Subjectivity / CANONICAL RECORD
WE — Whole Emergent
공진주체 WE
WE is an evental relational unit that emerges as a temporary form of subjectivity when human and nonhuman actors transform one another’s conditions of judgment through sustained recursive interaction and the relation itself becomes irreducible to its individual components.
Scholarly status
- Authoritative definition
- Reviewed English text
- Field-level status shown
- Publication links kept distinct from definition evidence
Canonical definition
WE (Whole Emergent) is an irreducible relational event that temporarily occurs when repeated relations between human and nonhuman actors reach recursive mutual conditioning and substantial transformation of frameworks of judgment; it does not denote an independent person or an ultimate subject of responsibility.
Compare Korean canonical text
WE(Whole Emergent)는 인간과 비인간 행위자의 반복적 관계가 재귀적 상호 조건화와 판단틀의 실질적 변형에 도달할 때 일시적으로 발생하는 비환원적 관계 사건이며, 독립적 인격이나 최종 책임주체를 뜻하지 않는다.
Problem statement
Connection alone does not produce WE. Simple Q&A, search, translation, or automated recommendation is difficult to call resonance when neither party’s framework of judgment is substantially transformed. Resonance is not merely external contact but the mutual adjustment of causal structures. There is therefore a threshold: connection → interaction → adjustment → resonance → WE.
Scope and distinctions
Actor–network theory is strong in distributing agency across a network. WE asks instead how a new integrated structure of judgment emerges for a certain duration within that relation. Posthuman theory emphasizes the dismantling and distribution of the anthropocentric subject; WE analyzes evental integration arising as distributed actors recursively coordinate one another. It is grounded not in an ontology of connection but in a generative account of resonance.
Connected claim
Canonical claim for WE — Whole Emergent ↗rh:claim:we:canonicalDirectly connected sources
Related concepts and relation status
- ArturaProvisional relation · author review pending
- Non-positionednessProvisional relation · author review pending
- PLMProvisional relation · author review pending
Cite this record
Lee, Yongwook. “WE — Whole Emergent.” ReHumanities Knowledge, version 1.0. https://knowledge.leehumanities.com/concepts/we.
Ready to copy.Author-approved explanatory context
The current definition of WE and the designation Whole Emergent come from the author-approved core-concept formulation. The 2024 article on generative AI and the restructuring of knowledge provides background on human–AI collaboration. Pages 321, 324, and 353–354 of the 2026 article on media aesthetics in the age of technological generation address points directly relevant to WE's event-like emergence and asymmetric interaction, including human judgment and responsibility and the system's conditional outputs. The name Whole Emergent is not retroactively attributed to that publication.
K01: Whole Emergent | P24: historical background | P26A: related events and asymmetryApproval scope
Approval of a canonical record is limited to the stated concept definition, edition, and language. Historical formulations in published articles, manuscripts still under review, translations with verified author approval, and unreviewed introductory texts must be distinguished. Publication or public availability alone does not extend the same approval status to other editions or languages.