Death, Anxiety and the Vicissitudes of Action

Abstract

In the previous chapter, and from a purely semantic perspective, I theorized the existential incompleteness of meaning formation and put forward some introductory ideas about how this ‘opening’ affects or is translated in social formations. The purpose was to set up a conceptual platform to start analysing the delicate balance between the ‘not-yet’ of the process of meaning formation and its disobedient potential, and the hegemonies, or forms of power, which are established when meaning — even if precariously — is consolidated. This way of conceptualizing incompleteness — or non-wholeness — brought to the forefront of the analysis the undecidability which characterizes any meaning formation, and also, as Derrida argued, the moment of decision (action) which in complex ways point towards the realm of ethics and responsibility, and, as we will see, also in complex ways towards death and violence.