Gesture Without Author

Reason arrived late. Not to an event, but to a composition that was already being made without a name. The world, before any cognition, was already leaning, already bending, already insisting. But reason, upon emerging as an instance of symbolic organization, interpreted this anteriority not as an operative condition, but as an enigma to be solved. Instead of listening to what preceded it, it interrogated it as if it were waiting for it. And since its entire structure relies on the need for internal coherence, it saw in what preceded it not a matrix of emergence, but an illegitimate interval — something that, by not responding, seemed to lack reason.

It is at this point that reason transforms into an obstacle. Not due to insufficiency, but due to excessive fidelity to itself. It tries to think what is not addressed to it. It applies categories that were born in already organized bodies — such as identity, causality, finality — to a regime that never obeyed them. And thus, everything that does not fit into its schemes appears as rupture, as failure, as absence. But there is an error in this diagnosis: what reason calls absence is not emptiness — it is another order. A regime of operations without a plan, of torsions without intentionality, of consistency without prior form.

The origin did not expect to be thought. It did not arise because it was invoked, nor by responding to a structure. It happened as a minimal incidence, as a variation that maintained itself, as an articulation that did not fall apart. It was not a beginning in the sense that something starts. It was an inflection, a local persistence of matter in reorganization. None of this was chosen. None of this was decided. And yet, all of this happened. The emergence of the real does not belong to the regime of the intentional. It belongs to the regime of what functions — and, by functioning, becomes durable. Its consistency is not guaranteed by a principle, but by an operative efficacy that survives chance.

Philosophy, in attempting to think this regime, stumbled upon its own architecture. Even when it breaks with previous systems, it retains the compulsion to locate, justify, organize. Even deconstruction, negativity, or contingency maintain an economy of the before: everything is derivation, deviation, postponement. Almost no one thought that there could be an operation that did not come from any structure. That was not born of lack, potential, or error. A movement that repairs nothing — because nothing was damaged. That does not initiate — because it does not succeed. That does not respond — because there was no call.

This movement is what can be called an inscription anterior to the sign. Not a voluntary mark, but a modulation of matter that, upon reorganizing itself, produces difference without intention. The inscription anterior to the sign is the threshold where the real begins to retain forms before giving them names — where variation transforms into consistency without yet being a symbol, but already establishing distinction. Its nature is not expressive, but operative. The inscription represents nothing: it merely establishes a regime where difference ceases to dissipate immediately and begins to last.

Reason, in this scenario, neither disappears nor collapses. But it sees its place decentered. It ceases to be origin and becomes derivation. It can only operate because there has already been operation. It can only organize because there has already been persistence. It can only think because there has already been form. Its task, then, is not to justify the beginning, but to recognize that it arrived late — and that thinking, in its most radical case, is listening to what was already being done without it.

The birth of the universe was not the result of a decision nor an imbalance. There was no cut, nor inaugural substance. What there was was matter that, by varying, found a point of retention. A small torsion that lasted longer than the instant that made it arise. This duration was not temporal. It was functional. It was a relationship that, without a subject, organized a consistency. And in this consistency, everything we call the world today began to reorganize itself.

But there was no beginning. There was only operation. A fold that did not know it was a fold. An inscription that referred to nothing. A doing that did not know it was doing — and which, nevertheless, persisted. This event was not dramatic, nor central, nor metaphysical. It was merely real: real in the sense of that which, without intention, installs itself and repeats.

To think this plane is not to describe it. It is to recognize that thinking, in this case, is not elaborating, but welcoming. There is materiality before any system. There are couplings before any observation. There is instability that reorganizes itself without expecting recognition. And it is in this blind reorganization that the universe begins to make itself — not because it was created, but because it became possible.

Because the origin does not wait, does not respond, does not represent, it merely inscribes itself, without memory, without will, without figure, but with the power to make that which, for an instant, was almost lost, endure.

"The origin does not begin — it maintains itself without knowing that it persists."

—— David Cota — Founder of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity ——