Eric Gans's weekly column on culture, desire, and the originary hypothesis — published every week from 1996 to 2019. An essential running commentary on contemporary thought through the lens of Generative Anthropology.
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Here, finally, is my promised analysis of I love you . In How to Do Things With Words , J. R. Austin divided sentences into two types. A constative tells you something about the world that is...
I promised in the last News & Views page to begin a column that would provide views rather than just news. I have decided to call it Chronicles of Love and Resentment because these are the two...
In my previous column, I said that resentment, because it is less originary than love, can be articulated more sharply. Jenny’s song , from which I quoted a line, ends with the heroine sailing off...
This quarter I’ve been teaching an undergraduate seminar on Ideas of Love , a topic not unrelated to that of this column. In the context of our readings, I thought I’d say a few words about the...
After body-piercing , what is left to write about but politics ? Is it possible to be above politics ? Clearly this is not just a theoretical question on the American scene today. The hope of an...
The early Christian theologian Tertullian , when asked how he could believe in a God who allowed himself to suffer the supreme humiliation of crucifixion, is said to have answered: Credo quia...
Since this is my last column of 1995, it seems an appropriate moment to take stock of the world situation. The recent political developments summed up in an article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles...
The death of Itzhak Rabin at the hands of a religious fanatic leads one to think about the deadly rhetoric of acting in God’s name . Although even for the vast majority of the Israeli right, Yigal...
This column is dedicated to the memory of Nicholas Collaros , my deeply regretted young colleague in the UCLA French Department, who died on Sunday, July 23. I haven’t forgotten James Williams’...
Why does it seem so natural for intellectuals to be liberals ? A Marxist analysis might tell us that intellectuals’ distance from the productive infrastructure allows them to produce utopian...
Where are the Women in the Originary Scene? The mimetic theory , both in its classic Girardian formulation and in Gans’s revised origin-of-language model, invites, if somewhat ambiguously,...
Plants and animals that survive in crises where others perish are gifted with the quality of robustness , the ability to adapt to new conditions. The same is true of ideas, of stories, of artworks:...
Since my last column tilted a bit to the side of resentment, I thought I’d even the score this week by borrowing another topic from my seminar on Ideas of Love. Manon Lescaut is one of those...
Last week I promised to pursue the idea that although the avant-garde artist despises the marketplace, he nevertheless expects his work to be recognized by it at some future date. This apparently...
As might have been expected, last week’s Simpson column aroused more interest than usual. I may have more to say on the subject next week. The present column returns to less topical matters. Why is...
Simplicity is the greatest of intellectual virtues. It is enshrined in the principle of minimality , also known as Ockham’s razor after the 14th century English philosopher William of Ockham :...
Paradoxes are not bizarre anomalies but the very stuff of language. The structure of the simplest narrative is paradoxical. The simplest model of language recognizes only practical or instrumental...
Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’Eternité le change Le Poëte suscite avec un glaive nu Son siècle épouvanté de n’avoir pas connu Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange! [At last changed by...
A search of the WWW will not uncover a plethora of information concerning originary anthropology . Not directly, that is. For all cultural activities inform us of our origins. Does not the...
During a conversation with Matt Schneider the other day, the question arose as to what GA can add to our understanding of our most visible current event: the Simpson trial . Or better put, what...
This week’s column is the text of a brief talk I gave at a symposium at UCLA in honor of the centennial of the Iranian philosopher and theologian Ostad Elahi . Good morning. I am greatly honored...
My undergraduate seminar on love ended in a peculiar way. About half way into the class, I distributed the usual student evaluation forms, then left the room while they were being filled out. When I...
This being the tenth of these columns, I thought it appropriate to put it a good word for the institution that makes it possible. Ever since market society began in earnest–and all society is always...