EPISODE · Feb 3, 2026 · 52 MIN
There Is No "Before" of Binary Oppositions
from Failure Is Freedom · host https://www.martinessig.com
There is no thing without the dialectic of some-thing and no-thing. Whatever was before the binary opposition of something and nothing, was neither something nor nothing. When this primordial non-thing, perhaps an "inconsistent multiplicity," or an absolutely unified, absolute nothing, was separated into something and nothing, then binary oppositions gave us everything that is, which is just like saying being is a relation to nonbeing and not a thing-in-itself. However, this cut into the primordial void didn't accomplish a complete dichotomization of differential relations because it couldn't entirely eliminate whatever ambiguity was "before" this separation. The incompletion of this separation reflects the inherent incompletion of the determination of being into either the positivity of presence or the negativity of absence. The irreducible ambiguity of what is, is that it also "isn't," which is reflected in such bizarre quantum phenomena as "interposition" and "non-locality," as well as in macro level phenomena described best by Jean-Luc Marion's adumbration of "Saturated Phenomena." Saturated Phenomena produce indeterminable hermeneutics from this irreducible ambiguity that resists determination because it resists separation into the most basic categories of being and nonbeing. Binary oppositions give whatever there is to being's self-knowing, but the resistance to knowing in the Lacanian register of the Real allows that self-relation to move. Becoming's continual movement through the dialectical relation of difference is without complete separation, so that knowing, like the being it represents, is a flow, rather than a static determination.https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.
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There is no thing without the dialectic of some-thing and no-thing. Whatever was before the binary opposition of something and nothing, was neither something nor nothing. When this primordial non-thing, perhaps an "inconsistent multiplicity," or an absolutely unified, absolute nothing, was separated into something and nothing, then binary oppositions gave us everything that is, which is just like saying being is a relation to nonbeing and not a thing-in-itself. However, this cut into the prim...
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There Is No "Before" of Binary Oppositions
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