In Bergsonism, Deleuze addresses a key question: “Where are recollections preserved”
(54)? The question involves a “false problem” (54) because it presupposes that recollections are preserved in the brain. He points out that “[r]ecollection therefore is
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preserved in itself”(54). How is such possible? Deleuze explains Bergson’s revolutionary theory of memory, which proposes that the past, instead of ceasing to be, “should not be said that it ‘was’ since it is the in-itself of being, and the form under which being is preserved in itself” (55). If the past “IS,” then, on the contrary, the present “was” because it passes ceaselessly. Deleuze demonstrates that Bergson’s ingenuity in the theory of memory lies in his revealing an organically entwined relationship of present and past:
The past and the present do not denote two successive moments, but two elements which coexist: One is the present, which does not cease to be, and the other is the past, which does not cease to be but through which all presents pass.
It is in this sense that there is a pure past, a kind of ‘past in general.’ (59) Bergson treats “the past in general” (59) as “ontological memory” (56), storing
recollections that escape us. When we search for certain recollections, Bergson proposes in Matter and Memory, we do not try to retrieve them from empirical, psychological memory but, instead, jump into the past in general:
While searching for a recollection, we become conscious of an act sui generis by which we detach ourselves from the present in order to replace ourselves, first in the past in general, then in a certain region of the past — a work of adjustment, something like the focusing of a camera. But our recollection still remains virtual; we simply prepare ourselves to receive it by adopting the appropriate attitude. Little by little it comes into view like a condensing cloud;
from the virtual state it passes into the actual. (54)
Empirical, psychological memory denotes actual memory, while “the past in general”
denotes virtual memory. It is only through virtual memory that actual memory is
actualized. Here, we encounter a journey from the present to the past and then back to the present, paralleling the leap from the actual to the virtual and back to the actual. The
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ontological priority of virtual memory means that we perceive recollections, not in ourselves, but, rather, in the virtual “past in general” (Matter and Memory 170). Here the
“past in general” refers, not to the particular past of a particular present, but to an ontological memory that encompasses all the virtual past memory.
Deleuze points out that the past (memory) is “virtual, inactive” (Bergsonism 55) and
“ontological” (56), while the present is actual and “pure becoming, always outside itself”
(55). He discusses the coexistence of the present and the past via the metaphor of a memory cone: “It is all our past, which coexists with each present. The famous metaphor of the cone represents this complete state of coexistence” (Bergsonism 59). It is easy to consider that each level of the memory cone contains particular elements of the past;
however, Deleuze/Bergson rectifies the concept by proposing, “Each of these sections or each of these levels includes not particular elements of the past, but always the totality of the past. It includes this totality at a more or less expanded or contracted level”
(Bergsonism 60). Each level repeats all the past but with differences. Each repetition renews the whole plane instead of the specific elements on a single plane. Therefore,
“The whole of our past is played, restarts, repeats itself, at the same time, on all the levels that it sketches out” (Bergsonism 61).
For Deleuze/Bergson, pure past, memory, is not subjective but is
“virtual,”extra-psychological. Nevertheless, a crucial question is raised from the
foundation: “How can pure recollection take on a psychological existence?” (Bergsonism
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62). If “our recollection still remains virtual” (Matter and Memory 170), how then can we actualize it? Deleuze posits an important movement, translation, which helps to actualize the virtual past. The virtual realm of the past serves as the background for the
actualization of different experiences. According to Deleuze/ Bergson, the process of translating the virtual past into present, actual, psychological memory is considered a
“contraction.” In Bergsonism, Deleuze describes the two contractions—the intensive, ontological contraction and the translative, psychological contraction—and shows how translation turns the virtually coexisting levels of the pure past into specific recollections.
We should be careful in distinguishing the two types of contraction. Ontological contraction refers to the extra-psychological coexistence of the past, which psychological contraction helps to actualize. The process of translative, psychological translation thus actualizes the virtual past and enables the past to progress toward the present instead of the present moving toward the past. I explain this difference later.
The process of contracting memory is crystalized by Bergson as the “memory cone.”
The image of the inverted cone occurs twice in the third chapter of Matter and Memory (196, 211):
If I represent by a cone SAB the totality of the recollections accumulated in my memory, the base AB, situated in the past, remains motionless, while the summit S, which indicates at all times my present, moves forward unceasingly, and unceasingly also touches the moving plane P of my actual representation of the universe. At S the image of the body is concentrated; and, since it belongs to the plane P, this image does but receive and restore actions emanating from all the images of which the plane is composed. (196)
The present perception is the contracted point of the body while the different regions with horizontal lines trisecting the cone represent multiple levels of past. The present image of
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the body enters one of the planes of the past and participates in the actual expression of the cosmos. The oscillation between the actual and the virtual, between the present and the past, bring to us a beautiful choreography of time/memory.