Konfiguration

[MSalter1@aol.com]

The idea of constellation, which may be close to this, is certainly central.
It has been taken over and developed further by R. Bhaskar's "Dialectic: anfd
the pulse of freedom" 1993, and according to Jameson's Late marxism,
originates in Walter Benjamin.

For me, the idea is useful as a counter to an (implicitly authoritarian)
top-down and state-centred notion of "totality"; and - contrary to all manner
of reductionisms - stresses the relational and mediated quality of social
phenomena, their distinct but not seperate quality.

Michael Salter