Psychoanalysis, unions, parties, and universities all function as mediating forums.

Evidence

The clinic in psychoanalysis has understood itself as a venue for these constructions, because its form establishes a problematizing encounter with the other. Politically, mediating bodies like the union and the party have performed a similar function, erecting groundwork for struggles and inspiration in crises. Historically, the university has also made itself available as such a forum, minimally introducing students to other zeitgeists, cultures, epistemologies, and languages. Conceptually, the project of critical theory has been to work through symptoms and resistances, to propel thought through impasses, to negate what is merely given, and then to negate the negation, convoking readers to collective composition. The calamity is that both the omnicrisis and the inflated imaginary impede all of these mediations—so maybe TV is the thing this year. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 107

Categorization

• XREF: This institutional inventory of mediation is the reader’s key evidence for why mediation is politically necessary.