The Central Signifier was a concept I generated in my previous article, elaborating on Jacque Derrida’s notion of the “transcendental signifier”, in which I speculated if Generative Anthropology’s fuzzy notion of the “Center” could become a future Central Signifier. To summarize the salient points, the Central Signifier “aligns” all other signifiers to its likeness, which in turn frames and delimits how we perceive things; how we think and can “think about things”, affecting our opinions, intentions, etc. The Center as a Central Signifier, I then speculated, would be able to open up a completely new “space” of how one can “think about things”, i.e. a much greater ability to conceptualize, which it must bring if it’s going to have a real chance at usurping the present Central Signifier.
While I have no doubt that our continued expansion of Generative Anthropology will yield us concepts and ideas that’re so performative, they’ll inevitably “decenter” (outcompete) currently central (dominant) concepts and ideas, we must also systematically replace or overcode signifiers and concepts that’re more peripheral. Like how I just changed the previous sentence’s wording from “they’ll inevitably outcompete currently dominant concepts and ideas” because those two signifiers in parentheses bear a strong likeness to the present Central Signifier I argued is “Evolution”. The signifiers “concept” and “idea” bear likeness to the previous Central Signifier of “God”, but it’s not necessary to change every word; that’d become too prohibiting on the general population. We just need to make sure that they’re aligned with the Center (like how Adam Katz aligned the signifier “Capitalist” in the example I used in my previous article), and only focus on renaming, discrediting, or otherwise rendering obsolete signifiers whose likeness is too complementary to another (would be) Central Signifier.
(Author’s note: I wasn’t even able formulate the wording “replace or overcode signifiers and concepts that’re more peripheral” differently, suggesting my thinking and conceptualization has already been significantly overcoded and aligned with the Center.)
In this article, I’m therefore going to elaborate on the Central Signifier, and Center as Central Signifier, even further. Unlike the previous article there won’t be a central thesis or question I’m trying to explore, so each section will stand on their own.
Change is a rare event
One thing I only vaguely implied in my previous article was that change seems to be a rare event, and that there must be a clearly tremendous energy behind a usurping Central Signifier, even against a presiding Central Signifier that’s become very ineffective at ordering the symbolic order. The term “evolution” was itself first coined in 1809 by French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and only really started getting traction after 1859, when Charles Darwin published his “On the Origin of Species”, so Evolution as Central Signifier has been central for roughly 150 years. Before Evolution was of course God, whom from my reading you have to go so far back, it becomes impractical for someone who isn’t a dedicated researcher to inquire about, if there’s even ever been any other. My intuition tells me we’d have to go as far back as the birth of Christianity, if not monotheism altogether, if we’re hoping to find Central Signifiers that predate God.
While the grounds for comparison are very sparse, my intuition likewise tells me that the change away from God as Central Signifier came very “late”. When I was reading more into the circumstances surrounding Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, I was slightly surprised how even an economics treatise was an attempt at peeling away at God’s ordering of the symbolic order. This, and many other instances, over a period of several hundred years, suggests to me that God had “ruled” well past his (in hindsight) expected expiration date before he was finally usurped by Evolution. It’s therefore plausible that the explosion of innovative energy we saw in the 19th and 20th century, was due to so much pent-up resentment finally being able to be efficiently donated to the new Center; and newly created, downstream Centers. Due to the “nature” of Evolution, the “space of conceptualization” (which I’ve now named the “space” that the Central Signifier simultaneously generates, enables, and delimits thinking and conceptualization into) it opened up was channeled toward what we call the “natural sciences”, which is why that’s where we saw remarkable disciplinary innovation and expansion.
Since Evolution has been reigning for a much shorter time than God did, it’s likely that the explosion won’t be as dramatic when a new Center usurps the symbolic order. However, my intuition again tells me that the space of conceptualization that Center will open up will be as big a boon to what we call the “social sciences”, as Evolution was to the natural sciences.
The incoherent ruler
And as I say Evolution has only ruled for a short period of time, and therefore the explosion of energy a change in Central Signifier will bring would likely not be that great, there’s an argument to be made that it will be. As I mentioned before, this explosion, or release of energy happens because resentment that’d be previously “undonated” can now be donated to a new Center that’s able to contain and process it. It's this transfer and release that generates all sorts of energy within a new space of conceptualization. Because the space of conceptualization is delimited, the expanding scene of representation (consciousness) of society will eventually run into it’s “boundary” or “edge” and can hence progress no further. This then generates resentment that the Central Signifier, or its downstream centers, cannot contain or process. When the boundary/edge is reached, the Central Signifier’s effectiveness at ordering the symbolic order starts to wane, which is when we can begin the search for an alternative Central Signifier.
The reason that we’re even here—beginning to consider the idea of an alternative Central Signifier—I believe we can attribute to Evolutions inherent incoherence as a Central Signifier. As I mentioned in my previous article, Evolutions internal structure, or rather model, is that of the rhizome, which I also depicted. I briefly speculated that the Central Signifier structures, or models, the symbolic order in its own likeness. Now I’d more accurately say that, not only does the Central Signifier model its symbolic order according to its own intrinsic “model”, it also models all the signifiers themselves according to its own intrinsic “model”, which is what “frames” the signifier’s signified.
This is what Adam Katz was doing when he was aligning the signifier “Capitalist” to the Center: He was taking the Centers intrinsic model and overcoded the prevailing rhizomatic model within the signifier “Capitalist”, leading us to come to a different understanding and perception of the signifier "capitalist’s" signified.
Evolution’s intrinsic rhizomatic model makes it incoherent as a Central Signifier, as it occupies an (what Gilles Deleuze would call) “arborescent” position, with rhizome and arborescence being binary opposites. Evolution as a Central Signifier occupies a position that it intrinsically denies even exists, rejecting its own centrality. This might be why what Eric Gans calls Victimary Thinking (i.e. denying one’s own attempt at usurping centrality while acting in ways that result in it), has become so central for political agitation to occupy the center. And this rhizomatic model is now disordering the symbolic order instead of ordering it, quickly building up a lot of resentment that cannot be assuaged. This convincingly speaks in favor of the next Central Signifier also being a catalyst for a release of a tremendous amount of energy, despite the last turnover not even being 200 years ago.
It's also plausible that it’s due to the unlikely long time that God remained in place as Central Signifier, that all the built-up resentment being released was just that big an explosion of energy, that the momentum of the expansion of the scene of representation just reached the outer “edge” of this space of conceptualization (which Evolution opened up) that swiftly. And this leads us into why Evolution even became Central Signifier in the first place. Surely there’d be more coherent candidates? Well, I think it might’ve been due to the fact that God had remained Central Signifier for an unlikely long time, that it was almost destined to become an incoherent one like Evolution. Evolution is basically diametrically opposite to God in all its dimension, attributes, and intrinsic model—though not in the categorical, binary opposite kind of sense, which might be a coincidence—but I suspect that Evolution as a signifier accrued the kind of thrust needed to eject God from its position as Central Signifier precisely because it was an almost wholesale rejection of everything God stood for.
Other Central Signifiers?
When I published my previous article, I got some questions as to whether Evolution had already been displaced as a Central Signifier, or whether it even was in the first place. Human Rights were suggested to me as another potential candidate. But Human Rights couldn’t have accounted for the explosion of energy we saw in the 19th century as it was first drafted in 1946 and adopted in 1948, which makes me wary that it could’ve achieved status as Central Signifier sometime after, given that turnover is supposedly a very rare event. However, entertaining the thought that it’s actually managed to become more centered than Evolution to now effectively be the reigning Central Signifier, what would be the evidence in favor?
Again, Victimary Thinking has indeed risen in prominence. Things like CSR, ESG, inclusiveness and anti-discrimination of various forms can now be found in virtually all corners of our society, e.g. taking focus away from corporation’s goal of “growth”. While that could be evidence of a change in Central Signifier, I think it’s more likely just that Human Rights have become more centered, due to Evolution’s incoherence, thus leaving traces of its own likeness upon a larger part of the symbolic order through having more downstream centers connected to it.
In Adam Katz’ recent Anthropoetics journal entry he focuses on how the economy has taken on a religious worshipping of it in the modern day. If the economy has become so important to take on an almost religious role in society, shouldn’t Economy be the Central Signifier? It even fits rights around the same time we saw the explosion of energy in the 19th century! Well, I think that’s far more likely than Human Rights, however as I talked about in the previous article, economic concepts and discourse has deeply embedded signifiers that’re enveloped in the language of nature and the natural sciences, which is one reason that makes me doubt it. Secondly, economics is a hotly contested discipline with many views and theories, whereas with Evolution, agreement is more or less uniform, only really being a question of whether you accept it or not. There’s no doubt however, that the economy is one of the signifiers that’s as close to the Central Signifier as you can come.
Another question I got was whether there’re other civilizations who’re under different Central Signifiers presently. I find that very likely, as I think Evolution lost momentum before we got to the present information age, meaning that Evolution likely hasn’t had the same energy to displace Central Signifiers of other civilizations. And where that’s happened, I think is more a product of the Western Center’s scenic sphere wholesale displacing the native scenic sphere. However, when the next turnover of the West’s Central Signifier happens, the interconnectedness of the world will almost certainly mean that all Central Signifiers everywhere will quickly get displaced as well.
What is lost
As previously mentioned, the Central Signifier models all other signifiers to its intrinsic model, and thus shapes our perception and understanding of their signified. Likewise, the space of conceptualization that the Central Signifier opens up, or generates, has its own outer bounds or limits, beyond which it cannot allow for conceptualization. One could say that everything outside of the current space of conceptualization is “esoteric” to the Central Signifier. When there’s a turnover of the Central Signifier, the new space of conceptualization it’s generated might not be able to contain everything the previous one provided meaning and intelligibility to, thus losing parts of the wisdom and knowledge created under the previous symbolic ordering.
Obviously, the new Central Signifier must be able to contain the vast majority of what’s previously been built, or we’d lose all knowledge altogether, which would not be very performative (in the same way that Postliberalism must be able to contain and nest as much of what was good and authentic about Liberalism as it can, the Center must be able to contain and nest as much of what was authentic and good about Evolution as it can). But at the same time, the new Central Signifier must also necessarily reject parts of the previous order that were ineffective and convoluted constructs, designed due to having reached the outer bounds or limits of the previous space of conceptualization.
However, that entails that knowledge and wisdom that couldn’t be encompassed, or reordered by the new space of conceptualization becomes hard to understand, decipher, conceptualize, or even access, which is how we more commonly understand “esoteric” (one could say that the “esoteric” is that which has no overlap with our own space of conceptualization, coming from a different space of conceptualization). My previous article set out to make the past more intelligible with the present, and I believe this insight allows us to better grok how to go about doing that, and better design a program for “transfer translating” past esoteric knowledge and wisdom into present intelligible knowledge and wisdom (or knowledge and wisdom from other civlizations we currently consider esoteric).
While we within Generative Anthropology and the Postliberal project would claim that religiosity never went away (but was just transfigured) there’s no doubt that what’s viewed as “traditional religion”, i.e. the parts of God’s order that couldn’t be contained within Evolution, are the parts of the past that suffer most from unintelligibility. And this is where GA can really stand out, by making intelligible traditional religion (which it’s already done in some regards) within the present, as there’s a lot of esoteric wisdom and knowledge that’s “up for grabs” just waiting to be brought into the present. It could even be argued that that’s where most of GA’s focus has been until now, and it’s actually had too little focus on reordering what’s already presently intelligible, to the Center’s likeness.
Miscellaneous
1) Earlier I called the Central Signifier’s position “arborescent”. I used that word, as it’s the binary opposite of “rhizome”, both theorized by Gilles Deleuze, but I’d like to dwell on it a little longer. As Jacque Derrida explained, all signifier’s have their own binary opposite, except the Central Signifier. If we take a look at the Center’s model again, all positions in the margin and periphery have an opposite or equivalent marginal positioning (a term I just named to describe the positioning of something within the margin), which lends credence to the notion of “binary opposites”. Conversely, the Central Signifier occupies a privileged position within symbolic order, as the Center is a wholly unique position that has no equivalent or opposite, lending credence to the notion of a Central Signifier.
2) Earlier I called Evolution’s intrinsic model “rhizomatic”. While I’ve used the term “arborescent” to differentiate Evolution’s “rhizome”, I don’t want to give off the impression that Evolution and Center are therefore binary opposites of one another. Nor that God and Evolution are binary opposites, even though I noted earlier that they are opposites in most regards. While Center’s intrinsic model could be called “arborescent” I think a better formulation to use would be “concentric”, as it doesn’t have the same vertically hierarchical connotations attached to it, and better gives a sense of “outward (toward the periphery)” and “inward (toward the center)”. Additionally, when talking about the chains or webs of within the marginal positioning of signifiers and centers (how they are connected to each other), I think using the words “upstream” (toward the center) and “downstream” (toward the periphery) is a good way to describe how we’re “moving” within the margin.
3) Throughout this article I’ve multiple times referred to how a space of conceptualization has its own natural boundaries or limits. I want to provide an obvious case where it’s really apparent the limitation of a Central Signifier’s space of conceptualization. And while I have done no actual research on the topic, primitive or tribal societies are often caricatured as having “strength” as a central concept in popular culture. Therefore, imagine that we inhabit a symbolic order whose Central Signifier is “Strength”. Under Strength, everything would be framed in terms of how strong it is. That’d maybe work well for weapons, but how do you e.g. conceptualize or express “power”? Under Strength, power could only really be conceptualized in terms of the crude caricature that power is about subjugation, who holds the weapons, and who holds a monopoly of violence within society, reduced to only a show of physical strength. Contrast that with GA’s rich understanding of what power is, as the ability to direct attention. That power is the directing of attention would be difficult to conceptualize or express when Strength is the model it must adhere to. Likewise, imagine “leader” or “leadership” under Strength as a Central Signifier. A good leader is someone who’s “strong”, and you must be strong to get in positions of leadership. As society progressed from brute tribal conditions, one would have to bend what it means to be “strong” more and more. This guy is strong on trade, that guy is strong on religion, the third guy is weak on the public welfare of orphaned kittens. You’d have a lot less nuance to express or conceptualize what it means to be a good or bad, effective or ineffective leader than we’re able to today.
4) While I could’ve drawn the space of conceptualization as yet more circles (looking like Venn diagrams), I thought it’d be beneficial to draw them differently (and when we can, it’d be prudent to do so in the future, as we’re going to have a lot of circular diagrams due to the Center’s concentric model). And incidentally drawing it this way led me to think that, as seen in figure 5, the parts of a previous space of conceptualization that a succeeding space of conceptualization won’t be able to absorb are likely to be the parts that are “close” to the Central Signifier, which I take to mean the area of the space of conceptualization dedicated to the direct study of the Central Signifier itself. And here we might have a way of overcoding “theology” because, as Wikipedia puts it, “Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief”. As God was a previous Central Signifier, this is a disciplinary space to study a previous Central Signifier; but now we have a chance at coopting it and defining theology as “the systematic study of the Central Signifier, and its symbolic order”. Which would make this and the previous article, as well as much (if not all) of Generative Anthropology, theology.
Conclusion
The Center seems to hold extraordinary potential as a future Central Signifier, providing a coherent model for the symbolic order to inherit, and a space of conceptualization that can both embody the present and the past, as well as its own (hopefully vast) future space of conceptualization. Further centering the Center to become a competitive candidate for Central Signifier is therefore a key task to undertake in order to inaugurate a truly Postliberal era, holding the promise to solve issues of both the modern era, and the Axial Age as a whole. So far, Generative Anthropology has in large part engaged with the past, before Evolution was Central Signifier, which is promising as it demonstrates its potential to reconcile the past with the present, bringing what we presently consider esoteric archaic knowledge into the Center’s space of conceptualization, and thereby making it intelligible. Therefore, I think a more pressing imperative we face now is to bring the present and modern into the Center’s space of conceptualization, to demonstrate that Generative Anthropology isn’t merely a rehashing of old forms, or an update to the outdated.
Last thing to do is to show the full model of how the Central Signifier obtains its intrinsic model, which it then projects onto its symbolic order:
Written by SamgyeopsalChonsa, edited by Uberover