Introduction: Divergence as Invention
The power of construal lies not only in its capacity to align or stabilise meaning, but in its potential to break alignment in generative ways. In this post, we explore how symbolic divergence can lead to the collective innovation of new realities—new ways of being, relating, and knowing.
1. When Construal Breaks Phase
Most symbolic infrastructures are designed to keep construal within phase: to ensure compatibility of meaning across time, space, and social scale. But what happens when:
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Construals begin to misalign across communities?
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Referential anchors dissolve?
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Shared phasing collapses under cognitive or affective load?
Rather than signalling system failure, such divergence may mark the threshold of symbolic breakthrough.
2. Divergence Is Not Error
In a system built for reflexive construal, divergence is not noise. It is the raw material of symbolic evolution.
We can distinguish:
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Disalignment (temporary or strategic misphasing)
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Disjunction (persistent incompatibility of construals)
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Departure (deliberate exit from a symbolic regime)
Each becomes a site of possibility, not pathology.
3. Symbolic Invention as Collective Event
Symbolic innovation—when it scales—is rarely an individual act. It is a collective construal event, in which:
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A group refuses the affordances of a prevailing construal
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A new symbolic system is construed into being
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This new system enables forms of coherence not possible before
The invention of jazz, Indigenous resistance protocols, feminist consciousness-raising, abolitionist imaginaries—each began as divergence that rewrote the possible.
4. The Role of Reflexive Individuals
Collective symbolic breakthrough often begins with reflexive individuals: those who can construe construal itself and hold space for phase transitions.
These figures are not ‘visionaries’ in the romantic sense. They are:
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Sensitive to misalignment
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Skilled in reframing
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Committed to symbolic responsibility
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Capable of phasing between systems without collapse
They do not create new realities alone. But they enable others to join the construal.
5. The Real Is Not Pre-Given
A relational ontology refuses the idea that the real is prior to meaning. It is always the outcome of construal. So when symbolic divergence reconfigures the semiotic architecture, it remakes the real.
This is not a metaphor. It is a statement about how the world becomes:
The real is what a collective construes it to be—reflexively, recursively, responsively.
Conclusion: Risking the New
To innovate the real is to risk symbolic incoherence. But when collective divergence is held, explored, and sustained, it can yield architectures more adequate to life.
In the next post, we turn to the relational ethics of construal: What obligations arise when one participates in symbolic divergence? How do we answer for what we help to bring into being?
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