“We hold ourselves in place through the interactional texts we build with and through others, and in the shadow of institutions of force. To use language effectively, all subjects must be able to operate-if not consciously understand-the principles by which texts cohere as the same principles that allow for their reformation. In short, the subject must learn to rely for survival on her provisionality within any one unfolding discursive space and her displacement across discursive spaces as her means of survival. In doing so, she places herself in the human lot: Every day, without relief from birth to death, she will remake the here and now whether she likes it or not, whether she knows it or not, in the context of institutional threat and incitement.

To be sure, these institutions might seem a welcome external brace, a resting place…"

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2001. “Sexuality at Risk: Psychoanalysis Metapragmatically.” In Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis, edited by Tim Dean and Christopher Lane, 387–411. (p. 404)