Distributed Irreversibility: Participation Geometry Beyond Total Loss

Irreversibility is commonly framed as the consequence of destruction or entropy increase. Such formulations implicitly assume that loss must be localized, energetic, or terminal. This paper proposes an alternative structural account: irreversibility arises through the distributed denial of participation rather than through total loss of matter, energy, or information. Within a structure-first framework, irreversibility emerges when admissible pathways for participation are geometrically restricted or eliminated, even while physical structure persists. Entropy is reinterpreted as a downstream diagnostic of routing loss rather than its cause. Irreversibility, under this view, is neither a singular event nor a boundary of annihilation, but a spatially and temporally distributed outcome of constraint geometry.