Symbolic Architectures: The Infrastructures of Reflexive Reality: 23 Architectures of Legitimation: How Symbols Authorise Worlds

Every symbolic infrastructure is also a system of legitimation.

It does not merely express what is—

it constructs what may count as real, true, good, or possible.

To build a symbolic architecture is to sanction a world:

to render some meanings natural,

some authorities legitimate,

some possibilities thinkable—

and to discredit, obscure, or render unliveable others.

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1. Construal and Authority

In relational ontology, construal is ontological:

there is no meaning outside of perspective.

Yet some construals come to structure others.

They claim not merely to see the world,

but to see it truly, rightly, normatively.

This is legitimation.

And it always relies on symbolic infrastructure.

Examples:

• A sacred text is not simply read—it is treated as source.

• A constitution is not simply a document—it is ground.

• A tradition is not simply past practice—it is precedent.

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2. The Work of Naturalisation

Legitimation involves naturalisation.

This means:

• Framing a particular construal as obvious, neutral, inevitable.

• Erasing the work of selection, construal, and contestation.

• Rendering symbolic choices ontologically inert.

Symbolic infrastructures do this subtly:

• Through citation (“As we’ve always known…”),

• Through formality (rituals, robes, genres),

• Through institutional scale (archives, curricula, monuments).

Legitimation is not imposed by brute force,

but infrastructured into experience.

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3. Contesting the Symbolic Order

Because symbolic architectures legitimise some worlds over others,

they are sites of contest.

To challenge a social order is often to challenge:

• its texts,

• its narratives,

• its icons,

• its forms of symbolic alignment.

Examples:

• The reinterpretation of sacred texts in liberation theologies.

• The reoccupation of public space through protest ritual.

• The decolonisation of museum collections and curricula.

Every symbolic order can be re-cut.

The question is not whether it is neutral—

but whose alignment it secures.

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4. Reflexive Legitimation

Relational ontology makes legitimation reflexive.

We are not seeking a final authority,

but exposing the architectures that construct authority itself.

This leads to:

• A shift from “Which is true?” to “How is truth being authorised?”

• A move from “What is real?” to “What symbolic conditions make this realisable?”

• A critique that is not relativist, but relationally situated.

Legitimation, then, becomes a domain of ethical design:

How shall we scaffold the alignment of worlds

without collapsing difference into domination?

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In the next post, we explore how symbolic infrastructures don’t just legitimate—but also stabilise.

They preserve alignment across time, resisting entropy and rupture.