Foreclosures of Possibility: 5 Recovering the Field: From Existence to Potential Again

We have traced a trajectory: philosophy compressed relation into substance, physics enshrined existence, method ritualised exclusion, and political systems codified predictive closure. Across these scales, possibility was narrowed, disciplined, and often made to vanish from view. Yet at every stage, the relational remainder persisted — the excess, the interstice, the potential that refuses containment.

The persistence of relational potential

Relation cannot be fully erased. It survives in the anomalies, the superpositions, the unsanctioned knowledge, and the creative acts that defy expectation. These are not mere exceptions; they are the signposts of the field itself — the ongoing space in which becoming occurs.

To recover possibility, we must shift perspective: from counting what exists, to tracing how potential emerges. Existence is not the measure of reality; it is a manifestation within a broader relational matrix. Method is not a limit, but a tool for navigating the field without foreclosing it. Politics is not a cage, but a structure whose openings can be amplified.

Practices of relational recovery

Recovering the field requires attentiveness to relational emergence:

• Observation without foreclosure: noticing patterns and interactions without immediately reducing them to fixed entities.

• Epistemic generosity: permitting uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction to inform understanding.

• Institutional flexibility: designing social and scientific systems that cultivate, rather than constrain, potential.

• Dialogic engagement: treating collective knowledge as a co-creation rather than a fixed ledger of truth.

These are not theoretical luxuries; they are the practical conditions for possibility itself.

From potential to becoming

To recognise the field is not to abandon rigor, clarity, or action. Rather, it is to situate these within a richer ontology — one in which what can become shapes the structures we build, the questions we ask, and the futures we actualise.

Possibility is neither abstract nor infinite; it is always relational, situated, and emergent. Recovering it is a matter of tuning into the interstices, noticing the persistent excess, and learning to navigate without compressing, measuring, or foreclosing.

In this sense, the becoming of possibility is both an analytic project and a practical art. It asks us to inhabit the field fully, to cultivate relational sensitivity, and to acknowledge that at every scale — from the philosophical to the social — the emergence of potential is what makes reality itself alive.