FUHRMANN, Jan Tobias, 2023. Die Gewalt der Zwei-Seiten-Form: Von der Kritik der Zwei-Seiten-Form zur Viel-Seiten-Form der Kritik. Soziale Systeme. 25 June 2023. Vol. 28, no. 1, p. 163–201. DOI 10.1515/sosys-2023-0009. [Accessed 11 December 2023].
**Abstract** page 
In the following, the operations of social systems are understood as the execution of différance (Derrida). Luhmann’s interpretation of the Laws of Form (Spencer-Brown) is rejected. Indications do not produce distinction. They produce indeterminacy. Only the Repetition of a creating violence produces the stability of Two-Sided Forms. In a first step, the Laws of Form are reconstructed as a sequence of commands in the medium of the visual-simultaneous and Luhmann‘s transfer to sequentially performed communication events is rejected (I). différance is marked as a constitutive indeterminacy of social operations (II). The radical indeterminacy of différance is restricted by the operation of compensation and limited to two-sided forms. The limitation marks an epistemic violence (Spivak) (III). This violence gains its authority from repetition (IV). In the interruption of repetition, Critique succeeds. The article concludes by proposing to the systems theory of critique that critique should be understood as the interruption of the authority of repetition (V).
Introduction
By adapting the concept of form from the Laws of Form (Spencer-Brown), Luhmann's sociological systems theory gained a context of differentiation theory. The theoretical figures of binary schematization and thus code formation (elaborated in detail in Luhmann 2017,461-518), which are interpreted as autocatalytic moments of system formation in the context of symbolic generalization (Luhmann 1975,176 f.), were thus conceptually upgraded and theoretically elevated to an epistemological level of a prior necessity of making distinctions (Goebel 2000,216-222). For Luhmann, this results in what he calls the two-sided form: "Following suggestions that can be taken from George Spencer Brown's calculus of forms, we understand form to mean the marking of a boundary with the result that two sides emerge and only one of them can be used as a point of contact for further operations. The transition to the other side is thus not excluded; but it requires a special operation, thus takes time and differs in its logical implications from what happens if one remains on the same side and only condenses and confirms the designation of this side. A form is therefore always a two-sided form. It can only ever be used as a form on one side (i.e. always only incompletely). But it is equally true that an observer (and this can also be the user of the form) can only see the form if he sees it as a two-sided form." (Luhmann 1991c, 166). For the operation this means: "The operation is never at two points in time at the same time, it is not a divine actuality, but it presupposes the simultaneity of the two sides of the distinction and thus the simultaneity of the world in order to be able to move in a before/after difference." (Luhmann 1992,80 f.)
Difference between before and after
This adaptation of the form as a special two-sided form will be criticized below. The criticism consists in the fact that the assumption of simultaneity can only be accepted if the two-sided form is processed in the medium of visual simultaneity. If this medium is abandoned, such use can no longer be assumed without further ado. For as long as one remains in the medium of the visual-simultaneous, an observer can simultaneously grasp an inside and outside through the presence of the drawn demarcation line of differentiation (cross). If one steps out of the visual, which is the case with verbal communication, for example, it only becomes apparent what the other side has been in the aftermath of crossing from one side to the other, without a demarcation line that has been crossed being preserved. Instead of the simultaneity of a marked and unmarked state, it is much more the case that an addendum takes place that pretends to be the recording of a change of state. What Luhmann thus marks as a spatial moment produces an ontology that can only process in the medium of the visual-simultaneous. An adaptation of the concept of form must therefore be more complex than Luhmann's two-sided form.
In the following, it is assumed that the restabilizations of two-sided forms result from a force that produces them. In order to show this, the use of a two-sided form is not assumed as a starting point, but rather recourse is made to a post-compatibility through which the two-sided form is first produced. At the moment of designation, the distinction is not yet determined by another side, but the other side remains undetermined; the cross is unwritten (Spencer-Brown 1999,7).
This means that it should not be assumed that the distinction is produced simultaneously with the designation and that the other side is marked with the aid of time in the crossing. Instead, it should be assumed that the crossing first produces a further indication and that the cross is produced as a result. The supplement therefore produces a state that is different from the previous state, which can then be marked by means of a cross.
As long as no crossing has taken place, it is merely a designation that could not have produced a distinction. At this moment, that is the proposal made here, a difference operates in the sense of Derrida (1999). In contrast to Nassehi's (1995, 57) interpretation, this decision ascribes a greater power to difference than to the calculus of forms. The advantage lies in not having to presuppose the use of a two-sided form, i.e. a distinction, in the actual operation of an indication. Being distinguished remains situational and momentarily indeterminate (I).
If this consideration is followed, a sheer Event can be identified, i.e. an event that does not yet have the quality of being distinguished as an event in the system (II).
Two-sided forms then only arise at the moment of compensation (Spencer-Brown 1999,10), i.e. the marking of the two-sided form. Compensations work as supplements that fix distinctions and, in fixing the indeterminacy of difference, do violence to it (III).
This violence, and this is what constitutes the sociological moment, must be constantly re-established and stabilized by intervening against deviating uses of distinction. In order to be able to name this, it is proposed to adopt Derrida's concept of differential contamination (1991, 83) and to identify it with a double violence, firstly the setting through compensation and secondly the repetition of this violence (IV).
The critique of the two-sided form developed in this way shows that two-sided forms do not arise as an automatism of a calculus of indication and distinction, but are produced by a violence. As it were, and this is what the power of difference serves, the first force can be understood as a necessity of the genesis of meaning. However, the necessity of the genesis of meaning does not have to be repeated permanently, as in the double violence of differential contamination, but can be interrupted by critique. By marking the violence of the production of two-sided form, both a concept of critique can be developed and a critical system theory can be articulated in terms of form theory (V).
⇒ Die konstitutive Nachträglichkeit der Distinktion