Amir Sulic

The aim of this essay is to elaborate two distinctive but interconnected modes of temporalization through common points in the work of Jaques Derrida and Jaques Lacan, namely the Subalternated and the Dislocated time. The explication of the different form of time structure reveals time as relational phenomena, which is constituted by the non-relation between the subject and the Other. The process of subjectivization as the formalization of the Real, or as the work of mourning, excludes traumatic present and opens the space for free flow of the Subalternated time, which is marked by linearity, identitarian thought, subordination, causality ect. The present is, therefore, marked by ontologization of the posthumous remains, canonized, excluded and deprived of any subversive potential. But despite this eternal requiem, something remains between the future and the past, non-present in its spectral subsistence which disrupts smooth stream of the Subalternated narrativity, announcing arrival, return and temporarily inexhaustible artificiality of novelty in the form of the Dislocated time.

In this essay, I will try to elaborate the fundamental postulates of transdifferential ontology, developed through the inscription of some basic concepts of poststructuralist philosophy within the realm of general system theory. In this manner, a system/being will be conceptualized as set of elements which is organized as a functional whole, whose goal is not to establish a homeostasis but to menage and organize disruptive forces of lack/surplus, that represents non-mediated kernel of any system. Therefore, any system is fundamentally grounded on imbalance and radical incompleteness as inherent conditions of its possibility. Among different kind of systems, the complex self - organizing systems based on feedback loops are governed by the principle of syntropy and its transdifferential organization of reality. In order to explicate the syntropic movement of systems, the concept of signifier is expanded beyond the boundaries of language, and the process of writing, as a permanent invention of in-vent, is interpreted in the manner of never ending sublation of the system and subversion of the subject. The interconnection between the general system theory and poststructuralist philosophy will provide us with a conceptual apparatus which overcomes both linguistic and entropic limitations of above mentioned domains, in order to conceive, interpret, predict and govern processes of becoming on different levels of organization of systems.

This article offers a structural rereading of Jacques Lacan’s 1945 essay “Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty” (Lacan, 1966/2006). It argues that the text already contains, in logical form, the operations of subjectivation later theorized as alienation and separation. Logical time is not treated as a psychological sequence or a proto–game-theoretic puzzle but as a formal model of situations in which action becomes necessary despite the unavailability of epistemic certainty. The three moments—seeing, understanding, and concluding—are shown to articulate a temporality in which the subject must act without justification and only afterward comes to appear as certain. On this basis, the article brings Lacan into dialogue with Wittgenstein’s reflections in On Certainty. The comparison is structural rather than exegetical: It compares the roles played by “certainty” in each framework rather than offering a line-by-line interpretation. In different vocabularies, both thinkers show that certainty is not a form of knowledge but a condition that must be assumed or enacted for action and assertion to be possible at all. The article argues, however, that where Wittgenstein’s analysis tends toward philosophical quietism, Lacan’s account illuminates why the demand for certainty persists. This persistence is understood as desire—not as a desire for recognition or satisfaction but as an orientation toward an impossible ground that nevertheless structures subjective action and responsibility.