We have arrived at a point where an assumption is beginning to feel unavoidable.
If something is given to be seen, and if this requires a field that does not contain things, then we might be tempted to conclude that what exists first is a kind of undifferentiated expanse.
From this expanse, differences would then be introduced.
This is not what is being proposed.
Because that account still presupposes something too familiar: a base substance, a homogeneous medium, a prior “stuff” into which distinctions are later drawn.
But we have no warrant for “stuff.”
So we must ask a harder question:
can there be differentiation without units that are differentiated?
At first glance, the question seems impossible.
Differentiation appears to require at least two terms.
Something differs from something else.
A contrast presupposes relata.
Even the simplest distinction seems to require two sides.
But this assumption depends on a model in which relations are secondary to terms.
We are not using that model.
So the question must be restated more carefully:
is it possible for difference to be operative without presupposing differentiated units?
We are not asking whether we can perceive such a situation.
We are asking what must be the case for anything like perception to be possible at all.
At this level, we are not dealing with objects, or even fields.
We are dealing with the minimal conditions under which anything can fail to be uniform.
Uniformity is important here.
Because uniformity is not nothing.
Uniformity is a condition in which nothing stands out.
If uniformity held absolutely, nothing would be given to be seen.
So whatever allows seeing must prevent absolute uniformity.
But this prevention cannot be achieved by introducing objects, because objects are what we are trying to explain.
So the task is this:
to understand how non-uniformity can arise without assuming units that carry it.
We are forced into a delicate position.
Difference must be prior to the things that differ.
But “difference” here cannot mean a relation between things.
It must mean something more primitive.
Rather:
a condition under which separation can occur without separated things already existing.
This is difficult to say because our language is structured around things that have properties and relations.
But we are attempting to speak at a level before that structure stabilises.
So we proceed by negation.
Differentiation without units is not:
- a set of objects contrasted with one another
- a spatial partitioning of a pre-given field
- a classification of elements into categories
- a segmentation of homogeneous material
It is also not a hidden multiplicity waiting to be discovered.
It is something more minimal than all of these.
It is the possibility that something can fail to be uniform in a way that is not yet attributable to distinct things.
At this point, we can risk a term, but only under strict constraint:
“difference” here names not a relation between things, but a condition under which anything can be distinguished at all.
This means that difference is not secondary to identity.
It is not what distinguishes already-existing units.
It is what allows anything like a unit to emerge as distinct in the first place.
But even this must be held carefully.
Because we are not yet entitled to “emerge,” “unit,” or “first place.”
We are only marking dependency:
without some form of differentiation that does not presuppose objects, nothing could ever stabilise as object-like.
So we are left with a constraint that is becoming more precise, but not more concrete:
- no objects yet
- no relations between objects
- no field of objects
- and yet, not uniformity
What remains is neither structure nor substance.
It is a condition in which uniformity is broken without units that carry the break.
We do not yet know how this is possible.
But we now know that any adequate account of seeing must account for it.
And so the question continues to sharpen:
what kind of organisation allows difference to exist without things that differ?
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