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7 Theorizing T heorizing is an activity that undermines received concepts, first by identifying the universe to which they refer and second by showing that their meaning depends on something necessarily omitted—on a different referential universe for which what is omitted has its possible concept. It begins with an idea among ideas each of which must be understood as for the other ideas, as if part of a system. What is left out, then, is not merely something specific but the sense of an alternative universe to the “known universe.” Given that the two universes qualify each other with respect to what is left out in one, theorizing is caught up in unresolvable ambiguities. This means that the work of theorizing cannot be directed toward resolving ambiguity; that is what theories are said to do. Instead, the activity of theorizing involves sustaining ambiguity, even though it may, despite itself, occasionally support a temptation to resolve the unresolvable, thereby envisioning its own end. Consequently, it is fundamentally ambivalent: every move toward appreciating the universal significance of an idea is also a move toward appreciating a universe that is thereby excluded. The moment at which a given referential universe appears as a determinate and encompassing reality is also the moment at which what was omitted appears either unreal or to exist elsewhere. Ambiguity is always present in the course of theorizing. It constitutes a continuing basis of critical reflection in which theorizing has no choice but to confront its own tendency to become other than what it is. Theorizing is the work involved in discovering a lost world, where its having been lost is both newsworthy and arbitrary. It is newsworthy to the extent to which the apparent totality of the known world suddenly appears dependent on and vulnerable to what is lost: what is discovered about the known world in the course of 132 Chapter 7 theorizing is that it entails the existence of a competing universe based on the fact that what had been omitted must not have been. The omission is arbitrary in that what is ostensibly known depends on indifference to the fact of the omission . The following expands on the distinction between theory and theorizing, which is fundamental to understanding how, in the study of human affairs, theory and its object are internally related so that each finds itself—is found— in the other. Otherwise, theory would be conceived of as external to and not an instance of human affairs, and what it acknowledges as human would lack any capacity to theorize itself. The tragic aspect of theorizing is a consequence of two opposing conditions. First, it is constituted as an ongoing commitment to what Heidegger referred to as “the life of the concept” and, by virtue of that, to the life of its object. Second, the ambivalence that motivates the activity is internal to it: the objectivity of the referent can be imagined as active only relative to its concept and, therefore, relative to the activity of formulating and refining the concept in opposition to its referent.1 On the one hand, the active unspecifiable object evades positive knowledge; consequently, it anticipates the failure of the concept in the very course of its being formed and refined. The relation of the evasive object and the increasingly determinate concept is part of what is meant by saying that the concept has a life. “Theorizing,” in contrast with “a theory,” can then be understood as an activity committed to the opposition of idea and subtheoretical object. But, the fact that the object cannot be specified without being lost undermines the absorption of the activity of theorizing in and its subjection to the life of the concept. On the other hand, theorizing involves more than a positive, forward-looking commitment: the antagonism between its positive aspect and the ambivalence that motivates it implies that more is involved than sacrificing subjectivity to the logical and empirical requirements of the concept . This includes attempting to expel the increasingly ominous shadow of the sub-theoretical object as the concept approaches the limit of its progressive refinement—becoming nothing but an empty signifier within a field of more or less empty signifiers, one of a system of signifiers that have “value” but no meaning. This transfers the risk of a loss of life from the concept to the activity of theorizing. What is positive about commitment diminishes with the attempt to sustain it: a theoretical continuation of theorizing implicates turning against its...

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