Theoretical names for unrepresentable forces are methodological necessities, not literal descriptions

Evidence

Therefore, “as a deconstructivist,” I cannot recommend that kind of dichotomy at all, yet, I feel that definitions are necessary in order to keep us going, to allow us to take a stand. The only way that I can see myself making definitions is in a provisional and polemical one: I construct my definition as a woman not in terms of a woman’s putative essence but in terms of words currently in use. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 453 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Pouvoir/savoir, then, is catachrestic in the way that all names of processes not anchored in the intending subject must be: lines of knowing constituting ways of doing and not doing, the lines themselves irregular clinamens from subindividual atomic systems—fields of force, archives of utterance. Inducing them is that moving field of shredded enonces or differential forces that cannot be constructed as objects of investigation. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1220 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Historical-psychological processes, in their fluctuations and complexities, can never be completely rationalized. Geometry, by contrast, does have the power to isolate absolutely pure forms out of their material realizations. It should always be remembered that this identity of the kinds of interaction in the face of the simultaneously existing variety of human or objective material (and vice versa) is nothing primarily but a device to make and legitimate the scientific discrimination between form and content in the treatment of empirical phenomena. Methodologically speaking, this discrimination would be required even if the actual constellations did not call for the inductive procedure of crystallizing the like out of the unlike. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 204 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Essentialist-sounding definitions can be adopted provisionally without belief in essence — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 453; Foucaultian pouvoir-savoir names processes not anchored in an intending subject. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1220; Power symbols express stabilized possibility, not resemblance to what is possible. (+3 more)

Related

• Foucaultian pouvoir-savoir names processes not anchored in an intending subject. (similarity 0.85)
• Foucault’s ‘power’ is a catachrestic name for an unintelligible complex, not a description. (similarity 0.80)
• Definitions can be held provisionally and polemically without belief in essence (similarity 0.79)
• Essentialist-sounding definitions can be adopted provisionally without belief in essence (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Essentialist-sounding definitions can be adopted provisionally without belief in essence #exemplifies (0.92) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 453
• Foucaultian pouvoir-savoir names processes not anchored in an intending subject. #exemplifies (0.85) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1220
• The form-content distinction is a methodological device, not a real separation #exemplifies (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 204
• Discourse operates as a strategic field of force-relations, not mere representation #exemplifies (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 363
• Power symbols express stabilized possibility, not resemblance to what is possible. #exemplifies (0.78)