The set o f dominant memories which tyranises perception in a Don Quixote like fashion is closely linked to another phenomenon which Bergson describes, mental inelasticity. Mental inelasticity is a moulding o f the world on concepts, as is the dominant memory, but the difference in this case is that the individual does not attempt to reinterpret the world according to their wishes and expectations, but instead acts the same regardless o f any prevailing circumstances. Such a state, as Monro points out, is somewhere between superiority and absurdity. (AoL, p. 55) Mental inelasticity is an absolute fixity - an example being the individual who says the same thing no matter what the circumstance: in short, a mechanical repeating machine. (Laughter, p. 74) Instead o f the attention which was previously outlined there is an habitual response which means that perception is not reflected on - there is no zone o f indétermination. (MM, p. 45) This results in the repetition o f the actual movement (Delhomme, p. 28) and the elimination o f memory. (Delhomme, p. 33) It is a mistake, according to Bergson to deal with memory purely in terms o f learnt habits and the ability to repeat. (MM, p. 83) Memory should instead be linked to creation. (ADM, p. 469) This is because o f the clear distinction drawn, by Bergson, between habit memory and pure memory, in fact Bergson claims that habit memory is only called 'memory' because we remember having acquired it. (MM, p. 84) Habit is foreign to our personal selves, it ceases to have the mark o f history, a specific place in time where it was acquired, unlike pure memory which records everything in its individual place. (MM, p. 83) Instead habit reduces us to the bodily (Worms, p. 101), a "... revenge offensive o f matter ..." (Jankélèvitch, p. 170) or what Gunter refers to as the "materiality o f the
conscious mind." (Gunter, p. 32) It is a move towards the equivalence o f moments, as opposed to the unique, (MM, p. 247) relying on repetition and quasi-identity, (Worms, p. 279) it ceaselessly repeats the past, each moment being causally deducible from the previous. (ADM, p. 478 & Mourelos, p. 108) Habit memory is a mechanism which has been acquired by the accumulation o f the past, (ADM, p. 476) rather than the independent souvenirs o f pure memory which are each unique and not acquired by habit. (Worms, p. 99) Thus habit acts the past rather than calling up an image, (MM, p. 151) it is the prolongation o f useful effects. (MM, p. 88) Because habit memory merely acts the past it is ultimately closed, (Cariou, p. 105) its acquired movement being invariant (Worms, p. 102), any apparent variation o f a habit being a change caused by forces external to habit memory: (Worms, p. 104) the external forces in this case being pure memory coming in to disrupt the habitual response, to subvert linear causality. (Delhomme, p. 167) The attention given by the habit response is thus automated, functioning without pure memory, which, as we have commented, has the power to adapt to vital and social circumstances. (Worms, p. 165) It is exactly this machine-like inflexibility which is occurring in the case o f humorous repetition. In its denial o f creativity the mechanical fixed order interrupts life, being the opposite movement to creation, (Delhomme, p. 179) an indefinite repetition. (Delhomme, p. 125) So discouraging habit through laughter
encourages the creativity o f life - what in Matter and Memory was seen as the task o f inserting liberty into the material world.37 (ADM, p. 472)
37 Although Bergson does treat matter as deterministic, (Robinet, p.66) a neutralised consciousness without memory (Jank£tevitch, p. 21, (Keith Ansell-Pearson, "Bergson and Creative Evolution/lnvolution: Exposing the Transcendental Illusion of
The commonness o f habit shows the rarity of free will, (Mullarkey, p. 26) and this fall into habitual patterns can be seen, ultimately, as the denial o f liberty and moral responisbility (Jankelevitch, p. 159) and as such an ethical demand, rather than merely being a lack o f authenticity in denying the basic conditions o f life, (Mullarkey, p. 106) i.e. liberty and creativity i.e. difference as opposed to spatial repetition.
It is this notion o f the machine like habit, as opposed to free will, which renders the comic individual's apparently automatic gestures amusing - they are inattentive as regards the world. This automatic humorous repetition gives the impression that something has somehow been wedged into an individual's psyche which every so often is triggered, for example a catch phrase, which somehow seems to inevitably end up
Organistnic Life", B e rg so n and Philosophy ed. John Mullarkey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) p. 158 (Henceforth KAP), Delhomme, p. 40, p. 6, Cariou, p. 100, (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, In Praise o f Philosophy, trans. John Wild & James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963) p. 10 (Henceforth In Praise), Robinet, p. 64) he also acknowledges that this is an assumption made because the distance between the rhythm o f matter and that of ourselves is so great. (MM, p. 248 & Capek2, p. 236) It is this temporal difference (Worms, p. 279) which has diluted the 'memory' o f matter to the extent where it is almost quantitative, (W orms , p. 278) which is referred to when Whitehead comments tht the universe is material in proportion to the restriction o f its memory.
Additionally Capek makes much o f the relationship between physical micro indetermination and Bergson's thought. (Capek, p. xii, p. 283) Additionally Milic Capek, "Bergson's Theory o f Matter and Modem Physics," Bergson and the Evolution o f Physics, ed. Pete Gunter (Knoxville: University o f Tennesse Press, 1969) p. 297, p. 299, p. 303, p. 320, p. 322, p. 327. (Henceforth Capek 2)
being said by the individual, what ever the situation. The best example o f such a repeating machine is the aptly named Trigger from the television series Only Fools and Horses, who constantly calls Rodney Trotter by the name Dave, insisting it is his name no matter what is said. The individual thus acts as a 'repeating machine', since they are in some sense out o f touch with 'life', finding it impossible to adjust to the correct plane o f action. This plausible description, is not without its critics, for example Swabey.
Swabey claims that jokes based on repetition, presumably including Trigger's Dave, do not involve genuine laughter, as they are only laughed at through habit. (Swabey, p. 147) The laughter which a repeated action causes for Swabey is conditioned (in the behaviourist sense), though it seems unclear what reinforcement would be present in this case. Presumably because something is amusing in the first instance, when the thing which is amusing is repeated, the first amusement is remembered and 'applied' to the second instance. This kind o f account appears to fly in the face o f the irritation caused by telling an initially amusing joke repeatedly. The constant telling o f a joke does not reinforce the initial humour, but acts instead to negate its humour. The negation o f that which is humorous through repetition would seem to point to a different kind of explanation: the one, in fact, which Bergson gives. It is the repetition
itself which is the source o f the humour, the habit o f the individual provoking laughter, rather than any habituation on the part o f the audience.
It would thus seem that the concepts o f mental inelasticity and the fixed response can explain a certain set o f examples very well, in terms o f the habit as a fixed repetition o f a word or gesture (Trigger), an acting on a single plane, or the fixed viewpoint based on a dominant memory which is applied without correct discrimination, failing to move to the correct plane, on the one hand, and on the other mental inelasticity (Don Quixote's adventure with the wind mills.) The next section will link the notion o f inflexibility and lack o f attention on the small scale, which we have so far been discussing, to a positive account o f social flexibility. The link to a positive account o f large scale social flexibility will be made via a consideration o f conversational rigidity and lack o f attentive adaptation.