The constitutive outside exceeds dialectical negation by questioning positivity itself.
Evidence
In order to avoid any misunderstanding, let me point out that the ‘constitutive outside’ cannot be reduced [0 a dialectical negation. In order to be a true outside, the outside has to be incommensurable with the inside, and at the same time, the condidon of emergence of the latter. This is only possible if what is ‘outside’ is not simply the outside of a concrete content but something which puts into question ‘concreteness’ as such. This is what is involved in the Derridean notion of the ‘constitutive outside’: not a content which would be asserted/negated by another content which would just be its dialectical opposite - which would be the ~ if we were simply saying that there is no ‘us’ without a ‘them’ - but a content which, by showing the radical undecidability of the tension of its constitution, makes its very positivity a function of the symbol of something exceeding it: the possibility/impossibility of positivity as such. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 63
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The them symbolizes the impossibility of any us, not a concrete opposite. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 63; The constitutive outside makes alterity both possible and impossible for identity; Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 363 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- An initial shocking transcendence is constitutive of all dialectical thinking
#expands(0.85) - Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously.
#expands(0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363 - The shock of self-transcendence is constitutive of any genuinely dialectical consciousness
#expands(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 635 - The ‘given’ arises as a phantom of exteriority separating opposed internal negations.
#expands(0.75)