Concept
Omnicentrism
The post-sacrificial condition — every individual as potential center, never to be sacrificed
“The post-sacrificial, or omnicentric social order makes us all centers—we have last names, ID numbers, histories in public institutions, credit cards, and much more—all of which requires a center around which all this “orbits.””
From the Archive
“historical movement of desacralization operates neither through the endless deconstruction of the originary center nor through its definitive rejection, but through its omnicentric multiplication. Even ‘decentralization’ is a dangerous term; what is required is rather the universal proliferation of centers—every human being a center”
“A completely marketized order is, as Eric Gans has pointed out, an “omnicentric” one.[3] In that case, one’s response to the emergence of new resentments or conflicts is to seek or create new centers. But any new center must draw upon the resources and authority of some existing center.”
“The paradox of market omnicentrism, then, is that it is the production system that produces the very forms in which new centers, denouncing that production system, are projected.”
“we are supposed to believe that somehow, as a result of the Christian revelation unfolding into market society, there was no longer a social center; rather, each individual was a center in a new, albeit still emergent, omnicentrism.”
“Just as there are no chosen among the faithful, so there should be no chosen in the marketplace, the extension of Christian omnicentrism to economic exchange.”
“If omnicentrism is to accommodate asymmetries between centers, how would that be different than saying that there is a social or final center, with other centers dependent upon that one?”
AI Overview
— AI-generated synthesis. The archive passages above are the primary source.Every human being on the originary scene faces the center as an equal — equal not in power or ability but in their shared prohibition against appropriating the object and their shared participation in the sign. This equality-on-scene is the origin of what will eventually become the moral recognition that each person is inviolable, cannot be sacrificed, has a kind of sacred immunity that cannot be violated by any merely human authority.
The Christian revelation. Center Study follows Gans in identifying the Christian revelation as the specific historical moment when omnicentrism becomes explicit: the recognition that every individual is potentially a center, that the God who has died for each is equally present to each, that no hierarchy can claim the authority to sacrifice any member of the community. The Incarnation — God occupying the human center — is the theological expression of omnicentrism: the center descends to the periphery, making the periphery potentially central.
Omnicentrism and anti-centerism. Omnicentrism is frequently confused with anti-centerism, but they are opposites. Omnicentrism affirms the center while extending its immunity to all individuals; anti-centerism denies the legitimacy of any occupied center while covertly occupying one. The victimary politics of modernity conflates the two: it presents the denial of any legitimate center (anti-centerism) as the extension of sacred immunity to all (omnicentrism). The confusion is productive for those who wish to occupy the center while denying that they do.
Omnicentrism and succession. If every individual is potentially a center, the question of succession becomes: who is capable of occupying the center without violently centralizing it? The omnicentric condition does not abolish succession; it requires that succession be managed without violence and without the permanent exclusion of any member of the community from the possibility of future centrality. Democratic succession is the attempt to institutionalize omnicentric succession — to make the center transferable without violence, to any capable occupant.
The imperative of omnicentrism. The moral imperative that follows from omnicentrism is not equality of condition but equality of standing: everyone must be treated as a potential center, as someone whose scenic position cannot be simply eliminated. This is not the same as saying everyone must be equal in power, wealth, or achievement. It is the minimal moral requirement that no one be sacrificed — that the center's claim to distribute does not extend to the right to eliminate those who cannot receive the distribution.
Across the Corpus
How this idea is developed elsewhere in the archive, earliest to latest.
“Postmodern cynicism and demystification have lost their edge and become merely perverse forms of naivete. Yet traditional religions have their limits, and the newer religions strain our credulity. But sacrality, properly understood, is nothing other than reverence for the personhood of what cannot simply be appropriated by our appetite. Christianity has…”
“Forms of sacrality, or hallowed sites, whether liturgical or secular in origin and character, would be the islands of transcendence framing and channeling those desires and resentments. Modernity emerges out of the crisis of the unified Christian world of the late medieval period, so it would be most economical to assume that modernity would best be…”
“We can consider the emergence of the Big Man out of the primitive egalitarian community as the beginning of civilization. With civilization comes the placing of some individual at the center of the community, as the source of power (this could just as easily be described as some individual appropriating the center). A new moral order is thereby initiated.…”
“If ethics is centered upon some good to be obtained, morality defers another kind of centering—the violent centering involved in sacrificial practices. A sacrifice is an attempt to influence a deity by offering some exchange; we don’t think we engage in such practices anymore, but we do. Some sacrificial practices seem innocuous enough, maybe even…”
“If omnicentrism is to accommodate asymmetries between centers, how would that be different than saying that there is a social or final center, with other centers dependent upon that one? If, in fact, there is always a center, and it is always occupied by a human, however often that human is replaced or how much resentment is encouraged towards him/her/xir,…”
“I’m coming back to this question in connection with arguments regarding the moral order of absolutism I’ve been making recently. The problem for absolutist political thought is conceiving of a post-sacrificial center. We can’t have a God-Emperor because we know that the emperor doesn’t control the weather, the river or the crops, nor can we in good faith…”
“I’ve been using the phrase “post-sacrificial culture,” generally in conjunction with the “Axial Age acquisitions,” to refer to the breakdown of the “imperative exchange” constitutive of sacrifice. Sacrifice involves an imperative exchange because the human member of the community offering the sacrifice (bringing his goat, or whatever, to the altar) is…”
“Whether or not we accept this reasoning can then be shown to be contingent on our position in the God-creates-man/man-creates-God controversy; is the sacred a reality beyond the human world, or its internal (hence subjective ) foundation? This same procedure could be extended to elucidate the characteristics normally attributed to God. Immortality,…”
“Religion is not idolatry of the center. Its essence is the attribution of all firstness to the originary sacred, whether it be the firstness of the god-emperor or of the holder of the floor in a discussion. In practical terms, we must of course distinguish between degrees of firstness. But saintliness, as Thérèse insisted on living it, attributed to God…”
“At certain points in his thinking, Eric Gans has proposed a post Christian, which is to say post-sacrificial, omnicentric market order that would eschew any single center, perhaps most explicitly in the penultimate paragraph of Originary Thinking: “[t]he historical movement of descralization operates neither through the endless deconstruction of the…”
Key Texts
The fullest development: traces omnicentrism from Gans's reading of Romanticism, quotes the canonical 'every human being a center' formula, and exposes the paradox that market omnicentrism is sustained only by a powerful central state.
Argues that any new center must draw on existing centers, so genuine omnicentrism is incoherent — to seek a new center is already to repudiate omnicentrism in favor of a unicentric order.
Katz's sharpest critique: omnicentrism is the 'aporia' that blinds orthodox GA to the persistence of the state, since a model where each individual is a center can say nothing useful about central power.
Tests omnicentrism against political reality — every order still has an occupied center — and asks whether an omnicentric order is an order at all.