The Degeneration of Relational Asymmetry - A Taxonomy of Coldness and Arrogance by Dimension of Degradation

Posted on 2026-07-17 In Philosophy , Theory of Justice Views: Disqus: Word count in article: 26k Reading time ≈ 1:34

ENGLISH

The Degeneration of Relational Asymmetry

A Taxonomy of Coldness and Arrogance by Dimension of Degradation

Wanhong Huang · huangwanhong@serendip.ngo

Abstract

Among those most invested with the expectation of help, the physician being the recurring instance, one sometimes meets two postures easily confused: coldness, a withdrawal, and arrogance, a settling into height. This paper asks whether the two are the same thing wearing different faces, or two degenerations with distinct mechanisms, and it approaches the question by classification. Working within a framework that takes being to be at once generative and relational, it treats relationality as holding a transcendental priority: as the condition under which difference and constraint can be posited at all, upon which the possibility of structural evolution, which is generativity, emerges. That priority is itself offered as a questionable premise, held open and not settled. On this footing degeneration is defined as the contraction of that possibility, and the two dimensions, the generative and the relational, serve as the axes of a taxonomy. Coldness and arrogance are then found to fall on different axes: arrogance appearing where the relational dimension degrades, a position ceasing to have its direction returned and ossifying into a supposed property of its occupant; one class of coldness appearing where the generative dimension degrades, the relation still holding while it no longer produces. Because the two dimensions mutually constitute one another in occurrence, a single posture is reachable by more than one path, so that the mechanisms are plural. The paper does not assert that this structure is the truth of arrogance. It proposes the structure as a candidate and asks whether the established accounts, from recognition, from disposition, from internalized oppression, from the psychoanalysis of the gaze and of narcissism, from the political economy of extraction, can be recovered as its projections, each such mapping being a place at which the structure, should the mapping fail, would be shown to be wrong.

Keywords: relational asymmetry; arrogance; coldness; generativity; relationality; ossification; taxonomy; recognition; narcissism.

A note on the standing of this paper. This is a conjecture pursued by classification. It takes two relational postures that settle upon those who occupy a position of giving, coldness and arrogance, and asks whether they share a mechanism or differ in one, using the two dimensions of a generative-relational account of being as the axes along which to sort them. Three cautions govern the whole. The account does not claim to be the truth of these postures; it proposes a structure and exposes it to refutation by asking that existing theories be recoverable as its projections, so that a failed projection counts against the structure. The priority it accords to relation is transcendental, a priority of possibility and of possibility alone, entered as a premise open to challenge and not as a demonstrated ground. And the account is dynamical throughout, in a sense to be kept apart from the moral: it concerns the conditions under which a relation degrades, and leaves aside the worth of anyone caught in the degradation. One further reservation belongs here. The taxonomy sorts the two postures along the two dimensions through which the framework takes being to be constituted, the generative and the relational; it does not claim that this cut is the best available, or that no other cut would sort the postures as well or better. The cut is the one the framework’s own constitution offers, and it is put forward to be worked with and tested, without any claim to optimality. Objection, correction, and counter-evidence are welcome at huangwanhong@serendip.ngo.

§1 Introduction

The prevailing ways of accounting for arrogance treat it as a trait of character or as an expression of power: the arrogant person is proud, or the arrogant person is strong, and in either telling the posture is read off from something the person has. Both accounts leave a gap. Pride and power are widespread and arrogance is uncommon, so that neither can be simply what arrogance is; and both pass over the most telling fact about the posture, that among people of equal competence and equal placement, some harden into it and some never do. An account that cannot say why the eminent surgeon who is daily corrected by her residents stays clear of arrogance, while another of equal standing settles into it, has yet to find the variable that matters.

This paper approaches arrogance, and the coldness with which it is easily confused, from a starting point in the relation itself, in what the relation does. The starting point is supplied by a framework, generative relational being, that takes subject, meaning, and value to emerge through relational process, in place of standing as properties prior to relation; and the wager of the paper is that the postures which settle upon those who occupy a lasting position of giving are best understood as degradations of that process. The occasion for the inquiry is a common and unsettling observation. Among the people most invested with the expectation of help, physicians being the sharpest instance, one meets, often enough, its opposite: sometimes a coldness that withdraws, sometimes an arrogance that surveys from a height. The observation is easily moralized, and just as easily excused; what it has seldom been is sorted.

Sorting it is the question of this paper. Are coldness and arrogance one hardening seen from two angles, or two different degradations that happen to befall the same position? The question matters because the two invite opposite responses, the one a depletion to be replenished, the other a lock to be broken, and because answering it calls for a way of telling relational degradations apart by their mechanism, in place of a verdict on either posture. The paper’s proposal is that the two dimensions through which generative relational being is constituted, the generative and the relational, furnish exactly such a way: that coldness and arrogance can be located as degradations on different dimensions, and that once so located, their difference in mechanism becomes legible.

The contribution is accordingly a taxonomy, and its standing is deliberately modest. The paper makes no claim that this taxonomy is the truth of coldness and arrogance, and none that it overturns the established accounts of them. It offers the taxonomy as a candidate structure and submits it to a test: if the structure has any purchase, the existing accounts, from recognition, from disposition, from internalized oppression, from the psychoanalysis of the gaze and of narcissism, from the political economy of extraction, should be recoverable as its projections, as what it looks like when one or another of its dimensions is dropped from view. Each such recovery is a checkable commitment, and a recovery that fails is a point at which the structure is shown to be wrong. The aim is to ask whether a single structure can stand behind these accounts, and to expose that structure, at named points, to refutation.

Two cautions govern the whole and are stated once here. The account is a conjecture throughout, put forward because it seems to organize the phenomena better than the alternatives and offered in a form built to be refuted; the reader is asked to weigh it. And the account is dynamical, in a sense held apart from the moral: to say that a configuration tends to produce a posture leaves the person caught in the configuration unaccused, and the humble occupant will turn out, on this telling, to be the differently situated one. The remainder proceeds as follows. §2 sets out the framework the paper works within and the family of phenomena to which the two postures belong. §3 fixes the two postures and the order of inquiry, taxonomy before unification. §4 sets down the two dimensions and the transcendental priority of relation on which the taxonomy rests. §5 builds the taxonomy and locates coldness and arrogance upon it. §6 develops the relational degradation that yields arrogance; §7 asks why some occupants degrade and others do not, and answers without appeal to virtue. §8 exposes the structure to refutation by asking the existing accounts to appear as its projections. §9 follows the guarding of authority that the running instance contained, lets it open a second coordinate the two dimensions do not supply, and states what the taxonomy does not reach. §10 states the trigger the account leaves unsettled, its limits, and the questions it leaves for later work.

§2 Background: Generative Relational Being and the Family of Degradations

The framework within which the two postures are examined is generative relational being, a theory of how subject, meaning, value, creation, and normativity co-emerge through generative relational processes. Its point of departure is a refusal. It declines to take the subject as given prior to its relations, or meaning as residing in a sign prior to its use, or value as a property borne by a thing prior to the relation in which it comes to matter. What these have in common, on this view, is that each is standardly treated as an entity that exists first and enters relations second; and generative relational being reverses the order, holding that subject, meaning, and value are generated in and through relational processes. The framework is in this sense doubly specified by its name. It is relational in that relation is prior to the terms it relates; it is generative in that what relation does exceeds the mere connecting of pre-existing things and reaches to production, bringing into being subjects, meanings, and values that were not there before the relating.

For the purposes of this paper two features of the framework carry the weight, and both will be developed formally in §4. The first is that being, on this account, is constituted along two dimensions at once: a relational dimension, concerning how difference and connection are posited and sustained between terms, and a generative dimension, concerning how new subject, meaning, and value emerge upon those relations. These are two aspects of one process, and, this is the second feature, the two are not symmetric. Relation holds a priority over generation, a priority of a particular and carefully delimited kind, which §4 will specify as transcendental. It is this two-dimensional constitution, together with the asymmetry within it, that the taxonomy of this paper will put to work: if being is generative-relational along two dimensions, then the degradation of being should be analyzable as degradation along one dimension or the other, and the postures this paper sorts should find their places accordingly.

The two postures belong, finally, to a larger family the framework brings into view: the family of relational degradations. Once subject, meaning, and value are seen as generated through relational process, a distinctive kind of failure becomes visible, the failure of a process to continue generating, which is other than the failure of a thing to have a property. Trust that no longer repairs itself, a silence that isolates without any act of exclusion, a bond that hardens into a fixed hierarchy, the internalization by which the demeaned come to author their own diminishment: these form variations on a single theme, the degradation of a generative relation into something that no longer generates. Coldness and arrogance are two members of this family, met at a particular site, the position of one who is chronically depended upon, and the present paper is, in the largest view, a study of how to tell the members of that family apart. It takes the two that settle upon the giver, and asks by what dimension of the underlying process each has failed.

§3 The Postures and the Order of Inquiry

This paper concerns the high side of a lasting asymmetry, and two postures that settle upon the one who occupies it. The first is coldness, a withdrawal from the one who approaches. The second is arrogance, a bearing from which the visitor is surveyed as though from a settled height. They are easily run together, and a first temptation is to treat them as one thing, a single hardening, seen from two angles.

The temptation should be resisted until it is earned. Coldness and arrogance may be one mechanism with two faces, or they may be two degenerations that happen to share a location; and which of these holds cannot be decided by inspecting the postures, only by asking what in each has degraded. This paper therefore proceeds by classification before unification. It first fixes the dimensions along which a relation can be said to degrade, and only then asks where on those dimensions each posture falls, and whether they fall together or apart. Unification, if it comes, must be a finding of the taxonomy and never a premise of it.

The setting in which the two postures are most concentrated, and which will serve throughout as the running instance, is the position of chronic giving, the physician at a leading hospital being the clearest case. The choice is not made because the postures are peculiar to medicine, for they are common elsewhere; it is made because the configuration is there in a dense form. Each day brings many who request the physician’s help, await the physician’s decision, and, when things go well, give thanks. The relation the physician inhabits, hour upon hour, has a constant shape: many depend upon me. What such a position does to the one who holds it, and why it sometimes issues in coldness and sometimes in arrogance and sometimes in neither, is the phenomenon to be sorted.

The physician stands in for a wider class, and it is worth naming its members, since the shared shape is what matters. The teacher whose students chronically rely on her, the priest to whom the congregation comes for solace, the judge before whom parties wait for a ruling, the senior social worker or the philanthropist to whom the needy apply, the therapist sought for healing, the reviewer whose word settles a value, the veteran engineer summoned to every crisis: each occupies a position defined by being turned to for something others lack. What binds them is more than eminence. Each holds a role whose very name presupposes the asymmetry, the role of one who rescues, teaches, judges, heals, or saves; and a role so defined has trouble finding a place for return, since a return would seem to unsettle the asymmetry the role is built on. How is a patient to instruct a physician, a supplicant to give to a benefactor, within the terms the role lays down? The question is not rhetorical. It marks a feature of these positions that later sections will need: the role’s own grammar may leave no slot for the return whose absence, on the account to come, is what lets a posture harden. That some of the people most called upon to help should be among those most liable to coldness and arrogance is, in this light, less a puzzle of character than a feature of the positions they hold.

§4 The Dimensions and the Priority of Relation

The framework within which the postures are sorted takes being to be at once generative and relational, and the taxonomy to follow uses these two as its axes. Before they can serve as axes their relation to one another must be fixed, for on it the whole classification turns; and fixing it takes care, since the natural ways of putting it import more than the framework will allow.

4.1 Why Relation Is Prior, and in What Sense

One might be tempted to call relation the substrate and generativity what runs upon it, so that there is first a relation and then, within it, the production of value. This says too much. It installs relation as a thing that exists first, with generativity as its later tenant, and so smuggles in exactly the kind of absolute ground the framework declines to posit. The framework does not hold that relation is the stuff of which being is made, with generativity a subsequent activity of that stuff. Neither does it make the two co-equal, each as originary as the other, for that would leave the taxonomy with two independent axes and no account of how a degradation in one bears on the other.

The priority relation holds is of a third kind, and naming it precisely is the point of this subsection. Relation is prior as a condition of possibility. Its priority is that of what makes something possible over the thing so made, and it remains, in occurrence, entangled with what it makes possible. What relation makes possible is the positing of difference and of constraint. A difference is always a difference with respect to something; it does not stand alone, and to have differences at all is already to stand in relation. Constraint, in turn, is what difference does to a field of possibility: it cuts the field, ruling some things in and others out. And it is only upon a field of possibility so cut, so structured by posited difference and constraint, that there can be such a thing as structural evolution, a capacity of the system to become, in whole or in part, otherwise than it is. That capacity, the possibility of structural, or partial-structural, evolution upon a relationally structured field, is what the framework means by generativity.

So the chain runs: relation makes possible the positing of difference and constraint; upon difference and constraint there emerges the possibility of structural evolution; and that possibility is generativity. Generativity presupposes relation, then, for a definite reason. Relation supplies the structure of the possibility-space within which alone anything could evolve, and supplies it without being the material out of which generation is made. This is the sense in which the priority is transcendental: relation is the condition under which generativity is possible, and is by that very role kept from being a ground lying beneath it.

Two consequences must be held together, and they do not conflict. The priority is genuine: absent the relational structuring of possibility there is no room for generation, and in that precise sense relation comes first. And generativity can, in occurrence, reshape relation, since a particular course of generation alters the particular relation it occurs in; the transcendental priority of relation survives this genetic feedback, because any such reshaping still takes place within the possibility-space relation affords. Relation is prior in possibility; generativity may feed back in occurrence. There is no question here of which came first in time, and none is asked.

Premise (entered as open). Relationality holds a transcendental priority over generativity: it is the condition under which difference and constraint can be posited, and only upon these does the possibility of structural evolution, which is generativity, emerge. This priority is one of possibility, held apart from substance and from temporal precedence, and it leaves room for generativity’s reshaping of relation in occurrence. The premise is used here to build the taxonomy; it is offered without claim of demonstration, and the account that rests on it stands or falls with it.

4.2 Degeneration and the Contraction of Possibility

The priority just fixed yields a definition of what it is for a relation to degrade. If generativity is the possibility of structural evolution upon a relationally structured field, then degeneration is the contraction of that possibility: the closing of the field, the narrowing of the room in which the system could become otherwise. A relation degrades, on this definition, when the space of its possible changes shrinks, when what could have become various becomes fixed; the mere fact of change is no degradation, for change is what a living relation does.

This definition has a degree built into it, for the qualifier “structural or partial-structural” was deliberate. The possibility-space need not close all at once or entirely; a part of it may narrow while the rest stays open. Degeneration is accordingly a magnitude and not a single event, and the taxonomy to follow will exploit this. Coldness and arrogance are distinguished as contractions of the possibility-space along different dimensions, reached by different routes, and the difference between them is one of dimension and route, not of the presence or absence of degradation.

§5 The Taxonomy of Relational Degradation

With the two dimensions fixed and degeneration defined as the contraction of possibility, the postures can be sorted. The claim of this section is that coldness and arrogance are degradations that fall on different dimensions, in place of one mechanism seen twice, and that each, moreover, admits more than one path, so that the mechanisms are plural.

5.1 The Two Dimensions and Their Axes

Two questions can be asked of any relation, and they are distinct. The first is generative: is the relation still producing, does structural evolution still occur upon it, or has the field gone still? The second is relational: does the relation still posit and return difference, does value and regard still flow both ways and reverse, or has the direction locked? The first axis runs from a relation that generates to one that has ceased to; the second from a relation whose difference is live and returned to one whose difference has been fixed one-way. Because relation holds the transcendental priority set out in §4, the two axes are asymmetric, and their asymmetry is what will separate the postures.

5.2 Arrogance and the Relational Dimension

Take arrogance first. What has degraded in it is the relational dimension. The relation of chronic giving, held long, may cease to have its direction returned: the giver gives and is not, in turn, given to; the difference between the positions, once posited afresh each time the roles reversed, is now posited once and held. The physician who is never, or too rarely, instructed by a patient, corrected downward from the seat of authority, returned to the position of one who receives, inhabits a relation in which difference has stopped circulating and lies fixed in a single orientation. This is a degradation of the relational axis. The relation may still produce, and the physician may be curing as effectively as ever; what has failed is the return, so that what the relation produces no longer comes back, and the difference it posits has locked.

Upon this relational lock the generative possibility above it contracts, and here the transcendental priority does its work. Because generativity emerges only upon posited-and-returned difference, a difference that has ceased to circulate can no longer support genuine structural evolution; what generation continues is more and more the reproduction of the fixed position, an idling that confirms the giver in place while opening nothing new. The relational degradation propagates upward into a generative hollowing, as the priority says it must. And it is upon this hollowed, locked configuration that the occupant’s experience becomes uniform, always above, never returned, and that uniformity lies open to being misread as a property of the self. Arrogance is the name of that misreading, and its root is the relational lock.

5.3 Coldness and the Generative Dimension

One class of coldness falls on the other axis. Here the relation still posits and returns difference; the cold physician may still recognize the patient as an other with a claim, may still, in principle, be reached; and yet no structural evolution occurs upon the relation, nothing new is generated, the field has gone still. This is degradation of the generative dimension with the relational dimension still standing. Its phenomenology is exhaustion in place of height: the sentence it speaks is “I have nothing to give,” which is far from “I am above you,” and its bearing is the withdrawal of one who is depleted, at a distance from the survey of one who is elevated. The relation is intact as a relation; what has failed is generation upon it.

The transcendental priority predicts that this degradation need not propagate the way arrogance’s does. Because generativity presupposes relation while relation does not presuppose generativity, the stilling of generation leaves the relational structure beneath it standing: the difference is still posited, the other is still an other, and the relation stays in principle recoverable should generation resume. This is why one class of coldness can lift where arrogance holds fast: the depleted giver who is replenished may simply resume, the relational ground having never been lost. The asymmetry of the two axes, which is the asymmetry of the transcendental priority, is exactly what tells the two postures apart.

Conjecture 1 (the taxonomic split). Coldness and arrogance may be degradations on different dimensions, in place of one mechanism seen twice: arrogance may arise where the relational dimension degrades, returned difference locking and the generative possibility above it hollowing into the reproduction of a fixed position; one class of coldness may arise where the generative dimension degrades, generation stilling while the relational structure stands. The asymmetry between them follows the transcendental priority of relation: relational degradation propagates upward into generative hollowing, while generative degradation may leave the relation beneath it standing.

5.4 Why the Mechanisms Are Plural

The two axes locate the postures without exhausting them, for a posture is an end-state, and an end-state on one axis may be reached by more than one route. The reason lies in a fact set aside in §4: though relation holds transcendental priority, the two dimensions mutually constitute one another in occurrence. A particular relation is sustained partly by what it generates, and a particular course of generation reshapes the relation it runs in. This occurrent entanglement means a degradation begun on one axis will, through feedback, draw on the other.

Two consequences follow. The first is that degradation, once begun, tends to deepen and to become stable, for the axes clamp one another: a relational lock hollows generation, and a hollowed generation, having nothing new to circulate, cannot rebuild the returned difference that would unlock the relation, a closed loop that neither side can easily open from within. Coldness and arrogance are in this sense self-holding, and seldom transient. The second consequence is that a single end-state is reachable by distinct paths. Arrogance may be entered from the relational axis, the direction locking first and generation hollowing after; or it may be entered from the generative axis, an exhaustion coming first, upon which the subject sustains a one-way bearing by overdrawing the old position in place of generating anew. The terminus is the same posture; the path differs. The mechanisms are accordingly plural, and a taxonomy of these postures must chart paths as well as positions, a task this paper opens and leaves for later work to complete.

Conjecture 2 (multiplicity of path). Because the two dimensions mutually constitute one another in occurrence, a degradation begun on either axis draws on the other, so that a single posture is reachable by more than one path and the axes clamp one another into a self-holding state. The mechanism of a posture is therefore plural, and its taxonomy must distinguish paths of entry as well as dimensions of degradation.

§6 The Ossification of a Relational Position

The taxonomy locates arrogance on the relational dimension and coldness, in one class, on the generative one. This section develops the relational degradation that yields arrogance, since it is there that a further and more contestable step is taken: the passage from a locked position to a supposed essence. The step is offered as a candidate mechanism, held short of any claim to be the established truth of arrogance.

Consider what a locked direction furnishes the subject as experience. When giving runs one way without return, the subject meets, day upon day, a single relational fact: I am above. Where the direction reverses, no such constant is available, for the subject is by turns above and below, and the alternation forbids the inference that either position is simply what the subject is. The relational lock removes the alternation and leaves a uniform experience of elevation, repeated until it takes on the seeming of a standing fact; and a standing fact about a person is read, too readily, as a fact about what the person is. I am always above becomes, by a short and unforced step, I am, by nature, above. This conversion of a constant relational position into a supposed property of its occupant is here called ontologization, and it is proposed as the mechanism by which a relational lock becomes the posture of arrogance.

So described, the passage from role to essence needs no decision and runs in one direction. It is sedimented in place of chosen: competence, a fact; then authority, a conferred and relational role; then a supposed higher worth, in which the standing has come loose from the relation that produced it and been read as a property of the person. Each phase is the natural reading of an experience the lock has made uniform, and the uniformity supplies the pressure that carries the reading onward. Arrogance, on this account, is a mistranslation the configuration invites, in place of an attitude the subject adopts.

Conjecture 3 (ontologization, offered as candidate). The relational lock may become arrogance by ontologization: the direction of giving locks, the subject’s experience of standing above is made constant, and that constancy is misread as a property of the person, in place of a feature of the relation, competence passing through authority into a supposed essence. This is proposed as a candidate mechanism for the relational branch of the taxonomy, to be tested against the projections of §8, and it is held short of any claim to be the truth of arrogance.

A consequence for identity follows, and is entered as conjecture. If arrogance is the misreading of a locked position as an essence, the “essence” so produced is a residue the relation’s degradation deposited, and not a property the subject held before the relation and expressed within it. Identity, in this instance, has the form of a sediment, what is left when a relation’s returned difference locks and its position is left to settle. The suggestion is confined to this identity, the arrogant one, and does not extend to all identity; it is consonant with a framework positing nothing prior to relation.

§7 The Sourcing of Confirmation

Some who occupy a high position for long degrade, and some do not, and answering why both strengthens the account and guards it against a moral misreading. Some who are chronically deferred to stay clear of the posture: the eminent practitioner who each day feels instructed by a student, corrected by a colleague, taught something by the problem or the patient before them. If the relational lock produced arrogance mechanically, these would ossify, and they do not. What holds them open?

The tempting answer is virtue, and it must be set aside, for the framework is not entitled to it and the account does not need it. The occupant who stays clear of hardening is, so far as this analysis can say, the differently supplied one, and no better a person. A subject in a high position stands in need of confirmation, some source that returns to it a sense of its standing, and the question is whence that confirmation is drawn. The hardening subject can draw it only from below, from the deference of those it gives to, the sole source a locked relation leaves open. The subject that stays open draws confirmation elsewhere: from the work, from being corrected, from the recurring experience of being wrong and coming to see it. So supplied, it has no need to extract its standing from the deference beneath it. And here is the decisive point: to be corrected, instructed, shown wrong just is to have the direction of the relation returned, which is the very thing the relational lock forecloses. The occupant whose confirmation is anchored in sources that return it to the receiving position is, by that fact, in a relation whose difference still circulates, and so has no constant elevation to be misread.

This reframes the difference between the arrogant and the humble occupant without recourse to character. What separates them is the sourcing of confirmation: for the one, downward-only, and exposed to the lock; for the other, anchored in what keeps returning the subject to the position of one who receives, and so kept unlocked. The humble occupant holds off the descent by no force of will; the descent is unavailable to a subject whose relation still returns. This is also the guardrail made exact. To attribute arrogance to configuration in place of vice locates it without excusing it, and the location is a relation’s, and not a soul’s.

Conjecture 4 (sourcing, held apart from virtue). Whether an occupant of a lasting high position degrades may turn on the sourcing of confirmation in place of character: the subject that can draw confirmation only from the deference below it is exposed to the lock, while the subject whose confirmation is anchored in sources that return it to the receiving position, the work, correction, the experience of being wrong, is by that fact in a relation whose difference still circulates, and so is held open. The difference between the arrogant and the humble is one of relational configuration, held apart from virtue.

§8 The Existing Accounts and the Projection Test

The structure proposed here would be idle if it stood apart from what has already been said about these postures. If it has any purchase, the established accounts should be recoverable as its projections, as what the structure looks like when one or more of its dimensions is dropped from view. This section asks, of six such accounts, whether the recovery goes through. The exercise is one of exposure in place of homage: each projection is a place at which the structure makes a checkable commitment, and a projection that fails to go through is a point at which the structure is shown to be wrong. The accounts are taken in turn, and in each the mapping is stated together with the point at which it might break.

8.1 Recognition

The Hegelian account of recognition, and its social elaboration, holds that the master’s predicament is that the recognition he commands issues from the very subordinate he has demeaned, and so is worthless to him. Mapped onto the present structure, this is the projection onto the confirmation dimension of §7: the subject whose regard is sourced only downward. The recovery is close, and its closeness is a point in the structure’s favor. The point at which it might break must equally be marked. Recognition, in the Hegelian telling, is answered by symmetry, by mutual recognition between equals; the present structure is answered instead by return, by the reversal of a difference that stays a difference. If these are the same demand, the projection holds. If symmetry and return come apart, as they do should a relation return difference without equalizing it, in the way the healthy asymmetry of teaching or of care appears to, then the structure and the recognition account diverge, and the divergence exposes a distinction the present account owes and has not fully paid: that between symmetry and return.

8.2 Disposition

The account of embodied disposition, of a durable hexis laid down by a position and worn thereafter as second nature, recovers the sedimentation of §6: the constant experience settling into a bearing. The projection is onto the mechanism of ontologization, and it goes through as far as the settling. Its breaking point concerns the source of what settles. In the disposition account the bearing is laid down by a social position exogenous to the relation, by where one stands in a field. In the present structure it is laid down by a lock endogenous to the relation, by the ceasing of returned difference within it. If the two sources coincide, the projection holds, and the present account is a dynamical refinement of the dispositional one, specifying when the disposition sets. If they come apart, so that positions produce dispositions with no reference to whether difference returns within the relation, the accounts part, and the parting bears directly on the open question of what locks the direction.

8.3 Internalized Oppression

The account of internalized oppression describes a subject brought to read a diminished position as its own nature, to author, from within, a lowering symbol of itself. This is the taxonomy’s other corner: a relational degradation read as essence, downward and from without, where arrogance is upward and from within. The projection tests the reach of the ontologization mechanism across the sign. If the diminished self-reading and the elevated one are recognizably one mechanism running in opposite directions, the structure gains a unification it did not assume. If they prove to differ in kind as well as in direction, then the corner does not belong to the same taxonomy, and the structure is narrower than proposed. The test is left genuinely open here, which is the honest state of it.

8.4 The Gaze

The psychoanalysis of the gaze holds that the subject is constituted under the regard of an other, and cannot simply forgo that regard. This recovers the confirmation dimension at its structural root: it says why the sourcing of regard should be constitutive at all, why a subject cannot merely walk away from the deference beneath it. The projection is onto the same dimension as the recognition account, one layer deeper, at the level of what makes regard necessary in place of what makes it worthless. Its breaking point: if the constitutive gaze requires no return, being, in its usual telling, a structural relation to an other that is no exchange, then the present structure’s insistence on returned difference may import an economy of exchange the gaze does not have, and over-relationalize what is meant to stay structural. The projection would then hold for the fact of the gaze and fail for its return, and mark a place where the present account has assumed more traffic than the phenomenon carries.

8.5 Narcissism

The clinical account of narcissism, particularly the account on which the self depends, for its cohesion, on a continuing supply of confirming regard from others taken as extensions of itself, recovers the present structure as its relational generating-condition. Mapped on, the failure of returned difference is the drying of that supply from its proper sources, upon which the self comes to draw confirmation from whatever regard it can command. The projection would place the present account beneath the clinical one, supplying the relational conditions under which the described dependence arises. Here lies the sharpest breaking point in the paper. If narcissism can arise with no relational asymmetry at all, from an intra-psychic deficit owing nothing to any degraded relation, then the relational generating-condition is not necessary, and arrogance of this kind can occur without the degradation the structure makes central. The structure does not forbid this; it is exposed exactly here, and the case of arrogance without relational degradation, should it be well established, would fix a boundary the structure must respect or fall to.

8.6 Extraction

The political economy of extraction describes value drawn continuously in one direction, taken and never returned. Mapped onto the subject, this is the relational lock of §5 seen as an economy: the one-way flow whose subjective face is the reading of the upstream position as a worth. Arrogance, on this projection, is the extractive relation worn as a posture. The projection connects the present account to a large body of analysis, and for the relational branch it is natural. Its breaking point concerns whether the posture is a necessary face of the flow. If extraction can run in a purely institutional, unsubjectivized form, value taken one-way with no occupant who reads the taking as a personal height, then the flow permits the posture without entailing it, and the structure must retreat from claiming that the flow produces the posture to claiming only that it permits it. That retreat is likely the correct one, and stating it is part of holding the structure to its weakest defensible form.

Conjecture 5 (the structure as candidate). The structure is offered as a candidate, and not as the truth of these postures, whose warrant is the recoverability of existing accounts as its projections: recognition and the gaze onto the confirmation dimension, disposition onto ontologization, internalized oppression onto the taxonomy’s opposite corner, narcissism onto the relational generating-condition, extraction onto the relational lock. Each projection is a checkable commitment, and each carries a point of possible failure, symmetry against return, exogenous against endogenous source, difference in kind across the sign, gaze without return, narcissism without asymmetry, extraction without subjectivation, at which the structure would be shown wrong. Its standing is exactly as good as these mappings prove to be.

§9 The Guarding of Authority and the Reach of the Taxonomy

The taxonomy so far sorts two postures along two dimensions and tests the sorting against existing accounts. This section marks where the sorting runs out. It does so by following a case the running instance already contained and the account has until now passed over, and by letting that case open a second coordinate the two dimensions do not supply. The section ends by stating, as plainly as it can, what the taxonomy does not reach.

9.1 The Defensive Lock of the High Position

The observation that opened this inquiry included a phrase the analysis has so far dropped. The physicians who met the visitor with coldness or height seemed also to be guarding something, to be holding a position and its resources. That guarding does not fit the coldness of §5, which was the coldness of depletion, the withdrawal of one who has nothing left to give. What the high position guards against is different. Here the withdrawal protects an authority, and the thing it fends off is the return itself: to be questioned by the one who has come for help, to be asked to justify a judgment to a subordinate, is felt as a threat to the standing from which the judgment issues. The lock, in this case, is no residue of an exhausted generosity. It is deployed, and deployed to keep the position intact.

This defensive lock differs from the trauma of a depleted subject, which closes to protect itself and pays the cost inward. The high position closes to protect its authority and passes the cost outward, onto the one whose return is refused. And the lock stands in a particular relation to arrogance. Where arrogance has already set, the defensive lock is what maintains it, since any genuine return, any moment of being instructed or corrected by one below, would loosen the very fixity that ossification depends on. Guarding and arrogance are in this sense one posture together with its self-defense, and not two separate things.

What this case exposes is a direction of causation the two dimensions were not built to carry. In §5 degradation came first and the posture followed: the direction locked, and arrogance settled upon the lock. Here the order can run the other way. A subject bent on guarding its authority may lock the return deliberately, and the relational degradation is then the product of the guarding, not its antecedent. The motive manufactures the degradation. A taxonomy that treats degradation as the independent term and posture as what follows cannot, by itself, hold a case in which the posture’s motive drives the degradation. The case asks for a further coordinate, one that registers what the subject is doing in the degradation, whether withdrawing from it or wielding it, in place of which dimension has degraded.

9.2 Why Symbolic Authority Guards Itself

To call the guarded thing an “authority” and stop there would name the case without explaining it. Why should a position of authority need guarding at all, such that a return becomes a threat? Two features of symbolic authority, drawn from psychoanalytic accounts of it, supply the reason, and both point the same way.

The first is that symbolic authority has no ground of its own. It is conferred by a symbolic order that rests, at bottom, on no ultimate guarantor; the authority a title carries is lent by the network of recognitions that install it, and is in that sense borrowed and revocable, standing on an empty place. An authority so constituted has to be continually enacted to persist, for it owns nothing beneath the enactment to fall back on. A return threatens it precisely because a return calls the enactment to account, asks it to explain and to justify, and an authority that must justify itself has already descended from the position of one whose word is taken to that of one whose word is weighed. The lock that refuses the return preserves the appearance that no justification is owed, which is the appearance on which a groundless authority subsists.

The second is that such authority runs on a presumption lodged in the other. The one who comes for help, for judgment, for healing, approaches the physician or the judge as one presumed to know, and the authority operates through that presumption far more than through any knowledge that might answer to it. The presumption is delicate. To be questioned closely by a subordinate, and to be found not to know, punctures it directly, and with it the position it sustains. The defensive lock guards this presumption from puncture: to decline the concrete exchange is to keep from view the moment at which the one presumed to know might be shown not to.

Both features describe something true of authority as such, and this is the point at which the case must be handled with care. If every symbolic authority stands on an empty place and runs on a presumption, then every symbolic authority requires maintenance, and maintenance cannot itself be the degradation. The healthy exercise of authority maintains its position too; a good teacher and a good judge are also presumed to know, and do not cease to hold their office each time they are questioned. What separates them from the defensive lock is the point on which this whole account has turned. The healthy authority maintains itself while admitting the return: it can be questioned, corrected, even bested, and its authority is re-granted afterward in place of destroyed. The defensive lock maintains itself by refusing the return, because it can no longer survive being questioned. The criterion is the familiar one. What matters is whether the maintenance proceeds by closing the return or by admitting it; the mere fact of maintenance settles nothing, since authority is always maintained.

9.3 The Registers of Damage

The defensive lock and the ossification of §6 both belong to the relational dimension, and they are not the same; what tells them apart is the register of the subject in which the damage falls, in place of the dimension that has degraded. Three such registers can be distinguished, and they furnish a second coordinate alongside the first. Where the first coordinate asks which dimension has degraded, the generative or the relational, this second asks which register the degradation touches: the symbolic, the imaginary, or the real.

The guarding of authority falls in the symbolic. What the defensive lock protects is a position in the order of recognitions, a standing conferred by title and office, and the threat it wards off is a threat to that conferred standing. The ossified arrogance of §6 falls, by contrast, in the imaginary. What ontologization does is take an image the relation has returned, the image of oneself as always above, and mistake it for one’s being; this misrecognition of an image as an essence is the work of the register in which the self forms by identifying with its reflection. The two are distinct, and yet they are found together, for the durable arrogance met in the world is seldom a private fantasy of superiority. It is an imaginary misrecognition stabilized by a symbolic authority, the reflected image of height held in place by a conferred standing that vouches for it. Arrogance of the enduring kind is a composite of the two registers; the guarding coldness is a defense mounted in one of them.

The third register, the real, marks the place the taxonomy reaches least. If there is a coldness that answers to it, the trauma-defense named below is the candidate, the closing of a subject upon an encounter it cannot bring into speech. The paper has little to say of this register beyond marking that it is there and largely empty. That emptiness is not a decoration. It is one of the boundaries the next subsection must draw.

9.4 What the Taxonomy Does Not Reach

A taxonomy earns trust by stating where it fails, and this one fails in three ways that can be named exactly. It is not exhaustive, not exclusive, and not complete in the register it has just opened.

It is not exhaustive because kinds of coldness fall outside the dimension it sorts. The coldness this paper placed on the generative axis was the coldness of depletion, and its own phrasing, a class of coldness, conceded from the first that others were left unsorted. Two press hardest. There is the defensive coldness of trauma, the closing of a subject to protect itself from an encounter it cannot absorb, which performs an active severing on the relational side in place of a stilling of generation, and which the account can locate only by adding the register of the real and the coordinate of response that §9 was driven to. And there is strategic coldness, the coldness of one who withholds response as a deliberate instrument, the silent treatment wielded to isolate or to compel. This last lies outside the taxonomy altogether, for the taxonomy sorts degradations, failures of a relation to go on generating or returning, and strategic coldness is a deed in place of a failure: the relation is not broken, it is used. A classification of degradations cannot hold an action, and the honest place for strategic coldness is outside its border.

It is not exclusive because the two dimensions leave a quadrant it cannot divide. A relation may fail on both axes at once, neither generating nor returning, and the subject in such a relation may present as cold or as arrogant with nothing in the two coordinates to say which. The both-degraded case is real, and the taxonomy has no criterion internal to it that assigns a posture to one name or the other. Where the axes fall silent, so does the sorting.

And it is not complete in the register-coordinate it has introduced, for that coordinate is unevenly filled. The symbolic and the imaginary have clear residents; the real has, at most, one uncertain candidate. A second coordinate that leaves a third of its range empty is a beginning of an analysis, not the whole of one. The right posture toward these empty and undivided cells is to leave them so, since to fill them by fiat would purchase completeness at the cost of the honesty that is the only thing recommending the scheme.

What all three failures share is a lesson about the taxonomy’s standing. It is a local instrument. It gives a mechanism-distinction for the postures it can place, the depletion-coldness and the ossification-arrogance that fall cleanly on its two dimensions, and it marks its own edges: the actions it cannot classify because they are not degradations, the quadrant it cannot divide, the register it has opened and mostly not filled. Completeness is not claimed for it. Completeness is named as something a further inquiry would have to establish, and this paper does not.

Conjecture 6 (the local reach of the taxonomy). The taxonomy may be local in place of complete. A second coordinate, the register of the subject in which damage falls, distinguishes the symbolic guarding of authority from the imaginary misrecognition of ossified arrogance, and suggests that enduring arrogance is a composite of the two; a third register, the real, is marked and left largely empty. Certain postures fall outside the scheme: strategic coldness, which is a deed and not a degradation; the trauma-defense, which asks for the register of the real; and the both-degraded quadrant, which the two dimensions cannot divide. The scheme is offered for what it can place, with its edges named, and with no claim to exhaust the postures it sorts.

§10 The Unsettled Trigger and the Limits of the Account

The account has made the lock of returned difference the hinge of arrogance and the stilling of generation the hinge of coldness, and has sorted the two postures onto different dimensions accordingly. It has yet to say why, in a given case, the direction locks or the generation stills, and honesty asks that this be posed openly, for the taxonomy classifies degradations whose trigger it does not supply.

At least three candidates present themselves, and the account does not adjudicate. The lock may be imposed from without, by a configuration that strips away the occasion for return, the sheer throughput of a setting that leaves no interval in which the one below could become, even briefly, the one who gives. It may be drawn from within, by a quiet declining of return, the labor of being taught and corrected being real labor a subject may cease to undertake; and in the sharper form given it in §9, the return may be locked on purpose, to guard an authority the return would threaten. Or it may follow a prior drying of confirmation’s other sources, so that the narrowing of regard precedes the lock and brings it on, in place of following from it. These candidates are not exclusive, and the paths of §5 suggest a given case may combine them. Which locks the direction, under what conditions, is the question the paper leaves open, and on which its central conjectures finally depend.

The limits are of a piece with this. The empirical basis is a small set of observations from a single kind of position, and the running instance carries confounds the account does not displace: the physician’s coldness admits explanations of volume, fatigue, and the defense against distress, which the relational reading does not overturn, and the claim entered was only that these do not exhaust the phenomenon, and never that the relational structure is its sole cause. The projections of §8 are offered as tests, and several are left explicitly unsettled; the structure is meant to be held only as firmly as they come to warrant. And the distinction on which the taxonomy turns, between a difference returned and a difference locked, awaits an operational form that would let a given relation be assigned to one side by something firmer than the reading offered here. Supplying that form, charting the paths of entry the mechanisms take, and settling the projections that here only hang, is the work this paper leaves open.

A note on method. No formal apparatus has been used, and the abstention is deliberate. The two dimensions could be written as coordinates, a degradation as motion along one of them, the mutual constitution of §5 as a coupling term, and a self-holding posture as an attractor of the coupled system into which the returning orbit has collapsed; the arrogant subject would then be a fixed point of a relation’s own degenerated dynamics. The connection is real and may be worth developing. It is left undeveloped here, because the argument is a conjecture stated in prose, and to formalize a conjecture would lend it a rigor it has not earned. What is claimed is claimed in the prose, and claimed only as a candidate to be tested.

References

[1] Bourdieu, Pierre (1990). The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. [French orig. 1980.]

[2] Fanon, Frantz (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

[3] Hegel, G. W. F. (1807). Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

[4] Honneth, Axel (1995). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Trans. Joel Anderson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[5] Kohut, Heinz (1971). The Analysis of the Self. New York: International Universities Press.

[6] Lacan, Jacques (1978). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton.

[7] Marx, Karl (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin, 1976.

中文

关系性不对称的退化

一份按退化维度对冷漠与傲慢所作的分类

黄万宏 · huangwanhong@serendip.ngo

摘要

在那些被寄予帮助之期待最多的人之中，医师是反复出现的实例，人们有时会遇到两种容易混淆的姿态：冷漠，一种退缩；以及傲慢，一种安坐于高处。本文追问这两者是否是同一样东西戴着不同的面孔，还是两种具有彼此有别之机制的退化；而它以分类的方式趋近这个问题。在一个把存在视为既是生成性的又是关系性的框架之内工作，本文把关系性当作持有一种先验的优先性：即作为差异与约束竟能被设定的条件，而结构演化的可能性，也就是生成性，正是在其上涌现的。那种优先性本身是作为一个可疑的前提被提出的，被保持开放而未被了结。在这一立足点上，退化被定义为那种可能性的收缩，而两个维度，即生成性的与关系性的，充当一个分类的诸轴。冷漠与傲慢于是被发现落在不同的轴上：傲慢出现在关系性维度退化之处，即一个位置不再有它的方向被回返，并僵化为它的占据者的一项假定属性；而一类冷漠出现在生成性维度退化之处，即关系仍然持守，而它不再产出。由于这两个维度在发生之中相互构成，一个单一的姿态可经由不止一条路径抵达，因而诸机制是复数的。本文并不断言这一结构就是傲慢的真理。它把该结构作为一个候选者提出，并追问既有的诸说明，即来自承认的、来自禀性的、来自被内化的压迫的、来自凝视与自恋之精神分析的、来自榨取之政治经济学的，能否作为它的诸投影而被复得；每一个这样的映射都是一个地方，倘若该映射失败，该结构便会在那里被表明是错的。

关键词： 关系性不对称；傲慢；冷漠；生成性；关系性；僵化；分类；承认；自恋。

关于本文分量的一则说明。这是一个以分类方式所追寻的猜想。它取两种落在那些占据给予位置者身上的关系性姿态，即冷漠与傲慢，并追问它们是共有一个机制、还是在一个机制上有别，用一套生成性关系的存在说明的两个维度，作为据以对它们进行分拣的诸轴。有三项审慎统辖全篇。该说明并不主张自己是这些姿态的真理；它提出一个结构，并通过要求既有的诸理论能作为它的诸投影而被复得，把它暴露于反驳之下，以致一个失败的投影构成对该结构的不利证据。它给予关系的优先性是先验的，是一种可能性的、并且仅仅是可能性的优先性，作为一个开放于挑战的前提、而不是作为一个被证明的根据而录入。而该说明自始至终是动力学的，在一种须与道德分开的意义上：它关切一段关系据以退化的诸条件，而把陷于那退化之中的任何人的价值搁置一旁。还有一项保留属于此处。该分类沿该框架据以认为存在被构成的那两个维度，即生成性的与关系性的，对这两种姿态进行分拣；它并不主张这一切分是现有最好的，也不主张没有别的切分会同样好地、或更好地分拣这些姿态。这一切分是该框架自身的构成所提供的那一个，而它被提出是为了被使用与被检验，不带任何最优性的主张。反对、纠正与反证，欢迎寄至 huangwanhong@serendip.ngo。

§1 引论

流行的解释傲慢的方式，把它当作一项性格特质或一种权力的表达：傲慢的人是骄傲的，或者傲慢的人是强势的，而在任一说法中，那种姿态都是从那个人所拥有的某种东西上读出来的。两种说明都留下一道缺口。骄傲与权力是广泛的，而傲慢是不常见的，因此二者都不可能单纯就是傲慢之所是；而且二者都越过了关于这种姿态的最能说明问题的事实，即在能力相当、位置相当的人们之中，有些人硬化为它，而有些人从不。一个无法说出为何那位每天被她的住院医师纠正的杰出外科医生远离傲慢、而另一位地位相当者却安坐于其中的说明，尚未找到那个要紧的变量。

本文从关系本身、从关系所做之事这一出发点，来趋近傲慢，以及那种与它容易混淆的冷漠。这个出发点是由一个框架所提供的，即生成性关系存在，它认为主体、意义与价值是通过关系性过程涌现的，而不是作为先于关系的属性而存立；而本文的赌注是：那些落在占据一个持久给予位置者身上的姿态，最好被理解为那个过程的诸种退化。这项探究的契机是一个常见而令人不安的观察。在那些被寄予帮助之期待最多的人之中，医师是最尖锐的实例，人们时常遇到它的反面：有时是一种退缩的冷漠，有时是一种自高处审视的傲慢。这个观察容易被道德化，也同样容易被开脱；它鲜少被做到的，是被分拣。

分拣它，正是本文的问题。冷漠与傲慢是从两个角度所见的同一种硬化，还是碰巧降临于同一个位置的两种不同退化？这个问题要紧，因为二者召唤相反的回应，其一是一种有待被补充的耗竭，其二是一把有待被打开的锁；也因为回答它召唤一种依机制把诸种关系性退化区别开来的方式，而不是对任一姿态的一个裁决。本文的提议是：生成性关系存在据以被构成的那两个维度，即生成性的与关系性的，恰恰提供了这样一种方式：冷漠与傲慢可以被定位为不同维度上的退化，而一旦如此被定位，它们在机制上的差异便变得可辨读。

因此，本文的贡献是一个分类，而它的分量是刻意谦抑的。本文并不主张这个分类是冷漠与傲慢的真理，也不主张它推翻了关于它们的既有诸说明。它把该分类作为一个候选结构提出，并把它交付一项检验：如果该结构有任何着力之处，那么既有的诸说明，即来自承认的、来自禀性的、来自被内化的压迫的、来自凝视与自恋之精神分析的、来自榨取之政治经济学的，应当能作为它的诸投影而被复得，即作为当它的某一个或另一个维度被从视野中略去时它所呈现的样子。每一个这样的复得都是一项可核查的承诺，而一个失败的复得就是一个该结构被表明为错的点。目的是追问一个单一的结构能否立于这些说明背后，并在被指名的诸点上，把那个结构暴露于反驳之下。

有两项审慎统辖全篇，并在此一次性陈述。该说明自始至终是一个猜想，之所以被提出，是因为它似乎比诸替代方案更好地组织了这些现象，并且是以一种被造来供反驳的形式被提出的；读者被请求去掂量它。而该说明是动力学的，在一种与道德分开的意义上：说一个格局倾向于产生一种姿态，这让陷于那格局之中的人不受指控，而那位谦逊的占据者，依这一说法，将被证明是处境不同的那一位。其余部分如下推进。§2 列出本文在其中工作的框架，以及这两种姿态所属的那个现象家族。§3 固定这两种姿态与探究的次序，即分类先于统一。§4 写下那两个维度，以及该分类所立于其上的关系的先验优先性。§5 建构该分类，并把冷漠与傲慢定位于其上。§6 展开产出傲慢的那种关系性退化；§7 追问为何有些占据者退化而有些不，并且不诉诸德性地作答。§8 通过要求既有的诸说明作为它的诸投影而现身，把该结构暴露于反驳之下。§9 追随那个贯穿实例已然含有的对权威的守护，让它打开一个那两个维度所不提供的第二坐标，并陈述该分类所不抵达之物。§10 陈述该说明所留作未决的那个触发因素、它的诸界限，以及它留给后续工作的诸问题。

§2 背景：生成性关系存在与退化的家族

这两种姿态在其中被考察的框架是生成性关系存在，一套关于主体、意义、价值、创造与规范性如何通过生成性关系过程共同涌现的理论。它的出发点是一项拒绝。它拒绝把主体当作先于其诸关系而给定的，或把意义当作先于其使用而寓于一个符号之中的，或把价值当作先于它于其中开始要紧的那段关系而由一个事物所承载的一项属性。依这一看法，这些所共有的是：每一个都被标准地当作一个先存在、后进入关系的实体；而生成性关系存在颠倒这一次序，主张主体、意义与价值是在关系性过程之中并通过关系性过程被生成的。该框架在此意义上被它的名字双重地限定。它是关系性的，因为关系先于它所关联的诸项；它是生成性的，因为关系所做之事超出对既存事物的单纯连接，而抵达生产，把在关联之前并不在那里的诸主体、诸意义与诸价值带入存在。

就本文的目的而言，该框架的两项特征承载着重量，而二者都将在 §4 中被正式展开。第一项是：依此说明，存在是同时沿两个维度被构成的：一个关系性维度，关切差异与连接如何在诸项之间被设定与被维系；以及一个生成性维度，关切新的主体、意义与价值如何在那些关系之上涌现。这是一个过程的两个方面，而，这是第二项特征，二者并不对称。关系持有一种对生成的优先性，一种特定的、被审慎地界定的优先性，§4 将把它规定为先验的。正是这一双维度的构成，连同其内部的那种不对称，是本文的分类将要投入使用的东西：如果存在沿两个维度是生成性关系的，那么存在的退化就应当可被分析为沿一个维度或另一个维度的退化，而本文所分拣的那些姿态就应当相应地找到它们的位置。

最后，这两种姿态属于该框架所带入视野的一个更大的家族：关系性退化的家族。一旦主体、意义与价值被看作通过关系性过程被生成的，一种独特的失败便成为可见，即一个过程未能继续生成的失败，而这不同于一个事物未能拥有一项属性。不再自我修复的信任、一种不带任何排斥行为却使人孤立的沉默、一段硬化为固定等级的纽带、被贬低者据以开始自撰其自身之贬损的内化：这些构成一个单一主题的诸变奏，即一段生成性关系退化为某种不再生成的东西。冷漠与傲慢是这个家族的两名成员，在一个特定的场址被遇到，即那个被长期依赖者的位置；而本文，在最大的视野中，是一项关于如何把那个家族的诸成员区别开来的研究。它取那两个落在给予者身上的，并追问每一个是依底层过程的哪一个维度而失败的。

§3 那两种姿态与探究的次序

本文关切一段持久不对称的高的一侧，以及两种落在占据它者身上的姿态。第一种是冷漠，一种对趋近者的退缩。第二种是傲慢，一种仿佛自一个安坐的高处审视来访者的举止。它们容易被混作一谈，而第一个诱惑是把它们当作一样东西，即从两个角度所见的一种单一硬化。

这个诱惑应当被抵制，直到它被挣得。冷漠与傲慢可能是一个机制带着两副面孔，也可能是碰巧共享一个位置的两种退化；而其中哪一个成立，不能通过检视这些姿态来决定，只能通过追问每一个之中什么已经退化来决定。因此本文以分类先于统一的方式推进。它首先固定一段关系据以能被说成退化的诸维度，然后才追问每一种姿态落在那些维度上的何处，以及它们是落在一起还是分开。统一，如果它到来，必须是该分类的一项发现，而绝不是它的一个前提。

这两种姿态最为集中的情境，也是全篇将充当贯穿实例的那一个，是长期给予的位置，一家顶尖医院的医师是最清晰的案例。这一选取不是因为这些姿态为医学所特有，因为它们在别处也常见；而是因为那个格局在那里以一种密集的形式在场。每一天都带来许多人，他们请求这位医师的帮助，等待这位医师的决定，并且，当事情顺利时，致以感谢。这位医师时时刻刻所栖居的那段关系，有一个恒定的形状：许多人依赖我。这样一个位置对持有它的人做了什么，以及它为何有时发为冷漠、有时发为傲慢、有时两者皆非，正是有待被分拣的现象。

这位医师代表一个更广的类别，而值得点出它的诸成员，因为那个共有的形状才是要紧的。那位学生长期依赖她的教师、那位会众前来寻求慰藉的神父、那位当事人等待其裁决的法官、那位资深社工或需要者向之申请的慈善家、那位被寻求以求疗愈的治疗师、那位一言定价值的评审、那位每逢危机便被召唤的资深工程师：每一个都占据一个由”因他人所缺之物而被转向”所定义的位置。把他们绑在一起的不止是显赫。每一个都持有一个其名称本身就预设了那种不对称的角色，即一个拯救者、教导者、裁决者、疗愈者或拯救者的角色；而一个如此被定义的角色，很难为回返找到位置，因为一次回返似乎会动摇该角色所建立于其上的那种不对称。在该角色所铺设的条款之内，一位病人如何去指教一位医师，一位恳求者如何去给予一位施惠者？这个问题不是修辞性的。它标出这些位置的一项特征，而后面诸节将需要它：该角色自身的语法可能不留下任何供回返的位置，而依即将到来的说明，正是那种回返的缺席让一种姿态得以硬化。在这一光照下，某些最被召唤去帮助的人竟属于最易于冷漠与傲慢者之列，与其说是一个性格之谜，不如说是他们所持位置的一项特征。

§4 那两个维度与关系的优先性

这些姿态在其中被分拣的框架，把存在视为既是生成性的又是关系性的，而随后的分类以这两者为它的诸轴。在它们能够充当诸轴之前，它们彼此的关系必须被固定，因为整个分类系于其上；而固定它需要审慎，因为那些自然的表述方式引入了多于该框架所会允许的东西。

4.1 为何关系是优先的，以及在何种意义上

人们可能会被诱惑去把关系称作基底、把生成性称作运行于其上之物，以致先有一段关系，然后，在它之内，有价值的生产。这说得太多了。它把关系安装为一个先存在的事物，而生成性是它后来的租客，从而恰恰夹带进了该框架所拒绝设定的那种绝对根据。该框架并不主张关系是存在由之被造的质料，而生成性是那种质料的一项后续活动。它也不使二者共等，各自与另一者同样原初，因为那会留给该分类两条独立的轴，而没有任何关于一个之中的退化如何关乎另一个的说明。

关系所持有的优先性是第三种，而精确地命名它正是本小节的要点。关系作为一个可能性的条件而优先。它的优先性是”使某物成为可能者”相对于”如此被造成之物”的优先性，而它在发生之中，仍与它所使成为可能之物纠缠在一起。关系所使成为可能的，是差异与约束的设定。一个差异总是相对于某物的差异；它并不独自存立，而要有差异，本身就已经是处于关系之中。约束，转而言之，是差异对一个可能性的场域所做之事：它切割那个场域，把一些东西划入而把另一些划出。而只有在一个如此被切割的、如此被所设定的差异与约束所结构化的可能性场域之上，才能有结构演化这样一种东西，即一个系统整个地或部分地成为与它当下所是不同的那种能力。那种能力，即在一个被关系性地结构化的场域之上的结构的、或部分结构的演化的可能性，正是该框架所谓的生成性。

于是这条链条如此运行：关系使差异与约束的设定成为可能；在差异与约束之上涌现出结构演化的可能性；而那种可能性就是生成性。因此，生成性预设关系，理由是确定的。关系提供任何东西才可能在其中演化的那个可能性空间的结构，而它提供这个，却不成为生成由之被造的材料。这就是那种优先性之为先验的意义：关系是生成性据以可能的条件，并且正因这一角色而被阻止成为一个躺在它下面的根据。

有两项后果必须被一同持守，而它们并不冲突。那种优先性是真实的：缺了可能性的关系性结构化，便没有生成的余地，而在那个精确的意义上关系居先。而生成性能够在发生之中重塑关系，因为一段特定的生成进程改变它于其中发生的那段特定关系；关系的先验优先性在这一发生性反馈中存活下来，因为任何这样的重塑仍然发生在关系所给予的那个可能性空间之内。关系在可能性上优先；生成性可以在发生之中反馈。此处根本不涉及在时间上哪一个先来的问题，也不问这个。

前提（作为开放而录入）。 关系性持有一种对生成性的先验优先性：它是差异与约束据以能被设定的条件，而只有在这些之上，结构演化的可能性，也就是生成性，才涌现。这种优先性是一种可能性的优先性，与实体和与时间上的在先分开持守，而它为生成性在发生之中对关系的重塑留下余地。这个前提在此被用来建构该分类；它是不带证明之主张地被提出的，而立于其上的该说明与它共存亡。

4.2 退化与可能性的收缩

刚被固定的那种优先性产出一个关于”一段关系退化”是什么的定义。如果生成性是在一个被关系性地结构化的场域之上的结构演化的可能性，那么退化就是那种可能性的收缩：那个场域的关闭，那个系统本可成为别样的余地的收窄。依这个定义，一段关系退化，是当它的诸可能变化的空间收缩之时，是当那本可成为多样的东西变得固定之时；变化这一事实本身并不是退化，因为变化正是一段活的关系所做之事。

这个定义之中内建了一个程度，因为”结构的或部分结构的”这一限定语是刻意的。可能性空间不必一次性地或整个地关闭；它的一部分可能收窄，而其余部分保持敞开。因此退化是一个量值而不是一个单一事件，而随后的分类将利用这一点。冷漠与傲慢作为可能性空间沿不同维度、经由不同路线所抵达的诸种收缩而被区别开来，而它们之间的差异是维度与路线上的差异，不是退化之在场或缺席上的差异。

§5 关系性退化的分类

那两个维度既已固定，而退化既已被定义为可能性的收缩，这些姿态便可以被分拣。本节的主张是：冷漠与傲慢是落在不同维度上的退化，而不是被看了两次的一个机制；并且，此外，每一个都容许不止一条路径，因而诸机制是复数的。

5.1 那两个维度与它们的诸轴

有两个问题可以向任何关系提出，而它们是彼此有别的。第一个是生成性的：这段关系是否仍在产出，结构演化是否仍在它之上发生，还是那个场域已经静止？第二个是关系性的：这段关系是否仍在设定并回返差异，价值与看待是否仍双向流动并反转，还是那个方向已经锁死？第一条轴从一段生成着的关系行至一段已停止生成的关系；第二条从一段其差异是活的且被回返的关系，行至一段其差异已被固定为单向的关系。由于关系持有 §4 所列出的那种先验优先性，这两条轴是不对称的，而它们的不对称正是将把这些姿态分开的东西。

5.2 傲慢与关系性维度

先取傲慢。它之中已经退化的是关系性维度。长期持守的长期给予的关系，可能不再有它的方向被回返：给予者给予，而不转过来被给予；诸位置之间的差异，曾在角色每次反转时被重新设定，如今被设定一次而后被持住。那位从未、或太少被一位病人所指教、被自权威之座向下纠正、被回返到一个接受者位置的医师，栖居于一段其中差异已停止循环、并固定地躺在一个单一朝向之中的关系。这是关系性轴上的一种退化。这段关系可能仍在产出，而这位医师可能仍像以往一样有效地治愈着；已经失败的是那种回返，以致这段关系所产出的东西不再回来，而它所设定的差异已经锁死。

在这个关系性的锁之上，它上面的生成性可能性收缩，而此处那种先验优先性发挥其作用。因为生成性只在被设定并被回返的差异之上涌现，一个已停止循环的差异便不再能支撑真正的结构演化；所继续的生成越来越是那个固定位置的再生产，一种把给予者确认在原地、却什么新东西也不打开的空转。关系性退化向上传播为一种生成性的空洞化，正如那种优先性所说它必然如此。而正是在这个被空洞化的、锁死的格局之上，那位占据者的经验变得一律，即总在上方、从不被回返，而那种一律性敞开于被误读为自我的一项属性。傲慢是那种误读的名字，而它的根是那个关系性的锁。

5.3 冷漠与生成性维度

一类冷漠落在另一条轴上。此处，关系仍在设定并回返差异；那位冷漠的医师可能仍然承认病人是一个带有诉求的他者，可能在原则上仍然能被触及；而没有任何结构演化在这段关系之上发生，没有任何新东西被生成，那个场域已经静止。这是生成性维度的退化，而关系性维度仍然立着。它的现象学是耗竭而不是高度：它所说的那个句子是”我没有什么可给的了”，这远不同于”我在你之上”；而它的举止是一位被耗尽者的退缩，与一位被抬高者的审视相距甚远。这段关系作为一段关系是完好的；已经失败的是它之上的生成。

那种先验优先性预言，这种退化不必像傲慢的那样传播。因为生成性预设关系，而关系并不预设生成性，生成的静止让它下面的关系性结构仍然立着：差异仍被设定，他者仍是一个他者，而这段关系在原则上保持可恢复，倘若生成重启。这正是为何一类冷漠能够解除，而傲慢却牢牢固着：那位被补充了的被耗尽的给予者可能就此重启，那个关系性的根基从未丧失。那两条轴的不对称，也就是那种先验优先性的不对称，恰恰是把这两种姿态区别开来的东西。

猜想 1（分类的分岔）。 冷漠与傲慢可能是不同维度上的退化，而不是被看了两次的一个机制：傲慢可能生起于关系性维度退化之处，即被回返的差异锁死，而它上面的生成性可能性空洞化为一个固定位置的再生产；一类冷漠可能生起于生成性维度退化之处，即生成静止，而关系性结构立着。它们之间的不对称遵循关系的先验优先性：关系性退化向上传播为生成性的空洞化，而生成性退化可能让它下面的关系仍然立着。

5.4 为何诸机制是复数的

那两条轴定位了这些姿态而未穷尽它们，因为一种姿态是一个终态，而一条轴上的一个终态可能经由不止一条路线被抵达。理由在于 §4 所搁置的一个事实：尽管关系持有先验优先性，那两个维度在发生之中相互构成。一段特定的关系部分地由它所生成之物所维系，而一段特定的生成进程重塑它于其中运行的那段关系。这种发生性的纠缠意味着：一种在一条轴上开始的退化，将通过反馈，援引另一条。

有两项后果随之而来。第一是：退化，一旦开始，倾向于加深并变得稳定，因为那两条轴彼此夹紧：一个关系性的锁使生成空洞化，而一个被空洞化的生成，没有任何新东西可供循环，无法重建那种会解开该关系的、被回返的差异，这是一个任何一侧都难以从内部打开的闭环。冷漠与傲慢在此意义上是自我持守的，并且鲜少是短暂的。第二项后果是：一个单一的终态可经由彼此有别的路径被抵达。傲慢可能自关系性轴被进入，即方向先锁死，而生成随后空洞化；或者它可能自生成性轴被进入，即一种耗竭先来，而在其上主体通过透支旧位置、而不是重新生成，来维持一种单向的举止。终点是同一种姿态；路径有别。因此诸机制是复数的，而这些姿态的一个分类必须绘制路径与位置二者，这是本文所开启、并留给后续工作去完成的一项任务。

猜想 2（路径的多重性）。 因为那两个维度在发生之中相互构成，一种在任一条轴上开始的退化都会援引另一条，以致一个单一的姿态可经由不止一条路径被抵达，而那两条轴把彼此夹紧为一个自我持守的状态。因此一种姿态的机制是复数的，而它的分类必须区分进入的诸路径与退化的诸维度。

§6 一个关系性位置的僵化

该分类把傲慢定位在关系性维度上，把一类冷漠定位在生成性维度上。本节展开那种产出傲慢的关系性退化，因为正是在那里，迈出了一个更进一步且更可争议的步骤：从一个锁死的位置到一个假定的本质的过渡。这一步是作为一个候选机制被提出的，止步于任何”它是傲慢的既定真理”的主张之前。

考虑一个锁死的方向给主体提供什么作为经验。当给予单向运行而无回返时，主体日复一日地遇到一个单一的关系性事实：我在上方。凡方向反转之处，没有这样的恒常可用，因为主体轮流在上与在下，而这种交替禁止了”任一位置就单纯是主体之所是“这一推论。关系性的锁移除了那种交替，留下一种一律的被抬高的经验，反复着直到它带上一个常驻事实的貌相；而一个关于一个人的常驻事实，太轻易地就被读作一个关于那个人所是之物的事实。我总在上方经由一个短促而不勉强的步骤，变成我依本性在上方。这种把一个恒常的关系性位置转换为它的占据者的一项假定属性的转换，在此被称为本体论化，而它被提出为一个关系性的锁据以成为傲慢之姿态的机制。

如此被描述，从角色到本质的过渡无需任何决定，并且单向运行。它是被沉积的、而不是被选择的：能力，一个事实；然后是权威，一个被授予的、关系性的角色；然后是一种假定的更高价值，其中那个地位已从产生它的那段关系上松脱，并被读作那个人的一项属性。每一个相位都是对一个被那把锁弄得一律的经验的自然读法，而那种一律性提供了把那个读法推向前的压力。依此说明，傲慢是那个格局所招致的一个误译，而不是主体所采取的一种态度。

猜想 3（本体论化，作为候选者提出）。 关系性的锁可能通过本体论化而成为傲慢：给予的方向锁死，主体站在上方的经验被弄得恒常，而那种恒常性被误读为那个人的一项属性、而不是那段关系的一项特征，能力经由权威过渡为一种假定的本质。这被提出为该分类之关系性分支的一个候选机制，有待对照 §8 的诸投影加以检验，而它止步于任何”它是傲慢的真理”的主张之前。

一项关于同一性的后果随之而来，并作为猜想而录入。如果傲慢是把一个锁死的位置误读为一个本质，那么如此被产出的那个”本质”就是那段关系的退化所沉积下来的一个残余，而不是主体在关系之前就持有、并在关系之内表达出来的一项属性。同一性，在这个实例中，具有一种沉积物的形式，即当一段关系被回返的差异锁死、而它的位置被留待沉淀时所剩下的东西。这一提示被限定于这一种同一性，即傲慢的那一种，并不延伸到一切同一性；它与一个不设定任何先于关系之物的框架是相谐的。

§7 确认的来源

有些长期占据一个高位置的人退化，而有些不；回答为何如此，既加强该说明，又守护它免于一种道德上的误读。有些长期被恭让的人远离那种姿态：那位杰出的从业者，每天都感到被一位学生所指教、被一位同事所纠正、被面前的问题或病人教会某种东西。如果关系性的锁机械地产生傲慢，这些人便会僵化，而他们没有。什么使他们保持敞开？

那个诱人的答案是德性，而它必须被搁置，因为该框架无权诉诸它，而该说明并不需要它。那位远离硬化的占据者，就这一分析所能说的而言，是被不同地供给的那一位，而不是一个更好的人。一个处于高位置的主体需要确认，需要某个把一种关于它的地位之感回返给它的来源，而问题是那种确认是从何处被汲取的。那个硬化着的主体只能从下方汲取它，从它所给予的那些人的恭让中汲取，那是一段锁死的关系所留下的唯一来源。那个保持敞开的主体从别处汲取确认：从工作中，从被纠正中，从反复经验到自己错了并逐渐看到这一点中。如此被供给，它便无需从它下面的恭让中榨取它的地位。而这里是决定性的一点：被纠正、被指教、被指出错了，恰恰就是让那段关系的方向被回返，而那正是关系性的锁所封闭的东西。那位其确认锚定在那些把它回返到接受位置的来源之中的占据者，凭这一事实，处于一段其差异仍在循环的关系之中，因而没有任何恒常的被抬高可供误读。

这不诉诸性格地重构了傲慢的占据者与谦逊的占据者之间的差异。把他们分开的是确认的来源：对其一而言，只朝下，并暴露于那把锁；对其二而言，锚定在那些不断把主体回返到接受者位置的东西之中，因而被保持未锁死。那位谦逊的占据者并非凭意志之力挡住那个下坠；那个下坠对一个其关系仍在回返的主体来说是不可用的。这也是那道护栏被弄精确。把傲慢归于格局而不是恶德，定位了它而不开脱它，而那个定位是一段关系的，而不是一个灵魂的。

猜想 4（来源，与德性分开持守）。 一位持久高位置的占据者是否退化，可能取决于确认的来源而不是性格：那个只能从它下面的恭让中汲取确认的主体暴露于那把锁；而那个其确认锚定在那些把它回返到接受位置的来源之中的主体，即工作、纠正、错了的经验，凭这一事实处于一段其差异仍在循环的关系之中，因而被保持敞开。傲慢者与谦逊者之间的差异是关系性格局上的差异，与德性分开持守。

§8 既有诸说明与投影检验

如果此处所提出的结构与关于这些姿态已经被说过的东西分立无涉，它便会是空转的。如果它有任何着力之处，既有的诸说明应当能作为它的诸投影而被复得，即作为当它的一个或多个维度被从视野中略去时该结构所呈现的样子。本节就六个这样的说明追问那个复得是否行得通。这项练习是暴露而不是致敬：每一个投影都是一个该结构作出一项可核查承诺的地方，而一个行不通的投影就是一个该结构被表明为错的点。这些说明被依次取用，而在每一个中，那个映射连同它可能断裂之点被一同陈述。

8.1 承认

黑格尔式的承认说明及其社会性阐发主张：主人的困境在于他所命令来的承认，出自他所贬低的那同一个奴仆，因而对他毫无价值。映射到当前结构之上，这是向 §7 的确认维度的投影：那个其看待只朝下取源的主体。这个复得是贴近的，而它的贴近是该结构的一个有利之点。它可能断裂之点也同样必须被标出。承认，在黑格尔式的说法中，是由对称所回应的，即由平等者之间的相互承认；而当前结构则是由回返所回应的，即由一个仍然是差异的差异的反转。如果这些是同一个要求，那么该投影成立。如果对称与回返分开，正如当一段关系回返差异而不使之平等化时它们所分开的那样，以教学或照护的健康不对称似乎所做的方式，那么该结构与承认说明便分岔，而这一分岔暴露了当前说明所欠下、并且未曾完全偿付的一个区分：对称与回返之间的区分。

8.2 禀性

那种关于具身禀性的说明，即一种由一个位置所铺设、此后作为第二天性被穿戴的持久习性，复得了 §6 的沉积：那个恒常的经验沉淀为一种举止。该投影是向本体论化机制的投影，而它就那个沉淀而言行得通。它的断裂点关乎那个沉淀之物的来源。在禀性说明中，那种举止是由一个对该关系外源的社会位置所铺设的，由一个人在一个场域中所站之处所铺设。在当前结构中，它是由一个对该关系内源的锁所铺设的，由该关系之内被回返的差异的停止所铺设。如果这两个来源重合，那么该投影成立，而当前说明是禀性说明的一个动力学上的精炼，规定了那种禀性何时定型。如果它们分开，以致诸位置产生诸禀性而不参照差异是否在该关系之内回返，那么这两个说明便分道，而这一分道直接关乎”什么锁死了那个方向”这一开放问题。

8.3 被内化的压迫

那种关于被内化的压迫的说明，描述一个被弄得把一个被贬低的位置读作它自己本性的主体，一个从内部自撰一个关于它自身的贬低性符号的主体。这是该分类的另一个角落：一种被读作本质的关系性退化，向下并且自外而来，而傲慢是向上并且自内而来。该投影检验本体论化机制跨越符号的所及。如果那个被贬低的自我读法与那个被抬高的自我读法可辨认地是一个机制朝相反方向运行，那么该结构便获得了一个它未曾假定的统一。如果它们被证明在种类上、而不只在方向上有别，那么那个角落便不属于同一个分类，而该结构比所提议的更窄。这项检验在此被真正地留作开放，而这是关于它的诚实状态。

8.4 凝视

凝视的精神分析主张：主体是在一个他者的看待之下被构成的，并且不能单纯地放弃那种看待。这复得了确认维度的结构性根部：它说出为何看待的来源竟应当是构成性的，为何一个主体不能仅仅从它下面的恭让走开。该投影是向与承认说明同一个维度的投影，深一层，处在”什么使看待成为必要”、而不是”什么使它变得毫无价值”的层面上。它的断裂点：如果那个构成性的凝视不要求任何回返，在它通常的说法中是一种对一个他者的、并非交换的结构性关系，那么当前结构对被回返的差异的坚持，可能引入了一种凝视所没有的交换经济，并把一个本应保持结构性的东西过度关系化。该投影于是会就凝视这一事实而成立，而就它的回返而失败，并标出一个当前说明假定了多于该现象所承载之流通的地方。

8.5 自恋

那种关于自恋的临床说明，特别是那个认为自我为了它的凝聚而依赖于一份来自被当作它自身之延伸的他人的、持续供应的确认性看待的说明，把当前结构复得为它的关系性生成条件。映射上去，被回返的差异的失败，就是那份供应从它恰当来源处的干涸，而在其上，自我开始从它所能命令来的任何看待中汲取确认。该投影会把当前说明置于那个临床说明之下，提供所描述的那种依赖据以生起的诸关系性条件。这里躺着本文中最尖锐的断裂点。如果自恋能够在根本没有任何关系性不对称的情况下生起，出自一个不亏欠任何被退化关系的心内缺陷，那么那个关系性生成条件便不是必要的，而这一类傲慢便能够在没有该结构所核心化的那种退化的情况下发生。该结构并不禁止这一点；它恰恰在此处被暴露，而那个没有关系性退化的傲慢案例，倘若被良好地确立，便会固定一条该结构必须尊重、否则便败于其下的边界。

8.6 榨取

榨取的政治经济学描述价值被持续地朝一个方向抽取，被拿走而从不被归还。映射到主体之上，这是 §5 的关系性的锁被看作一种经济：那种单向的流动，其主观面孔是把上游位置读作一种价值。依这个投影，傲慢是被当作一种姿态穿戴起来的榨取性关系。该投影把当前说明连接到一大批分析之上，而对于关系性分支它是自然的。它的断裂点关乎那种姿态是否是那个流动的一个必然面孔。如果榨取能够以一种纯粹制度性的、未被主体化的形式运行，即价值被单向拿走，而没有任何把那种拿走读作一种个人高度的占据者，那么那个流动便允许那种姿态而不蕴涵它，而该结构必须从”那个流动产生那种姿态”的主张后撤到仅仅”它允许它”的主张。那个后撤很可能是正确的那一个，而陈述它是把该结构持守于它最弱的可辩护形式之上的一部分。

猜想 5（作为候选者的该结构）。 该结构是作为一个候选者、而不是作为这些姿态的真理被提出的，它的凭据是既有诸说明作为它的诸投影的可复得性：承认与凝视投向确认维度，禀性投向本体论化，被内化的压迫投向该分类的对立角落，自恋投向关系性生成条件，榨取投向关系性的锁。每一个投影都是一项可核查的承诺，而每一个都带有一个可能失败之点，即对称对回返、外源对内源、跨符号的种类差异、无回返的凝视、无不对称的自恋、无主体化的榨取，在这些点上该结构会被表明为错。它的分量恰恰与这些映射被证明的成色一样好。

§9 权威的守护与该分类的所及

到目前为止，该分类沿两个维度分拣两种姿态，并对照既有诸说明检验这一分拣。本节标出那个分拣在何处力有不逮。它这样做，是通过追随一个贯穿实例已然含有、而该说明迄今越过的案例，并让那个案例打开一个那两个维度所不提供的第二坐标。本节以尽可能平白地陈述该分类所不抵达之物作结。

9.1 高位置的防御性的锁

开启这项探究的那个观察，含有一个该分析迄今丢掉的短语。那些以冷漠或高度迎接来访者的医师，似乎也在守护着某种东西，在持守一个位置及其资源。那种守护不合于 §5 的冷漠，那是耗竭的冷漠，是一位无物可给者的退缩。高位置所守护以抵御的东西是不同的。此处那种退缩保护一个权威，而它所挡开的东西正是那种回返本身：被那个前来求助者所质询，被要求向一个下位者证成一个判断，被感受为对那个判断由之发出的地位的一个威胁。这种情形中的锁，不是一份被耗尽的慷慨的残余。它是被部署的，并且是被部署来保持那个位置完好的。

这种防御性的锁不同于一个被耗尽主体的创伤，后者闭合以保护它自身，并把代价向内支付。高位置闭合以保护它的权威，并把代价向外传递，传递到那个其回返被拒绝的人身上。而这把锁与傲慢处于一种特定的关系之中。凡傲慢已经定型之处，防御性的锁正是维持它的东西，因为任何真正的回返，任何被一位下位者指教或纠正的时刻，都会松动僵化所依赖的那种固定性本身。守护与傲慢在此意义上是一种姿态连同它的自我防御，而不是两样分开的东西。

这个案例所暴露的，是一个那两个维度未被造来承载的因果方向。在 §5 中，退化先来而姿态随后：方向锁死，而傲慢安坐于那把锁之上。此处，次序可以反向运行。一个执意守护其权威的主体，可能刻意地锁死那种回返，而关系性退化于是是那种守护的产物，而不是它的前件。动机制造了那种退化。一个把退化当作独立项、把姿态当作随之而来者的分类，无法独自持有一个其中姿态的动机驱动了退化的案例。这个案例召唤一个进一步的坐标，一个登记主体在那退化之中正在做什么、是从它退缩还是挥舞它、而不是登记哪一个维度已经退化的坐标。

9.2 为何象征性权威守护它自身

把那个被守护之物称作一个”权威”并就此打住，会命名那个案例而不解释它。为何一个权威的位置竟需要守护，以致一次回返成为一个威胁？象征性权威的两项特征，取自关于它的精神分析诸说明，提供了理由，而二者指向同一方向。

第一项是：象征性权威没有它自己的根据。它是由一个象征秩序所授予的，而那个秩序归根结底不立于任何终极担保者之上；一个头衔所携带的权威，是由那些安置它的承认网络所出借的，并在此意义上是借来的、可撤销的，立于一个空的位置之上。一个如此被构成的权威，必须被持续地施行才能持存，因为它在那施行之下并不拥有任何可退守之物。一次回返之所以威胁它，恰恰是因为一次回返把那种施行召来问责，要求它解释与证成；而一个必须证成它自身的权威，已经从”其言被采信者”的位置降到了”其言被掂量者”的位置。那把拒绝回返的锁，保全了”无需任何证成”的那个表象，而那正是一个无根据的权威所赖以维生的表象。

第二项是：这样的权威运行于一个寄寓在他者之中的假定之上。那个前来求助、求裁决、求疗愈的人，把这位医师或这位法官当作一个被假定知道者来趋近，而该权威通过那个假定运作，远多过通过任何可能与之相应的知识。那个假定是脆弱的。被一个下位者密切质询，并被发现不知道，直接刺穿它，并随之刺穿它所维系的那个位置。防御性的锁守护这个假定免于被刺穿：拒绝那种具体的交换，就是把”那个被假定知道者可能被表明不知道”的那一刻挡在视野之外。

这两项特征都描述了关于权威本身的某种真实之物，而这是这个案例必须被审慎处理之点。如果每一个象征性权威都立于一个空的位置之上并运行于一个假定之上，那么每一个象征性权威都需要维护，而维护本身不可能就是那种退化。权威的健康行使也维护它的位置；一位好教师与一位好法官也被假定知道，并且不会每次被质询就不再持有他们的职分。把他们与防御性的锁分开的，正是整个这份说明所系于其上的那一点。那个健康的权威在承认回返的同时维护它自身：它可以被质询、被纠正、甚至被胜过，而它的权威在此后被重新授予、而不是被摧毁。防御性的锁通过拒绝回返来维护它自身，因为它不再能在被质询中存活。判准是那个熟悉的。要紧的是那种维护是通过关闭回返、还是通过承认回返而进行的；维护这一事实本身什么也不裁定，因为权威总是被维护的。

9.3 损害的诸层域

防御性的锁与 §6 的僵化都属于关系性维度，而它们并不相同；把它们区别开来的，是损害所落入的主体的层域，而不是已经退化的那个维度。可以区分出三个这样的层域，而它们提供一个与第一个并列的第二坐标。第一个坐标追问哪一个维度已经退化，即生成性的还是关系性的，而这第二个追问那种退化触及哪一个层域：象征界、想象界，还是实在界。

权威的守护落在象征界。防御性的锁所保护的，是承认秩序中的一个位置，一个由头衔与职分所授予的地位，而它所挡开的威胁是对那个被授予地位的威胁。§6 的僵化的傲慢则相反，落在想象界。本体论化所做的，是取一个关系所回返的形象，即自己总在上方的形象，并把它误当作自己的存在；这种把一个形象误认为一个本质的做法，是那个自我通过认同于它的倒影而形成的层域的工作。二者是彼此有别的，然而它们又被一同发现，因为在世上所遇到的持久傲慢，鲜少是一个关于优越的私人幻想。它是一种被一个象征性权威所稳定化的想象性误认，是那个被抬高的倒影形象，被一个为它作保的被授予地位持在原地。持久那一类的傲慢是这两个层域的一个复合物；那种守护性的冷漠是在其中之一里发起的一次防御。

第三个层域，即实在界，标出该分类最少抵达的地方。如果有一种应答于它的冷漠，那么下文所命名的创伤防御是那个候选者，即一个主体对一次它无法带入言说的遭遇的闭合。本文关于这个层域，除了标出它在那里并且大体上是空的之外，没有多少可说。那份空缺不是一个装饰。它是下一小节必须划出的诸边界之一。

9.4 该分类所不抵达之物

一个分类通过陈述它在何处失败来挣得信任，而这一个以三种可以被精确命名的方式失败。它不是穷尽的，不是互斥的，并且在它刚刚打开的那个层域中不是完备的。

它不是穷尽的，因为有些种类的冷漠落在它所分拣的那个维度之外。本文放在生成性轴上的那种冷漠是耗竭的冷漠，而它自己的措辞，即”一类冷漠”，从一开始就承认了别的种类被留作未分拣。有两种压得最紧。有创伤的防御性冷漠，即一个主体的闭合，以保护它自身免于一次它无法吸收的遭遇，它在关系性一侧执行一次主动的切断、而不是一次生成的静止，而该说明只能通过添加实在界这一层域、以及 §9 被迫引入的那个响应坐标，才能定位它。还有策略性冷漠，即一个把回应的扣留当作一件刻意工具的人的冷漠，那种被挥舞来孤立或胁迫的冷处理。这最后一种完全落在该分类之外，因为该分类分拣的是退化，即一段关系未能继续生成或回返的诸种失败，而策略性冷漠是一个行为而不是一次失败：关系没有被弄坏，它被使用了。一个关于退化的分类无法持有一个行动，而策略性冷漠的诚实位置是在它的边界之外。

它不是互斥的，因为那两个维度留下一个它无法划分的象限。一段关系可能同时在两条轴上失败，既不生成也不回返，而处于这样一段关系之中的主体，可能呈现为冷漠或呈现为傲慢，而那两个坐标中没有任何东西可说是哪一个。那个双重退化的案例是真实的，而该分类并不拥有任何内在于它的判准，能把一种姿态指派给这个名字或那个名字。凡那两条轴沉默之处，那个分拣也沉默。

而它在它所引入的那个层域坐标中不是完备的，因为那个坐标被不均匀地填充。象征界与想象界有清晰的居民；实在界至多有一个不确定的候选者。一个留下它三分之一范围为空的第二坐标，是一项分析的开端，而不是它的全部。面对这些空的与未被划分的格子，正确的姿态是让它们如此，因为以专断填充它们，会以那个唯一使该方案可取的诚实为代价，购买一份完备性。

这三种失败所共有的，是一个关于该分类之分量的教训。它是一件局部的工具。它为它所能安放的诸姿态，即那些干净地落在它两个维度上的耗竭冷漠与僵化傲慢，给出一个机制上的区分；而它标出它自己的诸边缘：那些它无法分类的、因为它们不是退化的行动，那个它无法划分的象限，那个它已打开而大体未填充的层域。完备性并未被为它主张。完备性被命名为某种一项进一步的探究才须确立的东西，而本文并不确立它。

猜想 6（该分类的局部所及）。 该分类可能是局部的而不是完备的。一个第二坐标，即损害所落入的主体的层域，把权威的象征性守护与僵化傲慢的想象性误认区别开来，并提示持久的傲慢是二者的一个复合物；一个第三层域，即实在界，被标出并被留作大体为空。某些姿态落在该方案之外：策略性冷漠，它是一个行为而不是一种退化；创伤防御，它召唤实在界这一层域；以及那个双重退化的象限，那两个维度无法划分它。该方案是为它所能安放之物而被提出的，带着它被命名的诸边缘，并且不带任何穷尽它所分拣之诸姿态的主张。

§10 未决的触发因素与该说明的诸界限

该说明已把被回返的差异的锁死当作傲慢的枢纽，把生成的静止当作冷漠的枢纽，并已相应地把这两种姿态分拣到不同的维度上。它尚未说出为何在一个给定的案例中，方向锁死或生成静止；而诚实要求这一点被公开地提出，因为该分类所分类的诸退化，其触发因素是它所不提供的。

至少有三个候选者自荐，而该说明并不裁决。那把锁可能是自外部被强加的，由一个剥去了回返之场合的格局所强加，由一个情境的纯粹吞吐量所强加，那种吞吐量不留下任何间隔，让下位者能够哪怕短暂地成为那个给予者。它可能是自内部被引出的，由一种对回返的悄然拒绝所引出，被教导与被纠正的劳动是真实的劳动，而一个主体可能停止承担它；而在 §9 所给予它的更尖锐形式中，那种回返可能被有意地锁死，以守护一个回返会威胁的权威。或者它可能跟随确认之其他来源的一次在先的干涸，以致看待的收窄先于那把锁并招致它，而不是随之而来。这些候选者并不互斥，而 §5 的诸路径提示一个给定案例可能把它们结合起来。是什么锁死了那个方向，在什么条件之下，是本文留作开放的问题，而它的核心诸猜想最终依赖于它。

诸界限与此是一体的。经验基础是来自单一一种位置的一小组观察，而那个贯穿实例带有该说明并不取代的诸混淆因素：医师的冷漠容许量、疲劳，以及对痛苦之防御的诸解释，而关系性的读法并不推翻它们；而所录入的主张仅仅是这些并不穷尽该现象，而绝不是关系性结构是它的唯一原因。§8 的诸投影是作为检验被提出的，而其中数个被明确地留作未决；该结构本意是只被持守到它们所逐渐担保的那种牢固程度。而该分类所系于其上的那个区分，即一个被回返的差异与一个被锁死的差异之间的区分，尚待一个可运作的形式，那个形式会让一段给定的关系由某种比此处所提供的读法更牢固的东西被指派到一侧。供给那个形式、绘制诸机制所采取的进入路径，并了结此处仅仅悬置的诸投影，是本文所留下的工作。

关于方法的一则说明。此处没有使用任何形式装置，而这一克制是刻意的。那两个维度本可被写作诸坐标，一种退化本可被写作沿其中之一的运动，§5 的相互构成本可被写作一个耦合项，而一种自我持守的姿态本可被写作那个被回返的轨道所坍缩进的耦合系统的一个吸引子；那位傲慢的主体于是会是一段关系自身的退化动力学的一个不动点。这一联系是真实的，并且可能值得展开。它在此被留作未展开，因为该论证是一个以散文陈述的猜想，而把一个猜想形式化，会赋予它一种它尚未挣得的严格。所主张的东西在散文中被主张，并且只作为一个有待被检验的候选者被主张。

参考文献