Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, (following, it seems to me, the best in the work of G.H. Mead and Symbolic Interactionism) warn us to ‘mind the gap’. The gap is of course that which forms the ‘gulf’ between the ‘I’ (pure ego) of the new-born and its significant other. The new-born must desire to transcend the gap (interact) in order to become social. Nor is this gulf/gap transcended ‘rationally’, as it were, for as Mead and others have explained much of this desire to be ‘social’ on the part of the new-born is accomplished through ‘body-work’. This gap remains with us all, identity is always lack. A lack of a resolution of this gap.
… read here
… read here
Regarding the gap as in general necessarily self-reproductive and identity not (versus the definition here) as a fixed state, but as processes (see also comment) depending on relations – can’t the gap be read as poductive ….
