The Order of Time As A Non Chronological Time: Sheets of Past

"The Bergsonian virtual past is a single dimension in which all past events coexist. The virtual past is produced at every present moment as a "memory of the present", a virtual double of each actual present. Bergson visualizes the the virtual past as a cone, with its point representing the past's coincidence with the present, and its widening volume representing the ever-growing expanse of coexisiting past events. In that our past is preserved within itself and surges forward into the present, we can say that each present moment is a contraction of the past, a concentration of the entire cone in the point of its apex. Conversely, the endless expanse of the past may be regarded as the dilation of the present, the cone's spreading volume issuing forth fro the apex of each present moment. When we try to remember something, says Bergson, we place ourselves in the past straight away, and then traverse "a series of different planes of consciousness" in search of the given memory. Each plane is a cross section of the cone of the virtual past, a nappe de souvenirs, or "sheet of memories" (as in sheet of ice), a region of the past with its peculiar affective "tones" and its "dominant recollections, veritable brilliant points around which others form a vague nebulosity". These planes of the virtual past Deleuze calls nappes de passé, "sheets of past" and gisements, geological "layers" or "strata"."¹

"Between the past as pre-existence in general and the present as infinitely contracted past there are, therefore, all the circles of the past constituting so many stetched or shrunk regions, strata and sheets: each region with its own characteristics, its 'tones', its 'aspects', its 'singularities', its 'shining points' and its 'dominant themes'.

"These are the paradoxical characteristics of a non-chronological time: the pre-existence of a past in general; the coexistence of all the sheets of past; and the existence of a most contracted degree."²

¹ Ronald Bogue, Deleuze On Cinema, pp. 136-137, Routledge 2003
² G. Deleuze, Cinema 2: L'Image Temps, 7th ed. University of Minnesota Press 2003, p. 99