The esoteric domain refers to those regions or aspects of an activity that are most strongly classified in relation to other practices in terms of both content and mode of expression. It is only with in this domain that the principles of the practice can be fully realised.

The subject of the esoteric domain is also a subject of a gaze that effects a recontextualisation of practices relating to other activities by subordinating them to the principles of the recontextualising activity, which is to say, the principles of its esoteric domain. The effect of this recontextualising gaze is the constitution of a public domain.