Ethics are performed within subindividual conditions that resist systematic statement

Evidence

For both Foucault and Derrida, in different ways, the ontico-ontological difference is a thinking through of the uses and limits of a critical philosophy. Their catachrestic nominalism may be trying to touch the ontic with the thought that there is a subindividual (or random, for Derrida) space even under, or below, or before… (the grasp begins to falter here, but how can philosophers who will not admit that actual ethical practice is affected, indeed constituted by this, understand why it is worth trying?) the “preontological Being as [Dasein’s] ontically constitutive state…[where] Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something like Being” (BT, 39; emphasis mine). Whatever the generalizing presuppositions necessary for a systematic statement of knowledge of ethics, these are the conditions within which ethics are performed, by subjects constituted in different ways. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1175

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s working question: ethical/identity practice always happens below the level of generalizing epistemic statement — relevant to whether strategic essentialism can remain merely ironic at the performing-subject level.