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Term

Significance

used in 80 texts across the archive

But that the first word is the name-of-God tells us that significance is not a product of disinterested contemplation, but exists to defer the violence of crisis.

In use

The ostensive offers a “profane” version of the scene, an intentional model of the universe limited to a single present reality, whose significance is presumed to require immediate attention.

I think we could say that lowering the threshold of significance is the way we conserve linguistic presence: what threatens linguistic presence is the loss of a shared center that we could point to; by lowering the threshold of significance we place a newly identified object at that center.

The man of resentment suffers from his finitude, not because he knows his life is finite, but because he feels his significance is finite.

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