Introduction

Abstract

This section is principally concerned with framing the project and in particular elaborating the set of ten “Presuppositions” that together assemble the architecture of the structure of sovereignty as a temporal continuum that represents the centerpiece of the argument. Additionally, the notion of “liminality” is framed as (in many respects) remarkable in its difference from its popular employment in post-colonial thinking as a limiting circumstance but rather as a limit function in the sense of calculus that allows for the establishment of instantaneous values that foregrounds temporality as the central line through the project.

And you slip into the breaks and look around.

Ralph Ellison , Invisible Man

In short, it is becoming a matter of urgency to know whether social critique is to be made by virtue of a presupposition that is not at all social (an ontology of Being-tout -court, as it were) or by virtue of an ontology of being-in-common, that is, of the plural singular essence of Being. That is why the subject of “ontology” first of all entails the critical examination of the conditions of critique in general.

Jean-Luc Nancy , Being Singular Plural