Limited, Inc.

The longing for the center has been a desire in the collective political consciousness at least since the age of the Atlantic revolutions. It is a desire that, at last, we discover the missing ‘no’ in the political unconscious. Although the desire for revolution has been tracked and interpreted and over-interpreted in political philosophy, the desire for the center, for ‘moderation’, has not been considered in itself. Rather, it is, mostly, considered parasitic on other forces – reactionary or revolutionary forces, in which the face of desire is not masked, even if the face itself, we discover sooner or later, is indeed a mask – there is no face behind it. Moderation, on this reading, is simply the desire that we not go so far, so quick, and above all that we avoid pain, instead of welcoming it – admittedly, usually the welcoming has to do with imposing it on others. And as the hastiest reading of history will show, the center almost always ends up finding its own targets to impose pai