Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The forms of exchange with the center must always be named, which is why we can never. transcend the question of succession: some formal transference of “deemed” power, authority if you like, must always be made explicit—even if it’s just a nod of the head in a small informal and close-knit group. If the juridical can convert the vendetta into contending claims heard in court, this is because the emergent imperial power must deem all forms of possession as having their origin in the imperial center. (The vendetta, in using violence to maintain the power of the patriarch, is also formalizing succession, albeit in ways incompatible with written forms of record keeping.) Presently, the gathering of data relies completely upon juridical forms: we gather information about individuals and groups based upon categories through which the state exercises juridical forms of governance. If the disciplines can come to create categorizations that yield knowledge without deriving them directly from “non-scientific” juridical sources, that would only be either by reducing humans to biological and chemical categories or by creating such tightly woven and intentional systems of human interaction in which humans are so at one with their practices that simply describing a role on a particular scene will bring into play a kind of “curvature” in the infrastructure that suffices to further design the scene so as to bring that role into even closer relation to others enacted on the scene.”

— Adam Katz, Disciplinarity and the Center · May 13, 2022 · Bouvard Substack