perspective that denies the opposition of nature and culture,
human and machine, natureand technology, the virtual and the inert.

DERRIDA READS AND REREADS FREUD

In Archive Fever, A Freudian Impression (1996), Derrida returns to an earlier essay in
which he first traced Freud's steps from treatingunconscious memory in terms of neurol-
ogy to when, in 1925, Freud finally treats the unconscious in the metaphorof a writing
machine. The writing machine is a child's toy thatFreudreferredto as the "mysticwriting-
pad" (see Freud 1925: 227-232). In Derrida'searlieressay, "Freudand the Scene of Writ-
ing" (1978), Derridapointsto Freud'sfailureto recognizethe existence of archivingmachines
or technologies that are surely more sophisticatedthan the toy writing-pad.Derridagoes
on to arguethatthe metaphorof the mystic writing-pad,which Freudclaimed to be the best
rhetorical device for treating unconscious memory, is made available "only through the
solid metaphor,the 'unnatural,'historical productionof a supplementarymachine, added
to the psychical organizationin orderto supplementits finitude" (228). Derrida suggests
that there is a relationshipbetween unconscious memory and historically specific supple-
mentarymachines, or thatunconscious memory is inextricablefrom the various "technical
substrates"given it with historically specific technologies, to use the bolder formulationof
Archive Fever. Derridaalso suggests that from the starta certain technology had overseen
Freud's treatmentof unconscious memory; a certain technology had drawnFreud to treat
unconscious memory in the metaphorof a writing machine.
If, as Derridawould have it, Freuddid not, perhapscould not, recognize the technology
that was overseeing his project,the same might be said aboutDerrida,at least in his earlier
386 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

rereadingof Freud.But in ArchiveFever, where Derridareturnsto "Freudand the Scene of

Writing"in the contextof interrogatingthe relationshipof unconsciousmemoryandteletech-
nology, what is suggested is that it is teletechnology that allowed for the connections
Derridafirst elaboratedbetween his own project and Freud's. Or, as I would like to put it,
in "Freudand the Scene of Writing,"Derrida begins to complete Freud's project in the
machine metaphorsgiven with teletechnology and suggests, therefore,that teletechnology
was already drawing the Freudianunconscious to it and to the future. But to propose that
teletechnology oversees the Freudianand Derrideantreatmentsof unconscious memory is,
of course, to raise a question about history. What history can place teletechnology at the
scenes of both Freud's writing and Derrida's writing? What is history, if there is some
relationshipbetween unconscious memory and historically specific technical substrates?
Surely,historycannotsimply be linearor simply developmentalif technologies give uncon-
scious memory historically specific technical substratesand if these are the condition of
possibility of various temporal/spatialrelationshipsfor the subject or for historicities of
the subject.
It would seem thatthere is an "aporiaof time," to use Derrideanterminology:In making
reference to teletechnology, a history of technological development is presumed, which,
nonetheless, undermineshistory.History,therefore,can only be impossibly so. This impos-
sibility is, however, productive.It is the condition of possibility of more than one history,
allowing for the anticipationof various historicities. It is in this sense that it is possible
to understand Freud's treatment of unconscious memory as anticipatory or, better,
compensatory-that is, as compensatingfor what could not be thoughtwithoutthe machine
metaphors yet to come in the future.3 It is this future which, I want to suggest, drew
Freud'streatmentof unconscious memory to it-from neurology to writing machine, from
the mystic writing-padto teletechnology.
I also want to suggest that Derrida's rereading of Freud's treatmentof unconscious
memory problematizes the history of technological development so profoundly that it
turns thought to ontology, to the ontological treatmentof Being and technicity.While not
providing an ontology, Derrida's writings do undermine the ontological privileging of
Being; or, as Richard Beardsworthhas suggested, Derrida'swritings draw an "originary
Being" down into an "originarytechnicity" (1996: 145-157). Derrideandeconstruction
therebyreconfiguresthe oppositions groundedby an ontology thatprivileges Being. Exam-
ples include the opposition of natureand technology, the humanand the machine, the real
and the virtual, the living and the inert. As Vicki Kirby suggests, it is as if for Derrida,the
"groundof Being" is "a 'writing' that both circumscribes and exceeds the conventional
divisions of natureand culture"(1997: 61). In this sense, Derrida'sproject is to be under-
stood in terms other than those which restrict it to the linguistic turn;instead, differance,
textuality, and writing are all to be understoodas thought trying to touch the ontic.
I, therefore,want to offer a reading of Derrida's"Freudand the Scene of Writing"that
suggests that Derridadoes not dismiss neurology, biology, or naturebut ratherrefuses to
oppose these to culture. He also refuses to oppose the unconscious to the machine. In
following Freud's steps from neurology to the writing machine, Derridainstead wants to
pose certain questions, such as: What is the machine that it lends itself as a metaphorfor
unconscious memory?What is the inside and outside of the machine? What is the inside

-Richard Dienst (1994) has arguedthat various media technologies have used narrativeto compensatefor their
inability to realize the "driveto transmission":that is, the drive to recordand transmiteverythingeverywhereto
everyone everywhere all the time. As Dienst sees it, this is television's drive which, he argues, functions even
before the actual production of television hardware.Therefore, while television may not exist for Freud, its
machine metaphorsand its drive are in the air, so to speak. Furthermore,I will suggest below that for Freudthe
Oedipal narrativecompensates for what he cannot yet say about telecommunication.
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATESOF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 387

and outside of unconscious memory?In posing these questions, Derridanot only means to
treat nature or biology as inextricably interimplicatedwith culture or the machine; he
means to do so in relationship to a historically specific technology. It is in the machine
metaphorsof teletechnology that Derridadraws Freud'streatmentof unconscious memory
to the future,to registerthe dynamismof matter,out of which natureand cultureare given,
always alreadyinterimplicated.In other words, I want to suggest that in following Freud's
steps from neurology to writing machine, Derridahas a tele-vision.

STEP BY STEP TO A TELE-VISIONAT THE SCENE OF WRITING

For Derrida,the mystic writing-pad,althougha child's toy, is a writing machine and it has
the metaphoricalcapacity that Freud had been seeking in order to properlyrepresentthe
functioning of unconscious memory; that is, the mystic writing-padhas "the potential for
indefinite preservation and an unlimited capacity for reception" (1978: 222). As Freud
describedit, the mystic writing-padis made of a wax slab to which is attached,on one end,
a celluloid sheet thatprotectsthe wax slab. The device works by lifting the sheet at the side
where it is not attached.This completely clears the writing, while leaving traces only on
the deepest layer-the wax slab, which Freudproposed might be comparedto the uncon-
scious "behind"perception. The device, therefore, can turn one surface out to the world,
remaining open to every excitation, because the traces of excitation can be stored else-
where than on the writing surface.
But when the traces are stored or, better,when there is an impression made on the wax
slab beneath, the impression entirely changes the network of traces which makes up what
is below or what Freud referredto as the unconscious. So while the mystic writing-pad
proposes that unconscious memory allows the perceiving surface above it to remain open
to the world, it also suggests that there is no presencepresent beneath,in the unconscious.
The unconscious has no place; it is a space that is temporally dynamic, a spacing of
ungraspabletraces, a temporalizingof the space of writing.
It is Freud's notion of the ungraspabletrace which interests Derrida. Earlier in The
Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Freud had introduced the notion of trace as a
kind of writing of forces in relationshipto the accumulationand the dischargeof energy in
the nervous system. As Freudexplained it, the primaryfunction of the neuronsis to receive
excitation and discharge energy. But Freud also arguedthat there is a secondary function
of the neurons which operates simultaneously with the primaryfunction. This secondary
function, which might be better referredto as the deferral of the primaryfunction, is to
resist the dischargeof energy-to accumulateenergy.This accumulationof energy seemed
to Freud to be necessary so that the nervous system could face what he described as "the
exigencies of life"-that is, to enable the activity of living.
Freud went on to argue that the resistance to discharge occurs at the "contactbarriers"
between neurons,so thatwhen the dischargeof energy is inhibited,the accumulatedenergy
forces open a path at the contact barriers.Along with resistance to discharge, a "pathof
facilitation"is opened or "breached"-"the tracingof a trail opens up a conductingpath,"
as Derrida puts it (200). The contact barriersbetween neurons thereby become variably
capable or incapableof repeatedconductionof energy while some contact barriersoffer no
resistance at all. Unconscious functioning, therefore, is a matterof the different paths of
facilitation in a network of neurons and the variation in the conduciveness to repetition
thereby allowed. But as already indicated, Freud further suggested that neural networks
reconfigurethemselves with each excitation, endlessly changing, and as such, they remain
fully dynamic. In this, "the first representation"or "the first staging of memory (Darstel-
lung)," Freud, Derrida argues, refuses to describe the neural nets as compartmentsfor
388 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

storingmemories;instead,his descriptionproposes thatneuralnets comprise a substratein

motion which allows the unconscious to function as a memory-making-not a memory-
keeping-apparatus (201).
Derridaemphasizes that it is the difference in the breaching,the difference in the spac-
ing and timing of the traces, that makes unconscious memory possible. It is not, then, that
there are paths or connections present in neural nets. As Derrida puts it: "[I]t must be
stipulatedthat there is no purebreachingwithout difference. Trace as memory potential is
not a pure breaching that might be reappropriatedat any time as simple presence; it is
rather the ungraspable and invisible difference between breaches" (201). For Derrida,
Freud's neurology suggests that "psychic life is neither the transparencyof meaning nor
the opacity of force but the difference within the exertion of forces" (201).
It is not surprising,then, that ElizabethWilson arguesthat Derridahas made it possible
to draw a productivelink between Freud'sneurological treatmentof unconscious memory
and various new models of cognition, such as "connectionism"(1998). As she sees it,
Derrida'srereadingof Freud'streatmentof unconsciousmemorynot only enables research-
ers in fields such as artificial intelligence and psychology to rethink cognition as "the
effect of relational differences in the activation between units and across a network (of
neurons)"(162). It also reinforces the efforts of these researchersto think of neural nets
without origin or ends, template or stored rules-that is, as operating "in excess of the
limits of presence, location, and stasis" (201).
Derrida,after all, makes it clear that for Freud,there is no memorizedcontent in neural
networks.While there is repetition,it is not rememberedcontent that is repeated.Instead,
the repetition is of an impression or a trace which is only a repetitionof the difference in
the exertion of forces. Derridaproposes thatrepetitionis an "originary"repetition;it is not
the repetition of an original. The "originary"of originary repetition is always already
crossed throughor put "undererasure."Thus, repetitionis labeled originaryonly to under-
mine the idea of an origin: "It is a non-origin which is originary"(203). In this sense,
Derridabrings Freud'streatmentof repetitioncloser to Gilles Deleuze's treatmentof "pure
repetition"(1994). For Deleuze, pure repetitionis repetitionwithout an originaryessence
or a transcendentalprinciple. It is neither a oneness turning into multiplicity nor is it a
matter of different versions of a concept that itself remains the same. Pure repetition is
meantto graspthe irreducibilityof the contingency of subindividual,singular,finite forces.
As such, pure repetitionreleases the possibility of pure difference.
In his treatmentof repetition,Deleuze, like Derrida,means to revise Freud'streatment
of repetitionand the death drive; both Derridaand Deleuze mean to undermineany inher-
ent connection of repetitionto an entropicdrive to sameness or oneness. Such a connection
was suggested by Freud when he treated repetition and the death drive in terms of his
interpretationof evolution as ontogeny recapitulatingphylogeny; as such, the repetitionof
the death drive was understoodby Freud as a returnto the primitive, the infantile, the
nonorganic,inert, or inanimatematter.For Deleuze, however, repetitionis a creative evo-
lution where natural selection has been displaced by an utterly artificial evolution. In
Deleuze's postbiological biophilosophy,the repetitionof the deathdrive is not entropicbut
an ongoing process of deterritorializingand reterritorializing.As Keith Ansell Pearson
suggests, for Deleuze, "deathis not, therefore,merely the negation of life but a sign of the
vital life that arrivesfrom the future and which seeks to emancipateorganic life from the
fixed and frozen forms which entrapit" (1999: 114).
For Derrida,too, repetitionis creative;it makes life possible. Derrida'sargumentis that
while the resistance of the neuronsto dischargeenergy makes repetitionpossible such that
the exigencies of life might be met, nonetheless, life is not originary(especially if what is
meant by life is the forms of organic life thatDeleuze undermineswith the thoughtof pure
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATESOF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 389

repetition).For Derrida,therefore,life is not alreadypresentin the nervous system. Rather,

life is made possible in the repetition of the protective resistance. But if life is not an
originarypresence, life also is not-life. In this sense and only in this sense, Derridaargues,
life is death, just as unconscious memory is forgetting, the forgetting of forgetting, or
repression. Or to put this anotherway, repetition is not opposed to life; in relationshipto
unconscious memory, life and death are ratherin a differantial relationship.
Therefore,Derrida'saim in following Freud'streatmentof neurology is made clearer;it
is not to dismiss neurology and biology as inert or dead matter.It is ratherto fold neurol-
ogy and biology back into the interimplicationof natureand culture,therebyto suggest an
ontological perspective that allows for a differantial relationship ratherthan an opposi-
tional or dialectical relationshipbetween the humanand the machine, natureand technol-
ogy, the virtual and the real, the living and the inert. Not only does Derrida'srereadingof
Freud's neurology suggest that natureand culture are deferralsof each other; it also sug-
gests that natureand culture are given out of differance or the dynamism of the singular,
subindividual,finite forces of mattering.At least, this is what Derrida'streatmentof dif-
ferance seems to imply: Differance is "becoming itself."
Differancerefersto a networkor a force field of differencesthatis nonlocatable,ungrasp-
able, or without exteriority in any final sense; differancerefers, therefore,to the impossi-
bility of presenceor identity,except whenthese areconstitutedin the disavowalof differance.
As Derrida suggests, differance refers to a pure interval of repetition:

An interval must separatethe present from what it is not for the present to be itself,
but this interval that constitutes it as a present must, by the same token, divide the
presentin and of itself, therebyalso dividing, along with the present,everythingthat
is thought on the basis of the present, that is, in our metaphysical language, every
being and singularly substance or the subject. In constitutingitself in dividing itself
dynamically, this interval is what might be called spacing, the becoming-space of
time or the becoming-time of space (temporization).And it is this constitutionof the
present, as an 'originary' and irreducibly nonsimple (and therefore, stricto sensu
nonoriginary)synthesis of marks, or traces of retentions and protentions ... that I
propose to call archi-writing,archi-trace,or differance .. . (1982: 13).

The above remarksappearsome years after the publicationof "Freudand the Scene of
Writing,"in an essay where Derridaoffers his most extensive treatmentof differance. But
already in "Freud and the Scene of Writing," in its very first pages, Derrida lists his
primaryconcern:There is presence and logocentrismto be put into play with differanceas
"the pre-openingof the ontic-ontological difference"(1978: 198). So often misunderstood
as linguistic undecidability,moral relativism, or political indifference, differancerefers to
none of these, or not simply to any of these. Differance ratheris meant to give an onto-
logical perspective. Derrida'streatmentof differancepoints to the preontologicalforces-
the subindividual,singular,finite forces of mattering;it draws an originaryBeing back to
an originarytechnicity.
It is in this sense that Derrida's treatmentof differance suggests a certain reading of
Foucault's treatment of power as a "moving substrate of force relationships which by
virtue of their inequalityconstantlyengenderstates of power but the latterare always local
and unstable"(1980: 93). Derrida'streatmentof differance draws Foucault's treatmentof
power to its ontological implications. That is, in pointing to the interimplicationof Being
and technicity, as well as to the dynamism of matter, Derrida's treatmentof differance
takes Foucault'streatmentof the force relationsof power beyond theirprogrammedeffects
in the discursive constitution of the human being as subject. Unlike Foucault, Derrida
390 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

follows Freudto his treatmentof the psychic apparatusof unconscious memory as itself a
writing machine with implicationsthatgo beyond the discursive constitutionof the human
being as subject to the interimplicationof unconscious memory and the machine.

TREATINGTHE PSYCHICAPPARATUSAS WRITINGMACHINE

Although in Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud treated neural nets as a matter of
differantialtraces, he had not yet considered unconscious memory as an apparatus,itself,
operatingas a networkof differencesor functioningas a writingmachine.Before he would
do so, Freudturnedfrom neurology to the question of unconscious memory,asking how it
functions or reaches to and through conscious perception to the world. He treated this
question as about the (im)possibility of translationwhich he takes up in relationship to
dream texts and their interpretation.Derridafollows Freud to his treatmentof the dream
text as a writing of hieroglyphics and to the question Freud thereby raises: If the text of
unconscious memory is written in hieroglyphics, what kind of translation is possible?
What kind of communicationis there between world and unconscious memory, between
unconscious memory and world?
According to Derrida,the answer given by Freudis that the hieroglyphics of the dream
text are not a translationof the world; nor are they translatablein the usual or narrow
senses of the term. Dreams do not merely refer to some reality or priormateriality;dreams
have a materialityof their own, "a scenic quality,"which cannot be translated.The hiero-
glyphics of the dreamtext are not meantto be meaningfuland, in this sense, the dreamtext
does not refer to a truthin unconscious memory-ready for translationto consciousness.
As Derrida sees it, the untranslatablehieroglyphics of the dream text suggest that for
Freud,the dreamis an "originary"productionwhich gives its own grammar.This grammar
is irreducible to any other code, foreclosing any thought of translationas a process of
re-presentation.The grammarof the dream text is singular-not because it refers to the
individual subject but because it refers to subindividual,finite forces of repressionwhich
are singular. That is to say, the forces of repression, which make the translationof the
dream text impossible, have their own singularvicissitudes. The productionof the dream
text, therefore, is a creative process, not a returnto a prior event or object, and it is only
through this creative scenic production, this unconscious productionof a "screen mem-
ory,"that the event of the dreamcan be (re)presentedand interpreted.
In treatingthe case of the Wolf Man, Freudsuggested that the screen memory seems to
allow for the experience of an event long after the event-in the Wolf Man's case, the
event being what Freudreferredto as the primal scene-the Wolf Man's parentsengaged
in coitus a tergo([1918] 1963: 187-316). But Freudalso suggested thatthe Wolf Man most
likely did not experience the event at an earliermoment, at least not consciously; the event
might even have been the stuff of an infantile fantasy carrying the deferred effects of
trauma. So while the screen memory allows for the stipulation of a primal scene and,
therefore,its interpretation,it is only the deferredeffects of traumathat are interpreted-
not a rememberedevent.
For Freud, after all, traumapoints to the incapacity to retrieve the past; it refers to a
forgetting without memory so that traumaticeffects are a symptomology substitutingfor
the event thatnever was experiencedas such. Whateverthe event was, one effect is thatthe
ego's defense was breachedor shatteredsuch that a hyperdefensivenessresults, an impas-
sivity even. Ruth Ley's refers to the ego's traumatizedor "fascinatedidentification"with
a fantasized event or object, such that the ego is inextricably immersed in the fantasy
object or event (1996). As such, the ego is engulfed in unconscious memory;unconscious
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATES OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 391

memory is more properly referred to as "incorporatedmemory," "body memory," or

"cellular memory."As such, unconscious memory is the unstable body of the ego, a sur-
facing of a difficulty in rememberingor in being certain aboutthe truthof memory.There
is, therefore,a deep link between the unstablebody ego and the dreamtext. Both the body
ego and the dream text are defensively meaningful, a matterof fantasy and unconscious
desire.
For Derrida, then, the connection Freud draws between the deferredeffects of trauma
and the dreamtext is not accidental in the working of unconscious memory.In relation to
unconscious memory, the text is always produced through a "supplementarydelay," a
secondary revision of an event that has never been lived in the present. Having followed
Freud's treatment of the dream text, Derrida concludes that there is no text present in
unconscious memory, that the unconscious is not a presence. He puts it this way:

There is then no unconscious truth to be rediscovered by virtue of having been

writtenelsewhere .... There is no presenttext in general, and thereis not even a past
present text, a text which is past as having been present. The text is not conceivable
in an originary or modified form of presence. The unconscious text is already a
weave of pure traces, differences in which meaning and force are united-a text
nowhere present, consisting of archives which are always alreadytranscriptions...
whose signified presence is always reconstitutedby deferral, nachtraglich, belat-
edly, supplementarily(1978: 211).

It is in similar terms that Freudwill treatthe psychic apparatusof unconscious memory

when finally he treats the psychic apparatusin the metaphorof a writing machine or the
mystic writing-pad.No possibility of translationwill be posited between the systems of the
psychic apparatus-from preconsciousness to the unconscious, from the unconscious to
conscious perception.There will only be, as Derridaputs it, "originalprints,""archives,"
"always already transcriptions."Unconscious memory not only is a movement of traces
and erasuresbut each of the systems of the psychic apparatusis also only this. Once Freud
treats the psychic apparatusin the metaphorof a writing machine, the psyche becomes
what Derrida describes as "a depth without bottom, an infinite allusion, and a perfectly
superficial exteriority: a stratification of surfaces, each of whose relationship to itself,
each of whose interior,is but the implication of anothersimilarly exposed surface" (224).
It is Freud's treatmentof the psychic apparatusas an infinite depth of meaning without
foundationwhich, Derridaproposes, is inextricablylinked to his own treatmentof the text.
Derridamay have alreadywritten,"[T]hereis nothing outside the text (thereis no outside-
text)" (1976: 158)-the infamous sentence appearing in the Grammatology,first pub-
lished in French, the same year as "Freudand the Scene of Writing"was published in
French. Although the statement-"there is nothing outside the text"-has been so often
(mis)understoodto mean thatthere is no reality or even any materialitythat much matters,
or thatthere is no meaning but what is given in writtentexts, the statementinstead must be
understoodas "thereis no present text"-"a text nowhere present"in the psychic appara-
tus of unconscious memory.The question, therefore,is not whetherthe psyche is a kind of
text but, as Derrida puts it, "what is a text, and what must the psyche be if it can be
representedby a text? For if there is neither machine nor text without psychical origin,
there is no domain of the psychic without text"-without the machine (199).
What Derrida means to suggest is that the psyche is irreducibleto a text or it is only
reducible to a text in the sense that the text is a defensive production,a secondaryrevision,
through which unconscious memory tries to reach consciousness but does not fully suc-
ceed. That is, unconscious memory makes its way into the dream text, filtered througha
392 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

secondary revision that only makes the dream text seem logical, meaningful, intelligent.
While secondaryrevision only partially succeeds, it does make it possible to recognize in
the dream text something that seems like the product of conscious processes, involving
what Freud describes as "considerationsof representability"(1965: 374-385).
So, too, the text, when narrowly conceived as a written text or a literary text, is pro-
duced in a disavowal of the productivity of unconscious memory; it is, for Derrida, a
disavowal of differance.The productionof a literarytext is the productionof an identity,
a "finishedcorpus of writing."It is "thebecoming literary"of differantialtraces (tracesof
the timing and spacing of differance), which always implies the disavowal of differance.
The deconstructionof the text as "finishedcorpus of writing"means to open up the text or
returnit to "a differentialnetwork,a fabricof traces,referringendlessly to somethingother
than itself, to other differentialtraces" (1991: 257).
The productionof a text and the possibility of its deconstruction,therefore,cannot be
disconnected from the psychic apparatusof unconscious memory where there is only pro-
duction without an exteriority,or without an ur-text, but where there also is the disavowal
of differance. In its effects, disavowal producesa text, giving an exteriorityto production;
disavowal makes the exteriority or the outside into a transcendentalfigure of the origins
and ends of thoughtso that outsideness loses its heterogeneity,its differance, its virtuality,
its futurity.Derridagives a list of figures thathave operatedin Westernthoughtto produce
a text and give origins and ends to thought: "eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence,
existence, substance,subject)aletheia, transcendentality,consciousness, God, man, and so
forth" (1978a: 279-280). The deconstructionof the text and of the origins and ends of
thoughtreturnsthe text to differance, to productionwithout beginning or end, that is, to a
writing machine which is an apparatus of originary repetition.
In insisting that the psychic apparatusis a matterof originaryrepetition,Derridaturns
Freud's mystic writing-padinto a perpetual-motionmachine. It is no surprise, then, that
after the publication of "Freudand the Scene of Writing,"when Derridareturns,in "Sig-
natureEvent Context,"to treatwriting and communicationas partof a criticism of speech
act theory, Freud's mystic writing-padhas become a distributednetwork of transmissions
without beginning or end, which functions only to permit the pure repetition of uncon-
scious memory.Against the privilege which speech act theory grantsthe speaking subject
as the origin and end of communication,Derridainsteadrefers communicationto a writing
machine, for which the software of the program and the hardwareof the apparatusare
indistinguishableso that the distinction of form and content is inoperativeand there is no
central executor or stored rules. It is here, in elaboratinga criticism of speech act theory,
that Derrida describes the writing machine of unconscious memory as "telecommunica-
tion," when every communicationis "being sent" without a sender, when the machine is
internal to every communication-"a machine that is in turn productive,"and "which a
subject's future disappearancein principle will not prevent from functioning and from
yielding and yielding itself to reading and rewriting" (1972: 8). It would seem that a
machine other than Freud's mystic writing-padis offering itself as metaphorfor the psy-
chic apparatusof unconscious memory.It would seem that Derridais having a tele-vision.
It is with this vision, just taking hold of him, thatDerridaends his readingof "Freudand
the Scene of Writing."He notices thatFreudfinally has become disappointedin the mystic
writing-pad.The mystic writing-padhas limits. It cannot go on its own; once the writing
has been left on the wax slab beneath the surface layer, the mystic writing-padcannot
"reproduceit (writing) from within." For Freud, the mystic writing-pad fails to mimic
unconscious memory perfectly. Someone's hands-writing hands-are necessary in order
to make the mystic writing-padwork.
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATESOF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 393

Derrida also is disappointed. He is disappointed in Freud. He notices that when the

limits of the mystic writing-padbecame apparentto Freud, he instead would privilege the
"organ"-that is, the unconscious that can do what it does on its own or can do it "natu-
rally."The mystic writing-padwhich Freuddeployed to supplementunconscious memory
and make its capacity for limitless receptivity seem a "natural"matter,finally would itself
be devalued for its limitations, for being "unnatural."Freudseems to Derridato be unwill-
ing to conclude that: "The machine-and consequently,representation-is death and fin-
itude within the psyche" (1978: 228).
Having dismissed the mystic writing-pad from further consideration, Freud also will
fail to notice that besides the child's toy writing-machine, there already are machines
"in the world" which more closely resemble memory-"machines for storing archives."
Freud will not address the question his treatmentof the psychic apparatusof unconscious
memory raised; he will fail to ask about the analogy between the psychic apparatusof
unconscious memory and the machine in the context of what Derrida describes as the
"historico-technicalproduction"of technology.
In addressing this question, which Freud did not, Derrida proposes that the machine
does not "surprise"unconscious memory from the outside. The machine is not only met-
aphor,outside unconscious memory.Unconscious memory is inextricablefrom its techni-
cal substratesgiven with historicallyspecific technologies. Derridatherebyposits a psychic
apparatusof unconscious memory,beyond the individual'spsychic organization,that calls
forth its own method of study-a discipline otherthanpsychoanalysis or the "sociology of
literature"-a discipline that can treat the "sociality of writing as drama" (227). This
discipline, Derridaproposes, must rethinktechne and technology, where "technology may
not be derived from an assumed opposition between the psychical and the nonpsychical,
life and death" (228).
One aim of this discipline would be to deconstructthe opposition of the machine and
the psychic apparatusof unconscious memory. There is to be no dismissal of nature or
biology, no opposition between nature and culture, biology and technology, the uncon-
scious and the machine. The machine is to be understoodas unconscious memorydeferred,
just as culture and technology are naturedeferred.As Derridaputs it: "[A]11the others of
physis-tekhne, nomos, thesis, society, freedom, history, mind, etc. [are to be thought of]
as physis different and deferred,or as physis differing and deferring.Physis in differance"
(1982: 17).
The thought of differance bears ontological implications for the relationshipof Being
and technicity. The ontology of Being by which natureand culture are opposed is under-
mined; culture and natureinstead are drawnback to the play of the differences of preon-
tological forces-the singular, subindividual, finite, forces of mattering, which subtend
and yet are immanent to the differantial relation of nature and technology. Or to put it
otherwise, the ontological implications given with the thought of differance are in the
future, to which the differantial relationshipof natureand technology opens up.
But in "Freudand the Scene of Writing,"Derridaonly points to this future of ontolog-
ical thought. He hesitates and turnsback from ontology, or turnsontology towardwhat he
has referredto as the "historico-technicalproduction"of technology.Derridatherebycomes
to the end of his reading of "Freudand the Scene of Writing"only having brought the
historico-technicalproductionof technology as close as possible to ontology, as if to cross
one throughthe other. Derridawill take no furthersteps toward ontologizing teletechnol-
ogy. Perhaps what stops Derrida is that he is unable to embrace the technology that has
given deconstructionits machine metaphors.If Freud had the disappointingtoy writing-
machine, Derrida has the much-malignedtelevision, the exemplary machine of teletech-
394 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

nology. Derridacannotgo all the way andfully articulatean ontologicalperspectivebefitting

the technology that has been drawing deconstructionto it all along.
Not that Derridawill never again treat teletechnology nor ever again returnto Freud's
relationship to teletechnology. Indeed, even before he does so in Archive Fever, in The
Post Card Derrida revisits Freud's own worries about the future of psychoanalysis-
Freud'sworries about his authorityover psychoanalysis in the future.And teletechnology
serves Derrida as the very form of rethinking the question of Freud's authority;that is,
Derrida places the subject of The Post Card "between the posts and the psychoanalytic
movement, the pleasureprincipleand the history of telecommunications,the post card and
the purloined letter .. ." (1987, quote on the back of The Post Card).
Teletechnology also makes an appearancein Specters of Marx where Derridatreatsthe
authorityof that discourse, otherthan Freud's,which has been both a resource and a target
of deconstructionand which has been implicated as well in the change of temporality/
spatiality in the globalization of teletechnology and the transnationalizationof capital.
Referringto Marxism, Derridasuggests:

Techno-science or tele-technology ... obliges us more than ever to think the virtu-
alization of space and time, the possibility of virtual events whose movement and
speed prohibit us more than ever (more and otherwise than ever, for this is not
absolutely and thoroughlynew) from opposing presence to its representation,"real
time"to "deferredtime,"effectivity to its simulacrum,the living to the non-living, in
short, the living to the living-dead of its ghosts. It requires, then, what we call ...
hauntology.We will take this category to be irreducible,and first of all to everything
it makes possible: ontology, theology, positive or negative ontotheology (1994: 51).

It would seem that teletechnology obliges us more than ever to think what Derridahas
been thinking,when he has been thinkingbeyond Freudand Marx,raising questions about
teletechnology and its challenge to the authorityof both Marxist and Freudiandiscourses.
For Derrida, these are questions of preontology or hauntology that put ontology close to
what he describes as the shared "history of psyche, text, and technology." What is this
sharedhistory that Derridatakes up instead of ontology, a history about which he, none-
theless, equivocates, suggesting that what the history producesis neither "absolutely"nor
"thoroughlynew"? What can be made of this pull toward and away from history, toward
and away from ontology-this "aporiaof time" which is producedwhen the thoughtof the
historico-technicalproductionof technology crosses throughontology?
What I think can be proposed is that the sharedhistory of text, psyche, and technology
historicizes ontology, making an ontology of Being impossible or impossibly so. To put
this anotherway, the historico-technicalproductionof technology gives differenttechnical
substratesto unconscious memory and therebyproducesdifferenthistoricities or different
relationsof time and space. These groundBeing differently.All this displaces the Being of
an ontology of presence.The historico-technicalproductionof technology pulls "originary
Being" down into "originarytechnicity"-into finitude and its different historicities. As
such, ontology is opened to the future, to the creative evolutionary process of technona-
ture, technoculture,and technoscience. Teletechnology not only offers a differenthistoric-
ity specific to it but it registers and oversees the drawing of ontology into the future.
Derridaproposes thatin the age of teletechnology,we must think "anotherhistoricity-not
a new history or still less a 'new historicism,' but anotheropening of event-ness as histo-
ricity ... as promiseand not as onto-theologicalor teleo-eschatologicalprogramor design"
(1994: 74-75).
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATESOF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 395

FROM FREUD TO DERRIDAAND BEYOND

Provoking a move from treating the psychic apparatusof unconscious memory in the
metaphorof the mystic writing-padto treatingit in the metaphorsof teletechnology, Der-
rida's rereading of Freud makes it possible to think of the unconscious as a matter of
thought's movement to unthought, for which the individual subject's identity is neither
origin nor end. This does not mean that the subject's unconscious memory is made irrel-
evant. Rather,it means that the confinement of unconscious memory to a certain narrative
fiction of subject identity is undermined.If the disavowal of differance still is possible, it
now may operate through something other than the narrativefiction of subject identity.
The metaphorswith which Freud gave the unconscious, and gave it over to the individual
subject, are no longer all that is necessary to an understandingof the psychic apparatusof
unconscious memory.
What then of Freud's insistence on Oedipus as the narrative logic of unconscious
memory? What of the Oedipal narrativizationof the subject's identity, its sexuality and
unconscious fantasy? After all, the Oedipal narrativenot only is central to the Freudian
treatment of unconscious memory; it also is central to Jacques Lacan's rereading of
Freud which has been so central to recent cultural criticism. What of Derrida's decon-
struction of Freud's treatmentof unconscious memory in relationshipto Lacan's reread-
ing of Freud?
Derridamakes no mention of Lacan in "Freudand The Scene of Writing";but there is
little doubt that Lacan's rereadingof Freud is alreadyat play in the essay-enabling Der-
rida's deconstructionand at the same time being its target. Is it not Lacan's rereadingof
Freud that Derrida wishes to go beyond as he follows after Freud?After all, Lacan pro-
posed that the unconscious is structuredlike a language and shifted the focus of psycho-
analysis to the speech of the subject-seemingly away from the writing machine or the
technical substratesof unconscious memory.Yet, in turningpsychoanalysis to the analysis
of the subject's speech and to the treatmentof its disturbances,Lacan was not merely
proposing to restoreto the speaking subject a unified identity or a self-same presence. For
Lacan, these only are possible as a fantasy disavowing the Otherand denying unconscious
memory altogether.In relationshipto unconscious memory, the subject, Lacan proposes,
speaks but with "the voice of no one" (1988: 170). Lacanian psychoanalysis, therefore,
shows that unconscious memory is a resource both for producing and deconstructingthe
narrativeof the individual subject's unified identity.
Derrida, indeed, recognizes a connection between his own rereading of Freud and
Lacan's rereading;Derrida finds the connecting point at the repetition of the death drive
or what Freud also refers to as "the drive for mastery."Commenting on Michel Fou-
cault's History of Sexuality where finally Foucault rejects Freud and psychoanalysis gen-
erally, Derrida differs with Foucault, arguing that the "Frenchheritage of Freud would
not only not let itself be objectified by the Foucauldianproblematizationbut would ac-
tually contribute to it in the most determinateand efficient way . . . beginning with ev-
erythingin Lacan thattakes its point of departurein the repetitioncompulsion . .." (1994a:
265-266).
Derridaproposes that Lacan makes clearer that Freud's treatmentof the death drive as
a repetitionof what is painful in orderto master it severely problematizeshuman agency,
thereby underminingmastery "with the greatest radicality."For Derrida, when the death
drive goes into overdrive, the authorityof the narrativeof mastery,the Oedipal narrative,
is severely undermined.Derridacloses his comments on Foucault suggesting that "[i]t is
very difficult to know if this drive for power is still dependentupon the pleasureprinciple,
indeed, upon sexuality as such, upon the austere monarchy of sex that Foucault speaks
396 SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY

of.. ." (266).4 Has not the historyof sexuality been opened up to the sharedhistory of text,
psyche, and technology, opened to the historico-technical production of technology, so
that repetitionbreaksits connection to an Oedipalized sexuality or an Oedipal narrativity?
Has not the historico-technicalproductionof technology opened Freud'streatmentof rep-
etition to the thought of "pure repetition" or "originaryrepetition,"thereby taking the
psychic apparatusof unconscious memory even beyond Lacan'sand Foucault'srereadings
of Freud?
All this is to say that in "Freudand the Scene of Writing,"Derridaopens philosophy to
the deconstruction of the Oedipal narrative by subjecting it to the peculiar historico-
technical productionof technology and the technical substratesof unconscious memory.
He begins what finally would be elaboratedas the deconstructionof the grandnarrativeof
the subject-centered,nation-centricWesterndiscourses of Man. But he also begins what
has been less elaborated:the realizationof an ontological perspectivethatrefuses to oppose
the humanand the machine, natureand technology, the living and the inert, so to allow for
the evolutionarytransformationsof technoscience, technonature,and technoculture.

AND WHATOF SOCIOLOGYBEYOND THE HUMAN?

Against those who imagine that the influence of poststructuralismon social theory now
can be relegatedto the past, my rereadingof Derrida'swritings is meantto suggest thatthe
ontological implications of poststructuralismmay well inform the future of social theory,
especially as it grapples with those characteristicsof the age of teletechnology that chal-
lenge the definition of the social or the social-structurallong presumedin modern social
theory. Of those characteristicsof the age of teletechnology, I have focused on the onto-
logically demandingchange in our understandingof natureand technology, the humanand
the machine, the virtual and the real, the living and the inert, and therefore,I have linked
Derrida'streatmentof the technical substratesof unconscious memory as well as the inter-
implication of Being and technicity to the increasedpossibility of the subject's reflexivity
about nonhumanagencies. While social theorists have alreadynoted the increased possi-
bility of the subject'sreflexivity about social structure-about the traditionsand the norms
of various communities-I am proposingthatpoststructuralismregistersan increasedpos-
sibility for reflexivity aboutnonhumanagencies in relationshipto knowledgeobjects includ-
ing the singular,subindividual,finite forces of mattering.
But, to focus on the ontological implicationsof poststructuralismis to suggest a reading
of it thatis nearly opposite to the readingthathas been circulatedamong social theorists-
thatpoststructuralismis a radicalsocial constructionismwhere, in the name of deconstruct-
ing the opposition of nature and culture, nature instead has been reduced to culture. In
terms of a radical constructionism,the inert, the nonorganic,and the biological are mean-
ingful only when understoodas little more than a constructionof culture or humanimag-
ination. (Although it would be too simple to say so, it might be said that JudithButler's
treatmentof humanbodies is often this kind of radicalsocial constructionism.)In a radical
social constructionism,the dynamism of matteris not recognized but as I have proposed,
poststructuralismis thought reaching to the dynamism of matter,to the nonhumanagen-
cies of the singular, subindividual,finite forces of mattering.

4Derridais referringhere to Foucault's often quoted remark:

. . . we need to consider the possibility that one day, perhaps, in a different economy of bodies and
pleasures, people will no longer quite understandhow the ruses of sexuality and the power that sustains
its organization,were able to subject us to that austere monarchyof sex, so that we became dedicatedto
the endless task of forcing its secret, of exacting the truest of confessions from a shadow (1980: 159).
THE TECHNICALSUBSTRATES OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 397

But I have also emphasized that the dynamism of matteris realized through a techno-
scientific production,that is, the dynamism of matteris given as a knowledge object, its
realizationdependenton mathematicaltechnology. Here, too, poststructuralismis relevant
because it points to a shift in ontological perspective that befits the volatile and unfolding
beingness of knowledge objects. As such, poststructuralismregisters the dynamism of
matter while guarding against any biological determinismor a simplistic biological evo-
lutionaryperspective. Poststructuralismrathersuggests that evolution has become postbi-
ological or utterly artificial if ever it was not so. In this sense, the transnationalizationof
capital and the globalization of teletechnology only makes it more apparentthat humanity
has been participatingin the constructionof biotechnologies and therebyhas been partici-
pating in a postbiological evolution where the integrity of the organismis underminedby
the technical substratesof unconscious memory, more fully recognized. The human sub-
ject is drawn back into the interimplicationof Being and technicity while the social is
drawn to a posthumanismin the smoothing out of the configurationof social spaces long
presumedby modern social theory.
Again, I do not mean to suggest a celebratorycosmopolitanismin an idealization of the
beyond-the-nationstate-ism. Rather,I mean to point to thoughtin its grasp of the interim-
plication of Being and technicity out of which bodies (and not only human bodies) are
constituted on one plane or out of the dynamism of matter.It is the socialities of these
bodies that demanda new sociology thatcan jump from and to differentscales of sociality
from the microphysical to the macrocultural.This also demands both a new politics that
attendsto these bodies as they adjustto the speeds of territorializationand reterritorializa-
tion of social spaces, and a new ethics to attendto the becoming of new life forms and the
unbecomingof others.All this, I have suggested, requiresrecognizing the breakof thought
from human consciousness, that is, recognizing the technical substratesof unconscious
memory.This is the project begun by Derrida'srereadingof Freud.But I want to give the
last words about the unconscious not to Derridabut to Deleuze: "Thereis ... a difference
in nature:the unconscious no longer deals with persons and objects, but with trajectories
and becomings. It is no longer an unconscious of commemorationbut one of mobilization,
an unconscious whose objects take flight rather than remaining buried in the ground"
(1997: 63).

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