no/thinking

Aging systems of thought eventually encounter the conditions of their existence. This dramatic process is mainly experienced as a type of eternal and ever-recurring conflict between the old vs. the new systems of thought. It is a ubiquitous confrontation as it, in principle, embraces all possible micro-conflicts between discursive utterances of what is coming-to-being vs. utterances of what has been present and already proliferated in Logos. The former set is a force of altering and canny innovations in discourse that gradually takes shape in formalizations of expressions, which enters the plain of thoughts either in an aggressive or in a conciliatory fashion, stepping on the very foundations of its predecessor, undermining its structural consolidations, exposing its limits, wearing out the edges of its argumentative infrastructure. 

Seen through the impossible standpoint outside Discourse, this clash appears to be primarily a spatial experience on the surface of Time, rather than simply a process of Reason. As such, it involves a consummation of space-in-time, of a taking over of time, which so far has been allocated to the proliferation of the aging system of thought, by the new intruding formations that attempt to invade the plain of Discourse in all possible ways. This precise moment has a timeframe that by no means can be measured in traditional terms, for it can last longer than in terms of defined historical periods. Nevertheless, when this clash of systems is taking place, we are offered a wealth of revelations about the discursive formations’ characteristics and their patterns of circulation and formalization: their very conditions of existence are exposed and challenged, not only in the classic sense of confronted arguments and negotiations, but also in the sense of a space-in-time invaded/managed by the process of confrontation itself. One will claim that this is obviously a continuous process in the discursive plain but yet one needs to notice that it always varies in terms of magnitude, force and expression. These variations are of great importance for the study of the tissue of History as well as for understanding the inevitable character of the process as such.

But the above-described process reveals another important and underestimated condition: that of an ever-present gap, which despite being commonly experienced as a distance in discourse (thus, a so-to-speak spatial parameter), a gap which seems to have a temporal nature, a temporal core: a core produced in Time and of Time. The study of the temporal aspect of the gap that occupies the space between competing discourses that promote different systems of thought is an act of liberating a genealogy of understanding and interpreting the conditions of their existence, an act of unveiling the temporal nature of their appearance and their dependencies on the merciless process of coming-to-being, without easily falling for the attractive explanations of competence, integrity and consistency between competing systems. This theoretical shift should be just experienced as a structural shift on the level of analysis, an opening up of the lens of Meaning and in order to reveal its accountable temporality.  

(as we know it)

The Political is suffering. It is suffering its own demise. Having been the ground of representations, having had the control of power, having claimed its central role in governance, it forgot it also had to manifest its effectiveness and its right to withhold these powers. Thus, the Political has proven to been arrogant. This arrogance is documented in its own attempts to negate and/or to resist all criticism referring to the fundamentalist character of its (essentialist) self-determination. This negation is all-embracing and ever-resisting: it stands against all alternative signifiers that struggle to have a share of its powers: social formations, cultural expressions, public discourses - all valid human expressions of representation/power/governance that seek to produce meaning and diffuse it with and through different means, forms and structures than those of the bureaucratic and narcissist patterns of the Political.

Yet, negation and resistance are counter-productive. They are regularly deductive, often inductive and definitely seductive. The Political, in its very moment of suffering, refuses to subject itself in a process of re:arrangement, of re:allocation, of re:orientation of its meaning. It resists analysis. Against the prospect of its redefinition, it beholds Law as its primordial asset and poses it as an armor of references ready to repulse any objections: a deo rex, a rege lex.

But the production of meaning and its free dispersion at all directions is the fundamental pattern designating the movement of human history. All counter-productive formations (discursive or non-discursive) had and will never be able to totally control the flow of the production of meaning. For the latter, always finds its way in knowledge, even in forms that appear latent and marginalised. Mainstreaming these oppressed forces that proliferate meaning outside the sphere of the demised Political, is like placing a self-reflecting mirror in front of its face, it is a step towards the (always historical) moment of its discursive arrest. This task asks for our support and creative force: we need to make it happen.

The Social has no end. It regularly has means of different kinds: of conduct, of misconduct, of power, of control. Round means of these types, a series of conflicts rise. Each conflict, no matter how micro or macro it may be, involves only aspects of the Social. There never is one single conflict to comprise all conflicts in the landscape of the Social. But there are myths of conflicts that claim to do so. This mythic claim, whenever it appears, functions as the origin of conflict as such. Because it produces an aspiration of an end: an end as scope and an end as a conclusion. Through this aspiration, conflict reproduces imaginaries and desires. And by attempting to fulfill its aspiration, it acts against the constant flow of the Social: conflict tries to interrupt this vital flow, to arrest it within the imaginary conclusion that it aspires: namely, it attempts to castrate it.