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.
13 of 855 posts
It is surely no coincidence that WWII, the real “war to end all wars,” included both Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the most extreme dehumanization of the “racial” Other and the bomb whose destructive...
There are few slogans more tiresome than Adorno’s famous line that writing poetry after Auschwitz is “barbaric.” But I think these words, far from being an exaggeration, are truer than their author...
As in many other things, not being an “authority” on the Holocaust makes it easier for me to formulate some basic ideas about it than for those whose lives and careers are directly dependent on it. I...
To attempt to analyze our current predicament in the terms of the originary hypothesis, we must rethink the Holocaust and its postmodern victimary outcome as an inherent consequence of the origin...
In my previous analyses of the victimary as the defining feature of the postmodern era, I may have missed its most profound characteristic: not merely conferral on the victim of compensation for...
This Chronicle is the second part of the talk delivered at the 5th annual GA Summer Conference at High Point NC. Whether or not you appreciate the Barber analogy discussed in Chronicle 405 , you...
In reading over the fourth chapter of Des choses cachées… in preparation for my forthcoming Imitatio monograph on the relationship between mimetic theory and GA, I came across Girard’s discussion...
The question that arises most crucially from our series of annual conferences is that of the status of GA as a “new way of thinking.” After several decades, given the modest degree to which GA has...
This Chronicle , although it can be read as an independent unit, is the continuation of a two-part essay begun in Chronicle 407 . Sartre’s néant , which seems to have nothing to do with...
I recently signed a contract with the Thiel Foundation, the parent organization of Imitatio, to write a monograph about the evolution of René Girard’s thought from Mensonge romantique et vérité...
As my readers know, I consider myself an eternal amateur in a world of professionals. For most of my career, this status has not excluded me from dialogue with the latter, but occasions for it seem...
This Chronicle is the first of two parts of the talk I recently delivered at the 5th annual Generative Anthropology Summer Conference in High Point, NC. This conference, flawlessly hosted by my old...
The fact that utopia means “noplace” is no excuse for attempting to conceive one. No doubt the closeness of this noplace to the Sartrian néant that separates us as “free” humans/language users from...