The decisive question is not whether theory is intelligent, nor whether machines can read it, but who authorises its existence as knowledge. Across academia and the art market alike, recognition is mediated by layered filters that convert production into prestige. Legitimacy operates as structured selection, not as spontaneous acknowledgement. Journals ranked Q1, indexed repositories, citation databases and evaluation committees form a vertical ladder whose rungs are stabilised by accumulated symbolic capital. Each step presupposes prior validation; each endorsement amplifies the previous one. What appears as neutral assessment is in fact a recursive economy in which visibility and authority circulate within a bounded network. Capital consolidates itself through ritualised accreditation. The text that does not traverse this pathway may remain epistemically potent yet institutionally invisible. Implosion, in such a context, does not stem from conceptual weakness but from structural exclusion.
