Dictionary

preconstitute en · VERB

Etymology

From pre- + constitute.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To constitute or establish beforehand.
   • Too often writing—in the broadest sense—is treated as a communicational medium where the subjects of that communication are constituted prior to the writing, where the objects of that communication are also constituted prior to that writing, and where the task of writing is seen as transparently mediating between already pregiven subjects, pregiven objects, and a preconstituted mise en scène. 2015, “Staging the Politics of Difference: Homi Bhabha's Critical Literacy, Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham.”, in Gary A. Olson, Lynn Worsham, Henry A. Giroux, editors, Politics of Possibility: Encountering the Radical Imagination, page 133:
   • Husserl's ‘now’ moment is a ‘passive’ synthesis rather than ‘active’, the ego is the recipient, it does not actively take part. But in seeing the possibility of seizing an opportunity in a moment, we begin to mark the moment as decisive, it is transformed into something which can shape one's past and future. We might say it brings the ability to ‘preconstitute’ and ‘precapitulate’¹³ our future, if we are able to think of it as extending itself out from the ordinary temporal reach of our notions of time. 2016 April 8, Koral Ward, Augenblick: The Concept of the 'Decisive Moment' in 19th- and 20th-Century Western Philosophy, reprint edition, Routledge, →ISBN:

Forms