<p>At first glance, surprise and sedimentation don't mix. Surprise is commonly associated with shock, rupture, crisis, catastrophe, or, on the positive side, with the emergence of the new, creation, the opening up of future possibilities; sedimentation, by contrast, goes hand in hand with deposition (of particles), conservation, the piling up of layers, traces, archaeological remains, remnants of the past. In short, everything seems to oppose them: surprise looks to the future, sedimentation to the past; surprise creates conscious discontinuity, sedimentation processual continuity; surprise gives rise to the invention of new forms, artistic, scientific, political; sedimentation invites the maintenance and conservation of the existing; in short, surprise is progressive, sedimentation conservative. This article argues that the relation between surprise and sedimentation is more complex. It unfolds the dynamic antinomy between them, that is, their productive tension. It does so in two main ways: (1) by analyzing surprise as at the service of sedimentation, where the internal openness inherent in surprise generates a productive process of sedimentation understood as self-regulation, that is, as a creative dynamic (emblematized by the artistic process); and (2) by examining the reciprocal movement of sedimentation at the service of surprise, where the sedimentation process, understood as stabilization (exemplified in the context of schizophrenic disorders), creates the anticipatory condition for a surprise whose coordinates unfold as an open welcome.</p>