Negation is a constitutive structure of spatial distance itself

Evidence

Take for example the notion of distance, which conditions the determination of a location, the localization of a point. It is easy to see that it possesses a negative moment. Two points are distant when they are separated by a certain length. The length, a positive attribute of a segment of a straight line, intervenes here by virtue of the negation of an absolute, undifferentiated proximity … Thus the total form consituted by the segment and its two limits with its inner structure of negation is capable of letting itself be apprehended in two ways. Rather there are two forms, and the condition of the appearance of the one is the disintegration of the other, exactly as in perception we constitute a particular object as a figure by rejecting another so as to make of it a ground, and conversely. In both instances we find the same quantity of negation which at one time passes into the notion of limits and at another into the notion of distance, but which in each case can not be suppressed. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 218

Categorization

• XREF: The figure-ground account of negation here clearly prefigures and coheres with Sartre’s for-itself/being-in-itself distinction — the same negation-structure that creates spatial distance reappears in the nihilation that constitutes consciousness. — connects to: Negation structures many everyday realities, not just judgments — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 219; Negation is the cement unifying spatial objects into Gestalt wholes; Negation as a constituting act separates what is not factually distinct (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes Sartre’s central claim that negation is not merely a psychological or logical operation but an ontological structure of the world, including spatial relations.

Broader Connections

• Negation is the cement unifying spatial objects into Gestalt wholes #expands (0.85)
• Negation as a constituting act separates what is not factually distinct #complicates (0.80)
• Modernist spatial form unifies parts into a whole while postmodern spatialization disperses totality #exemplifies (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 910