singularities, an effect and not a middle of the struggle. In the practical war between singular forces, the injuries must bring about actual [effectives] expropriations. They must wrest from the other the disposition of its own body, its language, must literally dislodge the other from its possessions. The field of the word [verbe] does not suffice for this: “Language, explanations, promising are not this recognition, for language is only an ideal middle (ideale Milte); it vanishes as it appears; it is not a real recognition, one that remains (bleibendes)." The insistence is very marked: linguistic idealism, linguisticism, these can always upsurge again—the temptation is too strong—to sweeten or cicatrize the injury, to make one forget that the middle of the carnage is not ideal but “actual.” “No one can prove this to the other through words, assurances, threats, or promises; for language is only the ideal existence of consciousness; here, on the contrary, actual opposites confront one another, i.e. , absolutely opposed opposites that are absolutely for themselves; and their relation is strictly a practical one, it is itself actual; the middle of their recognition must itself be actual. Hence they must injure one another. The fact that each posits itself as exclusive totality in the singularity of its existence must become actual. The violation [Beleidigung: outrage, rape, abuse] is necessary."

Without this Beleidigung no consciousness, no desire, no relationship to the other could posit itself. But this breaking-in that comes to injure the other’s proper(ty), the other’s own, does not come down to a singular initiative, to the decision of a freedom. This breaking-in is engendered by a contradiction that inhabits the proper itself, one’s own own. The question here, since Hegel insists above all on the possession of things, rather than of one’s own body proper, is of a contradiction in the thing itself. It is contradictory that a thing (Ding) be some one’s or some peoples proper(ty), their own. “In particular each must be dislodged from its possession (Besitze), for in possession there lies the following contradiction:

. . .” An exterior thing, a thing, a universal reality ofthe earth, by essence exposed to all, cannot, without essential contradiction, stay in the power of a singularity. The contradiction must be resolved. It can be so only by the violent and total expropriation of the singularity. But if this injury were the redistribution of morsels of proprietorship, if a singular reappropriation followed, the same contradiction would persist. So the only end possible is to put to death singularity as such, the possession of proper(ty), of one’s own, in general. What is said here of the body in general, of the thing of the earth, of everything that is exposed to the light, how is the exception of one’s own body proper marked in this? As visibility and availability at least, the body proper is worked (over) by the same contradiction, the stake[enjeu] of the same struggle to death.