Fields advance through exterior ruptures, not smooth internal accumulation.

Evidence

Again and again, the so-called unfolding of Cultural Studies was interrupted by a break, by real ruptures, by exterior forces; the interruption, as it were, of new ideas, which decentered what looked like the accumulating practice of the work. There’s another metaphor for theoretical work: theoretical work as interruption. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 247

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges Kuhnian smooth-paradigm narratives and Whiggish histories of disciplines; relates to reader’s interest in how ideas shape political economy. — connects to: The constitutive outside must be incommensurable yet enable the inside — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 63
• DEEPTHINKING: Framework for thinking about intellectual history as punctuated by exogenous shocks rather than organic development.