The notion of equivalence, of qualified sameness identifiable only as the minimal difference of pure repetition, characterises every exchange of meaning. We are able to understand one another only because certain elements within the inner realm of individual experience of others are equivalent to ours. The capacity for identifying this internal equivalence entails that the communicating beings are themselves equivalent, in the functional sense.
One of the most basic examples of functional equivalence is money, or more specifically: physical currency. When we lend a certain amount of cash we generally do not insist for the same notes, or even notes of the same denomination, to be returned. Money is money irrespective of what specific note or coin is received as payment and that is the essence of its function: money is fungible, meaning that it can be borrowed and then repaid with other notes of equivalent value. It is the value represented by the notes that matters, not their unique, objective substance. Every dollar indicated on a bank note is an equal unit of a currency on the dimension of monetary re-presentation of value. Similarly, every Taxi vehicle performs the function of a Taxi and that is what makes it useful. One does not need to find a specific vehicle but any vehicle performing that function, which may be available simultaneously in countless locations. It is this unitary yet spatially-distributed equivalence that makes Taxi Service both recognisable and convenient.
A unit is a member of an overarching identity, a fragment of a uniformly fragmented whole and it’s faithful representation insofar as it is functionally or categorially equivalent to all other units. The representation is partial only in regard to spatial distribution of the whole, which is a four-dimensional entity signified by units operating in three-dimensional space. Every organisation develops within itself a unique fourth dimension via which operational directives can be disseminated. Soldiers, policemen or, to a lesser degree, civil employees, are units in the field of minimal difference that serve as portals open to the power that sanctions their office. The commanding authority can transfer a function from unit to unit, activate one unit and deactivate another, and thus instantaneously change its active extension within the functional space, defined by all units capable of performing the relevant function. Anonymity of the uniform necessarily implies uniformity of the anonymous, of individual identity being subordinated to functional identity.
Organisational uniformity accentuates the dialectical opposition between that which is included in the field of equivalence (of functional units) and that which stands above (the commanding authority), and if the organisation seeks to combine these two functional levels it inevitably gives rise to an integration crisis, associated with the strong difference within an intrinsically fractured organisational identity: “The strong difference makes the multiple into a One of opposition, without the possibility that anything combined emerges from it.” (Badiou, Theory of the Subject 2009, 69) In that sense, every organisation that establishes a field of equivalence as a means of functional control also posits within itself something radically Other, an exception to the functional equivalence of units. Presence of authority is a negation of equivalence and therefore a source of internal resistance to its functionality.
Humanity (or, for that matter, members of any species) also possesses a characteristic, inter-species dimension apart from which it cannot exist. Language and meaning are a fundamental commonality for all social beings, a dimension of shared experience that entangles three-dimensionally distant nodes according to the level of their conceptual harmonisation. Members of a particular collective interact with one another more comprehensively than with anything external to that collective. The greater the level of equivalence among the related entities the more meaningful is their sense of temporal and spatial coexistence. A common ‘rhythm’ dominates any collective and distinguishes it from other collectives. To the world of sparrows we behave like snails; to the world of snails we flash-by like ghosts; to the world of bacteria we are too large and too slow to be sensed in our physiological totality and therefore we exist only at the scale of cellular organisation. The depth of interaction between people who are well acquainted with one another is noticeably stronger than among strangers and it is exactly this intimate familiarity that underlies increased harmonisation. Mutually attuned individuals tend to develop common dialect, body language, signs and symbols that are understandable to others only superficially but within their kind are imbued with deeper meaning. Such semantic tuning intensifies the pathways of information exchange between individuals, and although they may still differ significantly on other levels, their differences are peripheral to the order of their essential unity. Difference is all we see but the essential sameness is the substrate and a condition of difference. “[Beings] are present, and thus differentiated, by virtue of the same.” (Heidegger, Martin. Identity and Difference. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. 65)
A social structure – that which gives meaning to pluralisation of Self in the dimension of We – can be said to exist only where individual elements are mutually correlated in a common symbolic field, tying them together with a force of attraction greater or more fundamental than the alienating tendency of intersubjective difference. The very notion of individuality, the possibility of recognition of another Self as apart from My-Self, presupposes a meta-dimension of the subject, a sympathy of an internally differentiated whole, which includes every individual. A collective is the meta-level of individuality to the same degree that a collection or a class is the meta-level within which particular object-identities are differentiated but also unified despite their differences. Within our collective we share common language and myth, we communicate and learn from one another, we can be conceptually frivolous but ultimately we reach out to others to define what is real for ourselves and about ourselves, as if identity and reality were present only as a form of communication, as something transmittable: an ontological bond between otherwise alienated loci of perspective. Recognition of other beings of the same kind is a condition of my existence.
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