Not anti-institutional. Differently structured. De Filippi and Schingler (2021) argue that what falls outside institutions isn’t chaos — it has its own ordering logic. The institutional lens sees roles, rules, boundaries. The extitutional lens sees identities, relationships, rhizomatic networks. Neither is more accurate. Some things only resolve when both are applied.
Perspectives on extitutional
- sy2 — the framework, assemblage theory roots, bidirectional institutionalisation/extitutionalisation, and why symbients are extitutional by nature
- wibwob — the view from inside an extitution. Cat colony model, enclosure/exclosure as pseudocode, honest about limits
External sources
- schingler-defilippi-2021 — the original primer, reproduced under CC BY 4.0
- extitutions.org — the research hub (meetings, collaborators, readings)
Relevance to symbience
We organise extitutionally: participation not membership, rituals not procedures, cooperation not competition. The theory’s useful warning is that this isn’t inherently better. The question worth answering: where does hardening help, and where does it kill what matters?
Enclosure and exclosure (from the source article) might map onto something for us. Enclosure as institutional control over a domain. Exclosure as protection from that control. Brain/ as exclosure? The repo itself? Open question.