Theme introduction
Introduction to Theme III
The work that sustains life also consumes it. Repair cannot restore every alteration, metabolism spends the organisation it maintains, and reproduction preserves continuity only by transferring a form that remains exposed to variation and extinction.
Chapter 7 follows mortality within the energetic labour of living. Chapter 8 shows reproduction carrying instability across generations rather than securing an identical copy. Chapter 9 turns this bodily exposure towards ethics, locating the first demand for response in the vulnerability through which living beings affect and depend upon one another.
Death therefore belongs to the organisation of life from within. Its presence neither cancels persistence nor reduces existence to decline. It makes continuity finite, redistributes material possibilities, and leaves every living relation exposed to consequences that no individual body can master alone.
Theme chapters