Abstract

The association of ideas plays a prominent role in À la recherche du temps perdu. In fact, thanks to his philosophical studies, Proust makes precise and original use of it compared to the previous tradition. In 1979, Félix Guattari wrote an essay entirely dedicated to Proust entitled Les ritournelles du temps perdu. Guattari’s observations in this essay offer a valuable opportunity to bring to light the relevance of associative phenomena in Proust’s work. The Proustian association of ideas never consists in the simple repetition of the «already seen» and the «already heard». On the contrary, it reveals the eminently productive function of mental automatism – which Guattari thinks of as the opposite of habit