Theme introduction
Introduction to Theme I
Life begins with a material distinction that must remain open to exchange; a boundary creates an interior only by regulating its relations with an exterior that supplies energy and matter, alters conditions, and continually threatens the organisation it helps to sustain.
Chapter 1 examines the membrane as the first operative boundary. Chapter 2 follows the energetic cost of maintaining this distinction, since every living continuity expends resources in order to replenish itself. Chapter 3 removes consciousness from the origin of these operations: life regulates exchanges and repairs damage before it knows that it lives.
The theme locates biological singularity in organised work rather than in a vital substance. A living body persists by acting upon the conditions of its persistence, but this activity remains material and situated within relations of dependence; consciousness arrives within a history that life has already begun without it.
Theme chapters