1 Unfolding Without Time
“What we call time is not what flows. What flows are systems. And what we call ‘flow’ is already a construal.”
In a previous series, we disassembled the metaphysical construct of time — not as a dimension of the universe, but as a semiotic scaffolding we inherit, inhabit, and mistake for reality. We proposed that what actually unfolds is not time, but systemic processes: structured potentials actualising along particular trajectories. Time, we argued, is not the container of unfolding — it is a perspectival construal over unfolding.
So now that the metaphysics of time is gone, what remains? What do we gain in exchange for relinquishing the illusion of a universal temporal flow?
What we gain is phase.
From Time to Phase
Where time was presumed to flow independently of systems, phase is inherently system-bound. It is not “how much” has passed, but how far a system has unfolded, how it is unfolding, or where it might be cut from a particular standpoint.
To speak of a system’s phase is to describe it not with reference to clock or calendar, but in terms of its structured trajectory of actualisation — as construed from a particular position.
This is not simply a rebranding of time. It is a profound shift:
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From metric scale to structural relation.
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From external reference to internal differentiation.
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From linear progression to conditioned unfolding.
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From universal container to semiotic event.
Phase does not “tick.” It doesn’t flow. It is not measured — it is construed, enacted, and cut.
Examples of Phase Thinking
We already think in phases, though our metaphors often betray us:
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A plant grows: not because “time passes,” but because its structure unfolds under certain conditions. Seed → shoot → bloom → wilt. These are not times — they are phases.
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A conversation turns: it enters a phase of tension, then resolution, then reflection. These aren’t minutes on a clock — they are shifts in unfolding coherence.
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A social movement arises, gains traction, fractures, re-forms. These aren’t eras. They are phases in relational articulation.
We phase the world constantly — but we mistake the phasing for something that is in time. It’s the other way around: time is how we reify phase when we try to externalise it.
No Phase Without a System
Phase is not a general backdrop. It only makes sense in relation to a system — and more precisely, from a particular standpoint within or around that system.
Ask: what is phasing?
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A relationship.
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A potential becoming partially actual.
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A way of construing where something is, not in space or time, but in its own unfolding.
This means:
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There is no phase without perspective.
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There is no phase without structure.
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There is no phase without potential.
And crucially: there is no one phasing of a system. Different observers — internal or external — may carve different phases, see different thresholds, or experience unfolding at different scales of resolution.
Phase is Not a Substitute for Time — It Rewrites the Question
It would be tempting to treat phase as a “replacement” for time, a softer, more situated version of the same concept. But this would miss the point.
Time is a projection — a way of mistaking the regularities of symbolic coordination for a feature of reality.
Phase is a relational cut — a perspectival construal that makes systems legible in terms of their unfolding.
In moving from time to phase, we are not trading clocks for curves. We are relocating meaning from outside the system (a metaphysical timeline) to within it — to its own structured potential, as construed from a place of involvement.
This is the essence of phasecraft: the art of construing unfolding, without invoking time.
In the next post, we’ll develop a typology of phase — not to impose a universal scheme, but to show how different forms of unfolding can be cut, coordinated, and construed as meaningful trajectories.
2 A Typology of Unfolding
“Phase is not a thing a system has — it is a cut we make into its becoming.”
If phase is a construal of systemic unfolding — a perspectival cut rather than a temporal location — then what kinds of phases can be construed? What forms do these construals take across domains of experience? And how do symbolic systems participate in shaping them?
This post introduces a typology of phase, not as a metaphysical ontology of stages, but as a semiotic grammar for construing unfolding in ways that are legible, actionable, and sharable. These are not objective categories in the world — they are recurrent phasecraft patterns: ways of cutting into becoming so that it can be coordinated, remembered, redirected, or resisted.
Four Archetypes of Phase
While many phasal construals are possible, we begin with four widely-recognised patterns — each of which makes sense only from within the relational unfolding of a system.
1. Emergence
From potential to patterned actualisation.
Emergence marks the entry of new coherence into view. Something that was previously virtual, latent, or uncoordinated begins to take on shape, behaviour, recognisability. This may appear as:
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A new shoot from the soil.
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The start of a conversation, idea, or alliance.
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The first signs of a disease, movement, or rupture.
Emergence is always as construed — it becomes meaningful not when it begins, but when it is cut as beginning.
2. Sustainment
Recursive continuation under prevailing conditions.
Here the system maintains its structure or pattern over a span of unfolding. It may involve repetition, equilibrium, or ongoing coordination:
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A plant in bloom.
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A habit that repeats itself.
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A stable social formation or long-lived tradition.
This phase is not passive: it is a labour of coherence, often requiring regulation, feedback, and adjustment. The illusion of stability often obscures the activity it conceals.
3. Transition
Discontinuity or reorganisation across thresholds.
Transition marks a qualitative shift — a boundary-crossing within the system’s own unfolding logic. It may be abrupt or gradual, internally driven or externally catalysed:
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Adolescence into adulthood.
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Peace into war.
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Silence into speech.
Transition phases are often richly symbolic, and socially ritualised — because the cut is never automatic. It must be construed, legitimated, or performed.
4. Dissolution
Decay, disintegration, or return to potential.
Where emergence brought forth structure, dissolution returns it to flux — often yielding material for new phases. This might include:
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The death of an organism or the fading of a memory.
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The collapse of an institution or worldview.
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The erosion of sense in language or self.
Dissolution may be mourned or celebrated. Either way, it is never pure disappearance: it transforms structure into new relational potential.
Why a Typology?
These four archetypes are not fixed stages or cosmic truths. Rather, they are semiotic affordances — they help us:
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Orient ourselves to processes too large or too small to see in full.
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Coordinate with others who share systems with us.
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Intervene meaningfully in systems we care about.
They are tools of sense-making — meaningful construals of system dynamics, not measures of time.
Cultural Grammars of Phase
Different cultures, disciplines, and traditions develop grammars for constraining and regularising these phasal construals:
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Ritual life marks emergence and transition (birth, initiation, ordination).
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Calendars often encode sustainment (planting seasons, harvest festivals).
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Narratives often end in dissolution or renewal.
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Psychological models segment lifespans into stages.
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Scientific discourse phases processes (e.g. mitosis, states of matter, learning curves).
Each of these is a symbolic overlay on unfolding — a way of construing, not discovering, a phasal structure.
And all are contestable: not every emergence is welcomed; not every transition is consensual; not every dissolution is recognised as such.
No Phases Without Cuts
The point is not to replace time with a new metaphysical scheme. It is to see that:
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Phases are not “in” the world — they are cuts we make into unfolding.
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They are meaningful only in relation to systems, as construed from a position.
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They allow us to coordinate with change, without needing to believe in “the passage of time.”
In the next post, we’ll turn to this perspectival nature of phase itself — and ask: who gets to cut what, and when?
3 Perspective and the Cut
“The phase of a system is never absolute. It is a cut — made from somewhere, by someone, for some reason.”
Having defined phase as a perspectival construal of unfolding, and sketched a typology of emergent, sustained, transitional, and dissolving phases, we now turn to the cut itself: the act of construing a phase, and the position from which that construal becomes possible.
This takes us to the heart of phasecraft: not just how systems unfold, but how we make that unfolding legible — for ourselves, for others, and for the systems themselves.
1. The Cut Is Not in the System
We are used to thinking of phases as “inherent” to processes:
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“Childhood ends at 12.”
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“This project is in its final stages.”
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“The tide has turned.”
But these are not neutral facts. They are interpretive cuts, made by observers (or participants), often mediated by institutional, cultural, or disciplinary logics. A phase is not what is — it is what is seen, marked, and acted upon.
No system, on its own, announces: “I am now in the transition phase.” That designation always comes from somewhere — whether inside or outside the system — and it is always contestable.
2. Phasing Is Positional
The phase of a system depends on:
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Where you stand in relation to it.
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What you notice, ignore, or foreground.
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What meanings you bring to its unfolding.
For example:
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A patient and a doctor may cut different phases in a course of illness.
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A child, a parent, and a teacher may cut different phases in a school year.
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An insider and an outsider may construe the same social movement as emerging, collapsing, or stabilising — all at once.
Phases are not universal. They are perspectival relational construals: they exist in the relation between system and standpoint.
3. Phasing as Power
Because phasing is perspectival, and cuts shape meaning, the act of phasing is also an act of power:
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To declare something "over" or "just beginning" is to position it in relation to action, accountability, or memory.
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To frame a period as a “transition” can justify disruption — or deny continuity.
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To withhold recognition of a phase (e.g., refusing to see the “emergence” of a new identity or discourse) is to erase that unfolding from semiotic reality.
Institutions often develop authoritative phasing practices:
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Governments declare recessions, states of emergency, or eras of reform.
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Religions define phases of life, sin, or salvation.
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Scientific disciplines define stages of development, disease, or discovery.
These are not just descriptions — they are interventions in the semiotic ordering of the world.
4. Internal and External Standpoints
Not all cuts come from outside. Systems may be capable of:
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Self-phasing: construing and acting upon their own unfolding (e.g. reflexivity, self-narration, intentional transitions).
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Co-phasing: coordinating shared construals with other systems (e.g. dialogues, rituals, institutions).
This introduces a recursive dimension: a system’s phase can be shaped by its own construal of its phase.
But not all systems have the same capacity for this. And not all construals can be coordinated. Often, conflict emerges not from the system itself, but from incompatible phase-cuts brought by different observers.
5. The Cut is a Semiotic Act
In relational ontology, all meaning arises through construal — and every construal is an act of selection and perspective. The same applies to phasing:
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The cut is not arbitrary, but it is perspectival.
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It is not passive, but performative.
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It does not merely record unfolding — it shapes it.
Phase is thus not a temporal label. It is a semiotic move: a gesture of framing, a proposal about how this system is becoming — and what it means.
A Craft of Legibility
If the cut is perspectival and phasing is semiotic, then phasecraft becomes the art of making unfolding legible — in ways that are situated, accountable, and open to contestation.
This means asking:
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What systems are we phasing?
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From where are we cutting?
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Whose cuts are we coordinating with, and whose are we ignoring?
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What symbolic grammars are shaping the legibility of phase?
In the next post, we’ll explore this question of symbolic grammars in more detail — asking how different semiotic systems constrain the phasal construals available to us, and how phasecraft becomes collective.
4 Symbolic Grammars of Phase
“To phase a system is to mean it. And to mean is always to symbolise — in a grammar shaped by history, culture, and use.”
We have defined phases as perspectival construals of unfolding. But construal is not done in a vacuum. It is shaped — made possible, permissible, or prohibited — by the symbolic resources a community has at its disposal.
Every construal of phase is therefore a semiotic act: an act of grammaring — using symbolic systems to frame, segment, and interpret unfolding.
This post explores the symbolic grammars of phase — the inherited and improvised patterns by which communities make processes legible as phasal. It is here, in symbolic form, that phasecraft becomes cultural.
1. Symbolic Systems Mediate Construal
To cut a process into phases is to use signs — not just to label the cuts, but to perform them:
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A name for a stage (“infancy”, “maturity”, “crisis”) brings it into symbolic being.
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A tense system (past/present/future) scaffolds the temporal framing of unfolding.
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A diagram, timeline, or narrative arc visualises the flow of phases.
These are not descriptive mirrors of what is already there. They are enactments of a way of seeing, made possible by the semiotic system in play.
Different symbolic systems afford different kinds of phasal construal.
2. Grammars of Phasing Across Domains
Different domains have evolved specialised grammars — patterned resources for construing phase in ways relevant to their own unfolding systems.
Some examples:
Biological grammars
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Life cycle stages: birth, growth, reproduction, death.
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Medical models: incubation, onset, climax, remission.
Narrative grammars
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Aristotelian arc: exposition, rising action, climax, denouement.
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Folkloric cycles: departure, initiation, return.
Political grammars
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Revolution: oppression, uprising, transformation, consolidation.
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Policy: proposal, consultation, implementation, evaluation.
Educational grammars
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Bloom’s taxonomy: remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, creating.
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Curriculum phases: introduction, practice, mastery, extension.
Each grammar not only construes process — it also encodes norms, roles, and valuations: what counts as a valid phase, who gets to identify it, and how transitions are marked or resisted.
3. Metaphors That Cut
Symbolic construals of phase are often metaphorical. We use spatial, visual, or bodily experience to model the unfolding of systems:
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Vertical metaphors: growth, ascension, peak, decline.
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Journey metaphors: stages, milestones, turning points, destinations.
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Container metaphors: in/out of phase, entering/exiting, encapsulated processes.
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Flow metaphors: stream of consciousness, wave of protest, river of time.
These metaphors stabilise construals by naturalising them — making them seem obvious, inevitable, even biological. But they are not neutral: they prioritise certain readings of unfolding over others.
Phasecraft involves becoming literate in these metaphors — and being able to wield, question, or rewrite them.
4. Phasing as Collective Practice
Phasing is often treated as individual insight — a matter of observation or intuition. But in practice, it is deeply collective:
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Communities co-develop grammars of phase through shared rituals, institutions, and discourses.
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These grammars enable coordination — aligning behaviour to a shared sense of “where we are”.
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But they can also exclude, erase, or overwrite alternative construals.
To speak a grammar of phase is to enter into a social process of sense-making. Phasecraft is not just epistemic — it is relational and political.
5. Making and Unmaking Grammars
Because phasal grammars are symbolic, they can change. They are subject to:
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Metaphoric drift (e.g., from "growth" to "emergence").
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Re-semiotisation (e.g., reframing "decline" as "decolonisation").
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Discursive struggle (e.g., who decides what counts as a crisis, or when an era has ended).
This is not just academic. In times of social upheaval, ecological precarity, or epistemic uncertainty, communities may need to invent new grammars of phase — ways of seeing unfolding that break from inherited scripts.
The craft of phasing is therefore also the craft of re-symbolising: changing the forms by which unfolding is rendered meaningful.
Toward a Poetics of Phase
To symbolise phase is to enter into poetics — not as fiction or decoration, but as the formal work of making unfolding meaningful, actionable, and shareable.
In the next post, we’ll explore this idea of poetic phasing more directly: how symbolic forms — from ritual to rhetoric to design — do the work of cutting unfolding, and what happens when those forms themselves begin to break down.
5 Poetic Forms of Phasing
“Every cut has a form. And every form constrains what can be cut, how it unfolds, and who it becomes real for.”
In the last post, we examined how symbolic grammars shape the construal of phase — not just naming the stages of a process, but actively forming the space in which unfolding becomes meaningful.
But grammars are not only linguistic. They live in poetic forms — in the recurrent patterns of ritual, narrative, performance, image, and structure that communities use to give shape to time.
This post turns to the poeticity of phasing: how aesthetic forms — in the broadest sense — enable and constrain the cuts we make in unfolding.
1. The Cut Has a Form
To construe a phase is never simply to say, “this is a phase.” It is to perform a patterned construal:
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To cast an event as a turning point is to position it within a narrative arc.
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To mark a stage with a ceremony is to use ritual form to instantiate it.
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To visualise a process as a cycle, spiral, or line is to choose a diagrammatic schema that guides interpretation.
Each of these forms makes a cut possible — and in doing so, excludes other cuts. You cannot simultaneously see the same unfolding as a tragedy and a journey without tension. Form filters meaning.
2. Genres of Unfolding
Poetic forms often settle into genres — socially recognisable templates for framing process:
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The coming-of-age story
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The hero’s journey
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The rise-and-fall arc
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The redemptive cycle
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The apocalypse and rebirth myth
These genres do more than entertain. They organise unfolding:
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Institutions build stages around them (e.g. rites of passage, graduation ceremonies).
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Disciplines pattern research trajectories on them (e.g. discovery, crisis, resolution).
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Cultures project histories and futures through them (e.g. progress, decline, revolution).
When we phase a system using these genres, we are not just describing its structure — we are plotting its reality through a poetic form.
3. Ritual as Phasecraft
Perhaps the oldest form of phasecraft is ritual: patterned acts that mark, enact, and stabilise phases of life, time, or relation.
Rituals:
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Segment unfolding (e.g. initiation, mourning, celebration)
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Stabilise transitions (e.g. weddings, oaths, farewells)
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Coordinate shared construals (e.g. new year, harvest, renewal)
In ritual, the symbolic form is the cut. The act doesn’t just reflect a phase — it brings it into being.
But rituals are never universal. They are situated, contingent, and subject to breakdown — and thus to poetic reinvention.
4. When Forms Fracture
Not all unfolding fits inherited forms. Sometimes:
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A process outgrows its genre.
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A rupture resists narrative closure.
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A transition lacks ritual scaffolding.
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A collective can no longer agree on what phase it is in.
In such cases, poetic dissonance arises. We lose our bearings. The cut becomes ambiguous, contested, or impossible to make.
This is not a failure of observation — it is a breakdown in the semiotic infrastructure that supports phasal construal.
Moments like these demand new phasecraft — new poetic forms that can render novel kinds of unfolding meaningful.
5. The Craft of Forming Cuts
To be a phasecrafter is to be a poet of process:
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To sense where construals fail.
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To feel where unfolding resists inherited forms.
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To make — carefully, responsibly — new ways of cutting, coordinating, and symbolising becoming.
This is not decoration. It is ontological work.
And it is not solitary. The craft of phasing is relational: it happens between selves, systems, and symbolic resources — in the shared labour of meaning-making.
Toward the Edge of Form
In the final post of this series, we will look toward the edge — where phasing confronts the limits of form altogether. What does phasecraft become when unfolding can no longer be cut? What kinds of systems emerge when the symbolic resources to phase them have broken down? And how might we begin again?
6 At the Edge of Cut
“When form fails, the cut becomes impossible. And when the cut fails, unfolding becomes noise. What then remains of phasecraft?”
We have followed phasing from its ontological roots — as perspectival construal of unfolding — through its symbolic, grammatical, and poetic manifestations. Along the way, we’ve seen that to phase is always to cut with form: to bring meaningful structure to the flux of becoming.
But what happens at the edge — when the forms themselves falter?
This post explores the limits of phasecraft: where unfolding cannot be cleanly parsed, where shared grammars break down, and where symbolic resources prove inadequate. It is here that phasecraft becomes not just a practice of cutting, but of living-with the uncuttable.
1. When Phasing Becomes Impossible
There are moments — individual, collective, planetary — when phasing fails.
These may be:
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Crises of scale: where processes unfold too slowly, too quickly, or too massively to grasp (e.g. deep time, climate collapse).
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Crises of coordination: where communities can no longer agree on what phase they're in (e.g. political polarisation, epistemic fracture).
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Crises of form: where existing symbolic grammars no longer fit unfolding realities (e.g. postcolonial unsettlement, digital saturation).
In such moments, the capacity to phase — to cut unfolding meaningfully — is itself under threat.
The result is not timelessness, but temporal disorientation: acceleration without direction, duration without shape, motion without meaning.
2. Uncuttable Unfolding
Some processes resist phasing by their very nature:
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They are non-linear, without clear before/after.
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They are self-modifying, transforming their own conditions of construal.
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They are entangled, such that any cut severs what must remain whole.
Examples include:
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The slow violence of ecological degradation.
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The recursive churn of platform economies.
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The diffuse grief of cultural loss.
To try to phase such processes with inherited forms is not only inadequate — it can be actively harmful: it imposes clarity where there is only complexity, or closure where there is only ongoingness.
These are not failed phases. They are uncuttable unfoldings.
3. The Ethics of Not Cutting
At the edge of cut, phasecraft becomes ethical.
To refrain from cutting is not always a failure. It may be a choice:
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To hold space for ambiguity.
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To bear witness to what exceeds grammar.
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To refuse closure when meaning has not emerged.
This is a different kind of craft — one that values patience, care, and attentiveness to form’s limits.
Here, the phasecrafter is no longer a master of cuts, but a companion to unfolding — one who listens to the edge, and does not rush to contain it.
4. Rewilding the Forms
Even as forms fail, new ones can grow — not by returning to the old, but by rewilding the symbolic terrain:
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Letting go of linear time in favour of rhythmic, seasonal, or cyclical understandings.
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Shifting from human-centred narratives to multispecies, planetary, or cosmological ones.
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Moving beyond discrete phases to relational textures, entangled durations, and open-ended rhythms.
This is not a return to chaos, but a redistribution of form — a willingness to let symbolic resources evolve with the systems they mean.
At the edge of cut, phasecraft becomes regenerative.
5. Cutting Again, Differently
Eventually, new grammars may emerge — not to replace the old, but to resituate the act of cutting in a changed world:
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Cuts that are partial, hesitant, or reversible.
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Phases that do not close, but stay open to re-constellings.
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Forms that carry their own critique — that remind us they are symbolic, not ontological.
Here, phasecraft is not about mastering the unfolding, but staying in relation to it — symbolically, ethically, and imaginatively.
Coda: A Craft for Our Time
We live in an era saturated with broken phases — false closures, endless cycles, and disoriented durations. To practice phasecraft today is not to restore an imagined order of time. It is to:
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Attend to how we cut.
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Notice when the cut cuts too deep.
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Invent, unmake, and remake our symbolic bearings.
To phase is to mean unfolding.
To craft that meaning — in the face of failure, noise, and novelty — is one of the quiet responsibilities of thought.