The constitutive outside must be incommensurable yet enable the inside
Evidence
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. … In this case, antagonism is irreducible to a simple process of dialectical reversal: the ‘them’ is not the constitutive opposite of a concrete ‘US’, but the symbol of what makes IIny ‘us’ impossible. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 63
Categorization
- DEFINE: Precise definition of Derrida’s constitutive outside and why it is not dialectical negation — essential equipment for the reader’s conceptual test.
- DEEPTHINKING: The move that the outside questions ‘concreteness as such’ and makes positivity a function of the possibility/impossibility of positivity is genuinely paradigm-shifting and resists one-sentence summary.
- XREF: connects to: Power is misimagined as exterior restriction rather than interior formation — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 25; Having a place requires not being wholly absorbed in that place — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1169; The constitutive outside makes alterity both possible and impossible for identity (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- The constitutive outside makes alterity both possible and impossible for identity
#expands(0.95) - Power is misimagined as exterior restriction rather than interior formation
#expands(0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 25 - The local and global are mutually constitutive rather than hierarchical
#exemplifies(0.83) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 865 - One can only recognize a boundary by stepping outside of it
#exemplifies(0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 787 - A critic of a central domain must stand outside its defining structures
#qualifies(0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 322 - Partial occlusion by objects is constitutive of their being in a world
#exemplifies(0.79) - Having a place requires not being wholly absorbed in that place
#exemplifies(0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1169 - Fields advance through exterior ruptures, not smooth internal accumulation.
#exemplifies(0.76) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 247 - A closed system’s openness to modification while transforming itself is plasticity
#expands(0.74) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1283 - Restoring a place requires abandoning protection and entering it fully
#complicates(0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 302