Living Under Exposure: 4 Practices That Persist

Having established institutions as perspectival fields, we now turn to the practices that sustain life, knowledge, and thought under exposure. Practices are where the pressures of groundlessness, irreversibility, and responsibility are enacted continuously.

Persistence Beyond Instruction

Practices are not mere applications of theory, nor are they simple routines. They are the ongoing enactments through which distinctions are realised, knowledge circulates, and responsibility is exercised. Persistence does not imply repetition without change; it implies continuity in engagement, attention, and care within the pressures already acknowledged.

Practices as Carriers of Consequence

Every practice carries forward the cuts, distinctions, and responsibilities it embodies. It shapes attention, stabilises perspectives, and organizes the relational field in which life and knowledge occur. Practices remember what thought alone cannot; they enact, sustain, and transmit consequences over time.

This is not mastery. It is ongoing engagement under exposure. Practices are instruments of continuity precisely because they acknowledge irreversibility and responsibility without pretending to control the outcome.

Against the Illusion of Neutral Routine

There is a temptation to imagine that repeated practices can insulate actors from exposure or responsibility. Routine, ritual, or habit may appear stabilising, but without attentiveness, they merely conceal the pressures. Practices that persist must do so with awareness, responsive to the field, and conscious of their ongoing effects.

The Fourth Unavoidable Pressure

The pressure of persistent practice can be stated thus:

Practices must continue under exposure, enacting distinctions responsibly and sustaining engagement without illusion of control.

Persistence is not comfort. It is a commitment to the ongoing negotiation of life, thought, and knowledge. It demands presence, attentiveness, and adaptability.

The next post will examine care — attention and responsiveness — under these conditions, without recourse to ideology or shelter.

Next: Care Without Containment.