The Holding and the Held Center: Beyond Disagreement
dennisbouvard.substack.com
There’s a kind of spatial problem involved with speaking of the center and I think I’m ready to resolve it at this point. What I mean is that “the center” is always what draws your attention right here and now—and, even if it’s something you’re looking at by yourself, the fact that you are directing human attention towards it means that the attention is nevertheless shared—you are looking at with, through, and for others even if those others are not there. In this case, the center is always shifting, with one center being constantly replaced by another, and while this is an indispensable meaning of “the center,” it’s not what I, at least, mean most of the time when I speak of the center, which is to say the social center. And there’s something a little disorienting here, because insofar as you’re attending to some local center your back, so to speak is to the social, or occupied/signifying center. So, the articulation of these two centers needs to be accounted for, and it needs to be accounted for in a way consistent with, and to the extent possible, overlapping with, the distinction between the occupied and signifying center, and doing so should provide considerable explanatory power. And my
The Holding and the Held Center: Beyond Disagreement
The Holding and the Held Center: Beyond…
The Holding and the Held Center: Beyond Disagreement
There’s a kind of spatial problem involved with speaking of the center and I think I’m ready to resolve it at this point. What I mean is that “the center” is always what draws your attention right here and now—and, even if it’s something you’re looking at by yourself, the fact that you are directing human attention towards it means that the attention is nevertheless shared—you are looking at with, through, and for others even if those others are not there. In this case, the center is always shifting, with one center being constantly replaced by another, and while this is an indispensable meaning of “the center,” it’s not what I, at least, mean most of the time when I speak of the center, which is to say the social center. And there’s something a little disorienting here, because insofar as you’re attending to some local center your back, so to speak is to the social, or occupied/signifying center. So, the articulation of these two centers needs to be accounted for, and it needs to be accounted for in a way consistent with, and to the extent possible, overlapping with, the distinction between the occupied and signifying center, and doing so should provide considerable explanatory power. And my