The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 9 Reflexive Becoming

Possibility is not only lived but also reflected upon. Reflexivity names the feedback loop in which awareness of one’s own becoming alters its trajectory. To see oneself as a subject of possibility is already to shift the field of actualisation.

This reflexive moment does not provide mastery. Awareness does not secure control; it reconfigures relation. Reflection may expand horizons, opening futures previously unseen, or it may constrain, closing off avenues through doubt, fear, or overdetermination. Reflexivity is ambivalent: it both liberates and burdens.

Through reflexive becoming, the self folds back upon its own multiplicity, narrating, judging, and projecting. This recursive operation produces coherence but also destabilisation, for each act of reflection reshapes the very ground on which the self stands. The self is not merely lived; it is also interpreted, staged, and revised in real time.

The capacity for reflexivity is thus central to human becoming. It is the hinge where perception and actualisation meet, where possibility is not only enacted but also reimagined. To study reflexive becoming is to study the recursive loops through which life transforms its own conditions of unfolding.