Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“There has to be a center because humanity is constituted through joint attention, and attention must be attention toward something, and if attention is joint that something must be at the convergence of the respective lines of vision of the attenders. The only way this object of attention can be held in place is if it is desired by all of those attending upon it, and the only way it can be desired rather than appropriated is if its appropriation is proscribed; and the only way its appropriation can be proscribed is if the participants on the scene constitute this proscription by offering signs to each other that they will suspend any attempt to appropriate the object. The source of the sign(s) offered must be a reversal of the movement towards the object, and this reversal must result from the fear of violence produced by this novel, collective, unconstrained rush toward the object. Now, up until this point in our reconstruction of the originary event, there is in principle nothing that the participants on the scene couldn’t talk about and arrange deliberately among ourselves. That is, so far, there would be some justification in seeing the originary scene as a kind of social contract, if we were to set aside the problem of there not being any language in which the terms of the contract could be set. But we have left out one thing: precisely because there is no language within which a “negotiation” could take place, the injunction against appropriating the object can only come from the central object itself.”

— Adam Katz, The Architecture of the Center · May 2018 · GABlog