Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“It is in the nature of the declarative to both supplant and appropriate the ostensive. The declarative comes into being by deferring some imperative and, first of all replacing it with the combination of an “operator of negation,” or prohibition on proceeding to act on the failed imperative, on the one hand, and a negative ostensive, representing the demanded object in absentia , on the other. The declarative creates a world full objects, which is to say a world of useful and desirable things that we observe and refer to without appropriating. The declarative is born in terror of the imperative and, by extension, the ostensive, the latter of which it produces a virtual version of. All developments of declarative culture involve further distancing and regulating access to imperatives and ostensives. This is the logic of “enlightenment”: all action is to be a result of the sheer accumulation of declaratives, providing such a complete account of the world, that anything one might do has already been so mapped out in advance as to not even require a “decision.””

— Adam Katz, Accessing the Ostensive within the Declarative · Apr 2019 · GABlog