“Being itself is a ‘practice of the outside’, a practice of turning in or toward the swerve, losing itself in the changing of worlds, from form to form. Taken to the limit, this practice ‘demands’ that one not consider oneself ‘one’; that one look upon oneself or one’s being (in the restricted sense of ‘me’) as an after-thought (autos as product of a split-effect). No self without other, no ‘self’ at all without this split-off, this determination of self qua the expulsion of encountered elements determined to be foreign. Acknowledgement of this obliges us to reconsider the traditional model of self as atom, as autonomous outside or aside from other atoms. It throws into question the very possibility of pure solitude and solipsism, or that ‘someone’ could ever be independently of their encounters. The other is thus introduced at the heart of self-reflection, of the cogito, of decision—for these too are swerves. And, as Althusser advises, it is simply a repression of this teaching to attribute a swerve to the will, freedom, or drive of an individual/atom. No doubt, for centuries it has felt that way—as if our great and passionate in-clinations sprang from us, heart and soul. No one denies that it can still feel this way. But to resist this act of attribution is to acknowledge the passivity of this ‘passion.’ Or again, our passion is the very practice of being, which takes us ‘outside’ the ‘one’ we conceive ourselves to be.”