Centered Ordinality

Centered ordinality is the notion that a sequential order of signing was established on the originary scene.

Characteristics

Adam Katz amends Eric Gans notion that all members of the group issued the first sign (the aborted gesture of appropriation) simultaneously by observing that if the crisis leading up to the emission of the sign was mimetically driven, the same must be the case, in reverse, so to speak, for the issuing of the sign.

Someone, then, must have put forth the gesture (a kind of hesitation) first, with others subsequently imitating that sign. So, if there’s a first, there’s also a second, and a third, and so on. This establishment of a sequential order (and Firstness) then must be taken as the model for human activity as such, and “centered ordinality” expresses that ordering.